WHAT’S THE MAIN SKILL

REQUIRED FOR AN ARCHITECT?

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GENERATION OF A 3 DIMENSIONAL FORM / DESIGN

-Central core of an architect’s task

-Unique skill required of an architect
HOW DO WE GENERATE A 3
DIMENSIONAL FORM?

ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC

METHODS TO DO THAT??

HOW MANY METHODS ARE

THERE???
Welcome to architectural theories
THE NATURE OF BUILDINGS
Whoever does the design, however democratic the procedures by
which a design is achieved, the finished building actually will
display certain characteristics which were outlined by Hillier,
Musgrove and O'Sullivan.

Any building whether we like it or not, and whether the

designer(s) intend(s) it to or not, will:-

1. Enclose spaces for certain human purposes. The actual division

of spaces may facilitate or inhibit specific human activities, it may
also provide security.

2. Modify the external climate thus providing conditions in which

human beings may be more or less comfortable. in visual, thermal
and actual terms.

3. Act as a system of signs or symbols into which people may read

meanings

4. Modify the values of the materials from which it is built, the

land on which it stands and possibly of the adjacent properties.
MODES OF DESIGNING – Geoffrey Broadbent
It may be, however, that the nearest we shall ever get to a "theory" of architecture will be a
theory of design-behavior which predicts - with probabilities - the ways in which architects,
or anyone else who tries to generate 3-dimensional built form will act whilst they are
actually trying to design.

Certain mechanisms to have been used, in this context, by designers throughout history;
starting long before there were any professional architects have been summarized as four
different modes.
- PRAGMATIC

- ICONIC

- CANONIC

- ANALOGIC
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
Materials are used, by trial-and-error, until a form emerges which seems to serve the designers'
purpose.

A mammoth hunter's tent excavated at Pushkari near Novgorod-Seversk made from the
available building materials: some rather spindly trees, some small stones and after that the
bones, tusks and skins of the mammoths; all that was left after the meat had been eaten.
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
The site, as excavated, suggested that the mammoth hunters had built three interlocking tepee-
like frames from the available timbers and perhaps from the mammoth tusks. They had then
laid mammoth skins over this framework, weighting down the edges with stones and the bones.

So the most improbable of materials were used to form a very effective shelter; the available
resources were allowed to determine the form.
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
We still tend to use this mode of designing whenever we have to use new materials, as in the
case, say, of plastic air houses and suspension structures.
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
PRAGMATIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
The members of a particular culture share a fixed mental image of what the design should be
"like".

Often encouraged in "primitive" cultures by legend, tradition, work-songs which describe the
design process by the mutual adaption which has taken place between ways of life and building
form - as with the Eskimo's igloo - and by the conventions of craftsmanship which take a long
time to learn but, once learned, are difficult to abandon.
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
We still set up icons - such as Bunshaft's Lever House in New York (1952) which became the
fixed mental image for a generation of architects and clients as to what office buildings should
be like.

User-participation is perhaps the most potent mechanism of all for the repetition of design
icons.
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
ICONIC DESIGN
CANONIC DESIGN
The grids and axes of these early design drawings took on a life of their own; it became clear
that the second-rate artists could emulate the work of a master by abstracting from it the
underlying systems of proportion.

Once this view had been formed - that art and design could be underpinned by abstract
proportional systems - it received a massive boost from the Greek geometers (Pythagoras) and
Classical philosophers (Plato, etc.) who believed that the universe itself was constructed of
cubes, tetrahedra, icosahedra and dodecahedra and that these in turn were made up of
triangles.

The Platonic triangles underlay medieval Gothic design.

Whilst much 20th century design has been based on similar precepts; it is the basis of all
modular systems, dimensional co-ordination, prefabricated systems building and so on.

New mathematical techniques and computer aids are likely to boost even further this interest in
the abstract Geometry of Environment
CANONIC DESIGN
CANONIC DESIGN
CANONIC DESIGN

NASHVILLE CENTENNIAL
PARK
CANONIC DESIGN
CANONIC DESIGN
CANONIC DESIGN
CANONIC DESIGN
ANALOGIC DESIGN

The drawing of analogies - usually visual - into the solution of one's design problems.

This seems to have started with designing the Step Pyramid complex at Sakkara; given the
problem of building, for the first time, in large blocks of stone, he drew visual analogies with
existing brick tomb-forms, timber-framed and reed-mat houses, for the overall building forms,
with lotus buds or flowers and snakes heads for the decoration, and so on.
ANALOGIC DESIGN
ANALOGIC DESIGN

Analogy still seems to be the mechanism of "creative" architecture, as with Wright's use of
water lily forms in the Johnson Wax factory office (1936), his own hands at prayer in the
Madison, Wisconsin Chapel (1950) not to mention Le Corbusier's crab-shell roof of Ronchamp.
These are direct analogies - Broadbent
ANALOGIC DESIGN

Ronchamp chapel by Le Corbusier

ANALOGIC DESIGN

Much 20th century architecture has drawn on painting and sculpture as sources of analogies,
(Constructivism, Purism, de Stijl); but analogies can also be drawn with one's own body
(personal analogy) and with abstract, philosophical concepts (as in the present preoccupation
with indeterminacy).

Analogical design requires the use of some medium such as a drawing, for translating the
original into its new form.

The first Egyptian design drawings date from the same period as Imhotep's pyramid complex
and the drawing itself begins to suggest possibilities to the designer.

He sets up grids and/or axes to make sure that his drawing will fit on to the available surface;
these "suggest" regularities - symmetries and rhythms - which had not appeared previously in
architecture.

Any design analogue - a drawing, model, or even a computer program, will "take over" from the
designers and influence the way they design.
ANALOGIC DESIGN

Sydney opera house by Jorn Utzon

ANALOGIC DESIGN

Bahai Temple by Fariborz Sahba

ANALOGIC DESIGN

TWA Terminal by Eero Saarinen

ANALOGIC DESIGN
ANALOGIC DESIGN
ANALOGIC DESIGN
SUMMING UP . . .

The first three, pragmatic, iconic and

canonical design can be readily associated
with pre-modern design, but all describe
actions one could see modern architects
apply.

Pragmatic ("try it and see") design

commonly occurs on building sites; eg.
Where and when inadequacies in
documentation become evident and
immediate action is necessary to avoid
delays and claims.

Residential and commercial property

developers routinely instruct consultants,
including architects, to apply iconic and
canonic principles; eg. To match floor areas,
standard layouts, fittings and finishes to a
target purchaser model identified through
market research.
SUMMING UP . . .

However, in analogical design, when the designer

shapes and develops a representation of a design,
or variations of it in detail, before making a physical
embodiment, it is the most familiar and dominant
paradigm.

It is the method student designers are taught to

apply, almost universally.

The actions of analogical design, such as drawing,

model making or using CAD, typify what many
people would identify as the outward actions of
designing.

Recent developments of 2D and 3D design

computing software have magnified the power of
analogical approaches by enabling almost any
aspect of a design to be modeled, throughout its
life cycle.
EXTENDED THOUGHT . . .

A more process oriented form of classification than Broadbent's, divides designing into;
v. Routine
vi. Innovative
vii. Creative.

Routine design: is applied to designing which proceeds from existing prototypes. This
would include iconic design.

Innovative design: refers to designing which also proceeds from existing prototypes,
but with the freedom to change the ranges of prototype variables. This could include rule
based canonic design. Eg. Where a designer adopts traditional forms but changes their
proportions. The typical result of innovative design, by this definition, has a familiar
structure but novel appearance because the values of the defining variables are
unfamiliar.

Creative design: is distinguished from the first two by the use of new variables,
producing new types and providing the capacity to produce a paradigm shift. Creative
design and analogical design can themselves be regarded as analogous when they
involve transfer and adaptation of prototypes or an analog medium Innovative and
creative designs are two forms of non-routine design.
This was the contribution of Geoffrey
Broadbent to Architectural Theory…
 Just to check if you have understood . . . Tackle the quiz!

Imagine you are appointed as Head for Design team in an Architectural MNC for a
project to create sheltered space for street vendors along major commercial streets in
India.

By using the four methods of form generation, evolve different shelter models.

Sketch the design and write the process and the materials used.