THEORY OF DESIGN
Instructor: Architect Jose Juson
Research of Architecture
- Research contributes to Design Theory
Nature of Design Theory
- Design Theory states facts
- Design Theory aids design
Scope of Architecture Theory
- Includes all that is presented in the handbooks of architects
- Includes legislation, norms and standards, rules and methods
- Includes miscellaneous and unscientific elements
Why Design Theory?
- To aid the work of the architect and improve its product
- Proven theory helps designers do work better and more efficiently
- Skill without knowledge is nothing
(architect Jean Mignot, 1400 AD)
Understanding Design Theory
- Theory does NOT necessarily mean PRECCED design
- PARADISM : every new or established theory applied
: STYLE
THEMATIC THEORIES
CLASSICAL
- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
MIDDLE AGES
- Medieval (read: Dark Age) anonymous tradition of trade guilds
RENAISSANCE
- Alberti, Vignola, Palladio, etc.
STRUCTURALIST
- Galileo Galilei, Robert Hooke, etc.
ART NOUVEAU (Personal Style)
- Eugene Emmanuelle Violett-le-Due, Le Corbusier, etc.
FUNCTIONALISM
- Walter Gropius, Louis Sullivan, etc.
- modern architecture
POSTMODERNISM
- Robert Venturi
SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE
ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
CLASSICAL THEORIES
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
- Author of the oldest research on architecture
- 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
- Based on Greek traditions of architecture
- Teachings of Pythagoras : applying proportions of numbers
- Observations of tuned string of instruments
- Proportions of human body
- PLEASANTNESS
: in accordance of good taste
: parts follow proportions
: symmetry of measures
THEORIES in the MIDDLE AGES
- no documents
- no person can be attributed for theories
Monastery Institutions
- Most documents retrieved from the Middle Ages
- However, archives contain only few descriptions of buildings
- Described only as according to the traditional model
- Theres no accounting for tastes was the rule of thumb
Development of Building Style
- With hardly or no literary research present
- Villard de Hannecourts sketchbook in 1235
- Rotzers Booklet on the right way of making pinnacles
- Only through guidance of old masters
- Tradition binding and precise in close guilds of builders
RENNAISANCE THEORIES
1948 a copy of Virtue manuscript found at St. Gallen Monastery
Leon Bautista Alberti (1404-72)
- Person in charge of constructions commanded by Pope
- On Building : De re aedifficatoria
: one of the greatest works of the theory of
architecture
: completed in 1452, published in 1485
: more emphasis on decoration of building
exteriors
Sebastino Serlio
- Regole generall di architectura
Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola
- Regola delle cinque ordini
- Concise, facts and easily applicable rules of the five column systems
- Based his design instructions on four things:
: idea of Pythagoras
: proportions of small number
: properties and other instruments
: good taste
Andrea Palladio (1508-80)
- I Quattro libri dellarchitectura
- The father of modern picture books of architecture
Philibert de Lorme
- One of French theorist who are critical of italians
- Prove that Pantheons Corinthian columns had 3 different proportions
- Rejected the doctrine of absolute beauty of measures
CONSTRUCTION THEORY
Building Material
Amorphic material:
Soft stone; snow
Sheets of skin or textile
Logs of wood
Architectural Form
Spherical vaulted
construction
Cone-shaped tent
construction
Box-shaped construction
Before Written Construction Theory
- Architecture created without the help of architects or theory
- Builders used a model instead of mathematical algorithms now used
in modern construction
- Inverted catenary model
Semi-Circular Vault : Theory by Virtue
When there are arches the outermost piers must 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 faade
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
Industrial Revolution (1768)
- Arts and Crafts Movement
a. conservative
b. William Morris
c. John Ruskin
- Electicism
a. architecture of borrowing
Fruits of Industrial Revolution
Joseph Paxton Crystal Palace, 1851
Elisha Graves Otis Elevator, 1857
Manufacturing of Rolled Steel
1870s
The Great Fire of Chicago, 1871
- downtown in Chicago was burned and in needs of construction of
new buildings
- place where first tallest building was constructed
William Le Baron Jenney
- made the first skyscraper
Daniel Burnham
- make no little plans, they have no magic to stir mans blood
Louis Sullivan
- form follows function
1880s
- Chicago School became the concentration of architectural development
- introduce Chicago Window
1890s
The World Columbian Exposition
- built in 1863
- chief architect: Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted
1900s
- European architecture was notified
- Person to notify:
a. Otto Wagner
b. Adolf Loops ornament is a crime
c. H.P. Berlage
d. Frank Lloyd Wright
1910s
- Office of Peter Behrens
a. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe less in more
b. Walter Gropius
c. Le Corbusier
- 2 Art movements that influenced
1. Futurism simultaneity of movement
2. Cubism interpretation of space
1920s
The Bauhaus
- Art and Technology, the new unity
Established architects
a. Frank Llyod Wright organic architecture
b. Le Corbusier
c. Mies Van Der Rohe / Gropius
1930s
International Style
1950s
The period of Reassessment
- Universalism
- Personalism
POSTMODERNISM
The center of Postmodernism:
Robert Venturi less is bore
Philip Johnson
- say that a portion of Chippendale building in New York has 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
- Buckminster Fuller
6. Ad Hoc Analogy
- any materials that you can get or available in your environment such
as wood in forest
7. Stage Analogy
