THEORY OF DESIGN  THEMATIC THEORIES

Instructor: Architect Jose Juson • CLASSICAL

- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
• Research of Architecture • MIDDLE AGES
- Research contributes to Design Theory - Medieval (read: Dark Age) anonymous tradition of trade
• Nature of Design Theory guilds
- Design Theory states facts • RENAISSANCE
- Design Theory aids design - Alberti, Vignola, Palladio, etc.
• Scope of Architecture Theory • STRUCTURALIST
- Includes all that is presented in the handbooks of - Galileo Galilei, Robert Hooke, etc.
architects • ART NOUVEAU (Personal Style)
- Includes legislation, norms and standards, rules and - Eugene Emmanuelle Violett-le-Due, Le Corbusier, etc.
methods • FUNCTIONALISM
- Includes miscellaneous and “unscientific” elements - Walter Gropius, Louis Sullivan, etc.
• Why Design Theory? - modern architecture
- To aid the work of the architect and improve its product • POSTMODERNISM
- Proven theory helps designers do work better and more - Robert Venturi
efficiently • SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE
- “Skill without knowledge is nothing” • ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
(architect Jean Mignot, 1400 AD)
• Understanding Design Theory  CLASSICAL THEORIES
- Theory does NOT necessarily mean PRECCED design • Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
- PARADISM : every new or established theory applied - Author of the oldest research on architecture
: STYLE - Wrote an extensive summary of all the theory on
construction
- Had a thorough knowledge of earlier Greek and Roman
writings
• “Ten Books on Architecture”
- De architectura libri decem
- Consists mostly of normative theory of design (based on
practice)
- A collection of thematic theories of design with no method
of combining them into a synthesis
- Presents a classification of requirements set for buildings:
: DURABILTIY (firmitas)
: PRACTICALITY or “convenience”
(utilitas)
: PLEASANTNESS (venustas)
 • Vitruvian Rules of Aesthetic Form • Sebastino Serlio
- Based on Greek traditions of architecture - “Regole generall di architectura”
- Teachings of Pythagoras : applying proportions of numbers • Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola
- Observations of tuned string of instruments - “Regola delle cinque ordini”
- Proportions of human body - Concise, facts and easily applicable rules of the five column
- PLEASANTNESS : in accordance of good taste systems
: parts follow proportions - Based his design instructions on four things:
: symmetry of measures : idea of Pythagoras
: proportions of small number
 THEORIES in the MIDDLE AGES : properties and other instruments
- no documents : good taste
- no person can be attributed for theories • Andrea Palladio (1508-80)
- “I Quattro libri dell’architectura”
• Monastery Institutions - The father of modern picture books of architecture
- Most documents retrieved from the Middle Ages • Philibert de L’orme
- However, archives contain only few descriptions of - One of French theorist who are critical of italians
buildings - Prove that Pantheon’s Corinthian columns had 3 different
- Described only as “according to the traditional model” proportions
- “There’s no accounting for tastes” was the rule of thumb - Rejected the doctrine of absolute beauty of measures
• Development of Building Style
- With hardly or no literary research present  CONSTRUCTION THEORY
- Villard de Hannecourt’s “sketchbook” in 1235
- Rotzer’s Booklet on the right way of making pinnacles Building Material Architectural Form
- Only through guidance of old masters Amorphic material: Spherical vaulted
- Tradition binding and precise in close guilds of builders Soft stone; snow construction
Sheets of skin or textile Cone-shaped tent
 RENNAISANCE THEORIES construction
Logs of wood Box-shaped construction
• 1948 – a copy of Virtue manuscript found at St. Gallen
Monastery • Before Written Construction Theory
• Leon Bautista Alberti (1404-72) - Architecture created without the help of architects or
- Person in charge of constructions commanded by Pope theory
- “On Building” : De re aedifficatoria - Builders used a model instead of mathematical algorithms
: one of the greatest works of the theory of now used in modern construction
architecture - Inverted “catenary” model
: completed in 1452, published in 1485 • Semi-Circular Vault : Theory by Virtue
: more emphasis on decoration of building “ When there are arches… the outermost piers must
exteriors be made broader than the others so that they may have the
 strength to resist when the wedges under the pressure of
the load of the walls, begins to thrust to the abutments.”
• During Middle Ages
- No written documents survived about theories or models to
describe the magnificent vaults of medieval cathedrals
• During Renaissance
- From Alberti onwards, architects began specializing
- Mathematical models by Francis Bacon and Galileo
Galilei
: considers load and scientific studies
contributed to constructions
- 1675 : Marquis de Vauban founded a building
depatment in the French army called “ Corps des
Ingenieurs”
- 1747 : Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees, special school
founded in Paris where new profession specializing in
construction was organized.
--- first engineering school
- Other figures of mathematical construction theory
: Robert Hooke
: Jakob Bernoulli
: Leonard Euier
 PERSONAL STYLE
• Copying from Antiquity
- Architecture form antiquity came to a print of perfection
- Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1863)
: the first theorist who set out to create a totally
new system of architectural forms independent of antiquity
“What we call taste is but an involuntary process of reasoning whose
steps elude our observation. Authority has no value if its grounds are
not explained.”
: the foundation of modern
architecture
: did not create a timeless architectural style
himself, he showed others the philosophical
foundation and method that they could use to
develop even radically new form language
- Owen Jones : used forms inspired from nature, especially
plants
 ART NOUVEAU
- The first architectural style independent of the tradition of
antiquity after the Gothic style
- The example set by Art Nouveau encourage some of the
most skillful architects of the 20th century to create their
private form language
THEORETICAL TREATISES
- Five points of Architecture (1926, Le Corbusier)
a. pilotis
b. free plan
c. free façade
d. the long horizontal sliding window
e. the roof garden
- Architecture as Space (Bruno Zeri)
“The crux of architecture is not the sculptural pattern, but
instead the building interiors. These can be seen as
“negative solids”, as voids which the artist divides,
combines, repeats and emphasizes in the same way as the
sculptor treats his “positive” lumps of substance.”
- The “personal style” of architects are not necessarily
based on laws of nature or on logical reasoning. More
important is that they exhibit a coherent application of an
idea which also must be clear that the public can find it
out. An advantage is also if the style includes symbolical
undertones.
 MODERN ARCHITECTURE 1900’s
• Industrial Revolution (1768) - European architecture was notified
- Arts and Crafts Movement - Person to notify:
a. conservative a. Otto Wagner
b. William Morris b. Adolf Loops “ornament is a crime”
c. John Rustrin c. H.P. Berlage
- Electicism d. Frank Llyod Wright
a. architecture of borrowing 1910’s
• Fruits of Industrial Revolution - Office of Peter Behrens
Joseph Paxton – Crystal Palace, 1851 a. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe “less in more”
Elisha Graves Otis – Elevator, 1857 b. Walter Gropius
Manufacturing of “Rolled Steel” c. Le Corbusier
- 2 Art movements that influenced
1870’s 1. Futurism – simultaneity of movement
• The Great Fire of Chicago, 1871 2. Cubism – interpretation of space
- downtown in Chicago was burned and in needs of 1920’s
construction of new buildings • The Bauhaus
- place where first tallest building was constructed - “Art and Technology, the new unity”
• William Le Baron Jenney • Established architects
- made the first skyscraper a. Frank Llyod Wright “organic architecture”
• Daniel Burnham b. Le Corbusier
- “make no little plans, they have no magic to stir man’s c. Mies Van Der Rohe / Gropius
blood” 1930’s
• Louis Sullivan • International Style
- “form follows function”
1950’s
1880’s • The period of Reassessment
- Chicago School became the concentration of architectural - Universalism
development - Personalism
- introduce Chicago Window
 POSTMODERNISM
1890’s • The center of Postmodernism:
• The World Columbian Exposition Robert Venturi “less is bore”
- built in 1863 • Philip Johnson
- chief architect: Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law - say that a portion of Chippendale building in New York has
Olmsted no function
• Introduce the element of “Discovery”
 SYMBOLIC ARHITECTURE
- “Building as a message”

1. Mathematical Analogy
2. Biological Analogy
- use of plants and ornaments
3. Romantic Architecture
- uses exotic language of form
- vastness; trying to surprise; huge
4. Linguistic Analogies
- grammar; uses words with proper grammar
5. Mechanical Analogies
- Buckminter Fuller
6. Ad Hoc Analogy
- any materials that you can get or available in your
environment such as wood in forest
7. Stage Analogy