CONCEPTS &

PHILOSOPHIES

Functional concepts
Environmental concepts
Structural concepts
Cultural concepts

Thematic concepts
Time-based concepts

CONCEPTS

Traditional
definition of
good
architecture:
Vitruviuss
Utilitas, Firmitas,
Venustas

FUNCTIONAL CONCEPTS

Existing State

Architecture is
a product of
programming

The Setting
Cultural, Social, Political,
Historical, Economic
Physical Conditions/ Site
Data
Geography, Climate,
Archaeology, Geology
Client/User Profile
Demography,
Organizations, Needs,
Behavior
Constraints
Legal, Financial,
Technical, Market

FUNCTIONAL CONCEPTS

Future State

Mission
Goals
Performance
Requirements
Concepts

Durand:
There are only two problems in
architecture :
1) in private buildings, how to
provide the optimum
accommodation for the smallest
sum of money
2) in public building, how to
provide the maximum
accommodation for a given sum.

FUNCTIONAL CONCEPTS

Ornament had nothing to do with architectural

beauty, since a building was only beautiful when
it satisfied a need.
Whether we consult our reason, or examine
ancient monuments, it is evident that the primary
purpose of architecture has never been to please,
nor has architectonic decoration been its object.

Public and private usefulness, and the

happiness and preservation of
mankind, are the aims of architecture.

FUNCTIONAL CONCEPTS

Light and color

as a modifying
element of space;
artificial or natural,
light can be
manipulated by
design to identify
places and to give
places particular
character

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Temperature,
ventilation,
sound, smell,
texture

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Temperature,
ventilation,
sound, smell,
texture

ENVIRONMENTAL
CONCEPTS

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Using and
modifying things
that are already
there

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Stratification
and climate
responsiveness

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Passive
Cooling

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Le Corbusier
Architecture is the masterly,
correct and magnificent play of
masses brought together in
light. Our eyes are made to see
forms in light.
Thus, cubes, cones, spheres,
cylinders or pyramids are the
great primary forms which
light reveals to advantage;
they are not only beautiful
forms, but the most beautiful
forms.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

Rococo: multiplication of real effects of

parallax, which is the apparent displacement of
objects caused by an actual change in the point
of observation. Ex. Use of mirrors

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

ARCHES

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

Frames

STRUCTURAL CONCEPTS

Tube
Construction

STRUCTURAL CONCEPTS

Mushroom
Construction

STRUCTURAL CONCEPTS

Mushroom
Construction

STRUCTURAL CONCEPTS

SUSPENDED
SYSTEMS

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

PREFABRICATION

STRUCTURAL
CONCEPTS

Stretched
Membrane

STRUCTURAL CONCEPTS

Stretched
Membrane

STRUCTURAL CONCEPTS

Stratification

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

EVOLUTIONARY ARCHITECTURE

Architecture can
create as nature
creates

tree

A building can be
seen as a living
organism with
functional processes

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

EVOLUTIONARY
ARCHITECTURE
The overriding objective is
to reach the ultimate

evolution of a design
so that it is a perfected
culmination of
function, form and
purpose within limits of
budget, materials, and so
forth

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

ETHNOCENTRISM
Habitual disposition to judge
foreign peoples or groups by
the standards and practices
of ones own culture or ethnic
groups.

CULTURAL CONCEPTS

CRITICAL
REGIONALISM
Factoring in cultural variations
and contextual realities.

CULTURAL CONCEPTS

Ledoux: the plan of

an edifice was not
something resulting
from its function but
was deliberately
designed to express
its function by
association of ideas.

CULTURAL CONCEPTS

THEMATIC CONCEPTS

THEMATIC CONCEPTS

TIME-BASED
CONCEPTS

ARCHITECTURAL PHILOSOPHIES

The Ten Books of Architecture by

Vitruvius
MAN OVER
ENVIRONMENT

The man of learning can fearlessly look

down upon the troublesome accidents of
fortune. But he who thinks himself
entrenched in defenses not of learning but
of luck, moves in slippery paths, struggling
though life unsteadily and insecurely.

ARCHITECTURE-ENVIRONMENT

The Poetry of Architecture by John Ruskin

ENVIRONMENT
OVER MAN

Everything about it should be natural, and should

appear as if the influences and forces which were
in operation around its had been too strong to be
resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check
their power, or conceal the evidence of their
action, entirely unavailing it can never lie too
humbly in the pastures of the valley, nor shrink too
submissively into the hollows of the hills; it should
seem to be asking the storm for mercy, and the
mountain for protection; and should appear to owe
weakness, rather than strength, that it is neither
overwhelmed by the one, nor crushed by the
other.

ARCHITECTURE-ENVIRONMENT

Architectural Principles in the Age of

Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower
Explores Renaissance use of ideal geometric
figures and ratios in their designs. Also
discusses why they believed that such figures
and ratios were powerful. Bases are the
relationship of the human body with nature.

ARCHITECTURE-ENVIRONMENT

Le Corbusier The plan proceeds from within to

without; the exterior is the result of the interior

ARCHITECTURAL FORM

The New Architecture and the Bauhaus by

Walter Gropius
The ultimate goal of the new architecture was
the composite but inseparable work
of art, in which the old dividing line between
monumental and decorative elements will have
disappeared forever

ORNAMENTS

Bauhaus: Aim was to unite art and

technology under a purified
aesthetic that removed all ornament
and articulation from form and
stressed the beauty of expressed
function.
Ornament was considered a
bourgeois decadence, if not an
actual crime- Walter Gropius,
Marcel Breuer and Josef Albers

ORNAMENTS

Less is More
Mies Van der Rohe

Less is Bore
Robert Venturi

ORNAMENTS

Less is More
Mies Van der Rohe

Less is Bore
Robert Venturi

ORNAMENTS

An Architecture of complexity
and contradiction has a special
obligation toward the whole- its
truth must be in its totality or
implications of totality.

It must embody the difficult

unity of inclusion rather than the
easy unity of inclusion
- Venturi

CONTRADICTIONS

De Stijl: pursuit of social

renewal through ideal
abstraction;

Close relationship between

architecture and the fine
arts; pristine, geometric but
more decorative than the
Bauhaus:

Painter Piet Mondrian, Design

Critic Theo Van Doesburg,
Architects J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit
Rietveld and Mart Stam

DE STIJL

INTERNATIONAL STYLE

The house is a machine to live in.

the program for building a house should be
set out with the same precision as that for
building a machine;
structural frame should be separately
identified from the space-enclosing walls;
house should be lifted on pilotises so the
garden may spread under it;
roofs should be flat, capable of being used
as a garden;
interior accommodation should be freely
planned

INTERNATIONAL STYLE

INTERNATIONAL STYLE

INTERNATIONAL STYLE

Tectonics- the art and

science of shaping,
ornamenting or assembling
materials in building
construction.

TECTONICS

REVOLUTIONARY
ARCHITECTURE (1800s)
Eclecticism or Indiferrentism- designing without
considering that any matter of principle was
involved
The new tendency to plan buildings
geometrically or symbolically without close
reference to functional requirements

HISTORIOGRAPHY
Historicism and Exoticism: Notion of evolution
and chronology
Passion for Archaeology

ROMANTICISM

INFLUENCE OF THE PICTURESUE

Sculptural and picturesque
The villa concept- multiplicity, relatively modest
dimensions, unrestricted sites, assymmetry,
irregularity of plan, fenestration and silhouette

Intricacy defined as the disposition of objects

which, by a partial and uncertain concealment,
excites and nourishes curiosity

ROMANTICISM

AWARENESS OF STYLE

Style :

the fashion which each generation can

promptly recognize as its own; what ties together
the aesthetic achievements of the creative
individuals of one age;
the expression of a prevailing, dominant or
authentically contemporary view of the
world by those artists who have most
successfully intuited the quality of human
experience peculiar to their day, and who are able
to phrase this experience in forms deeply
congenial to the thought or matter expressed

REVIVALISM

PRIMITIVISM AND PROGRESS

Issues of birth, growth and decay were tackled
The value of historical study was that it showed
by what gradual steps the transition had been
made from the first simple efforts of uncultivated
nature to a state of things which was so
wonderfully artificial and cultivated
Glorification of the noble savage

REVIVALISM

ECLECTICISM (1830s)
A composite system of thought made up
of views selected from various other
systems.
Eclectics claim that no one should
accept blindly from the past the legacy
of a single philosophical system to the
exclusion of all others but each should
decide rationally and independently
what philosophical facts used in the past
were appropriate to the present and then
recognize and respect them in whatever
context they might appear.

REVIVALISM

ROMAN REVIVAL
Influences of the Roman monumental
compositional forms
The new tendency to fit public buildings into
antique temples
The tendency to incorporate the compositional
forms of Antique temples into public buildings
Importance of ruins and archaeological studies

REVIVALISM

GREEK REVIVAL
Acknowledgement of the idea of
the Parthenon as the most perfect
building ever constructed; its
qualities have been interpreted to
justify every change in
architectural fashion,
from the servile duplication of its
composition and details to the most
individualistic creations in
reinforced concrete and steel.

REVIVALISM

GREEK REVIVAL
Traditional use of plumb lines, squares and
levels
Regard for public buildings as objects in
space rather than objects enclosing space.
Making pediments correspond to the
structural reality of the pitched roof

REVIVALISM

RENAISSANCE REVIVAL
the renaissance revival allowed an
architect to select and even to invent
for himself such compositional and
decorative forms as might be
considered suitable for the occasion.

Introduced common sense

into architectural design.

REVIVALISM

RENAISSANCE REVIVAL
Picturesque and lacked order and symmetry of
classical architecture.

REVIVALISM

RENAISSANCE REVIVAL
Skill of architects not to be found in
archaeological accuracy of facades but in the
orderly sequences of accommodation on
awkward sites, skillful combination of different
and new materials

REVIVALISM

GOTHIC NATIONALISM
Buildings with pseudo-mediaeval details
Ideals with which to justify Gothic revival were
immensely varied and often diametrically
opposed.

REVIVALISM

GOTHIC NATIONALISM
Neglect of practical comforts and
functional planning; spaces were
planned more with an eye to their
scenic effect than to their workability

REVIVALISM

POLYCHROMY
Introduction of variegations into the exterior
design of facades.
Exteriors should display colors of various hues.
Structural Coloration: architectural form was
necessarily structural form, and hence, effects of
color should result from the structural materials
by which an edifice was actually built.

REVIVALISM

SYMBOLS OF
FUNCTION
BIOLOGICAL ANALOGY
MECHANICAL ANALOGY
GASTRONOMIC ANALOGY
LINGUISTIC ANALOGY

FUNCTIONALISM

BIOLOGICAL ANALOGY

Architecture based on anatomy

Concept of Organic Architecture
Parts of a whole
Morphology: science of form
Form follows function
Influence of the environment

FUNCTIONALISM

MECHANICAL ANALOGY
Scientific evolution and artistic evolution
follow the same laws
Movement and function
Collaboration in the progressive accumulation
of technical knowledge
Precise destination and expression of
potentialities

FUNCTIONALISM

GASTRONOMIC ANALOGY
Demands the combination of materials of
strength, ideal sequence or plan, analysis and
testing of efficacies
Goes beyond scientific analysis; requires
intuition, imagination, enthusiasm, immense
amount of organizational skill

FUNCTIONALISM

GASTRONOMIC ANALOGY
Demands the combination of materials of
strength, ideal sequence or plan, analysis and
testing of efficacies
Goes beyond scientific analysis; requires
intuition, imagination, enthusiasm, immense
amount of organizational skill

FUNCTIONALISM

LINGUISTIC ANALOGY
Eloquence and expression
Emotions and experiencing emotions
Vocabulary and composition

FUNCTIONALISM

LINGUISTIC ANALOGY
Eloquence and expression
Emotions and experiencing emotions
Vocabulary and composition

FUNCTIONALISM

INFLUENCE OF ENGINEERS
Importance of mathematical studies in
constructional design
Straightforward, unadorned building unless
needs of decorum demanded ornament
Classical proportions were modified in
accordance with new materials
Architecture of iron

FUNCTIONALISM

INFLUENCE OF THE ALLIED

ARTS
Decorations and ornaments
Abstract patterns on space layout
Furniture design on Architectural
composition

FUNCTIONALISM

INFLUENCE OF
THE ALLIED
ARTS
Decorations and
ornaments
Abstract patterns on
space layout
Furniture design on
Architectural
composition

FUNCTIONALISM

EKISTICS
Doxiadis:
A human settlement is made
up of five ekistic elements,
which are interactive and
interdependent with each
other. These are man, nature,
shells, networks and society.

HOUSING AND URBAN PLANNING

CONCEPTS

Linear and Nodal City- Le Corbusier

Broadacre City- Frank Lloyd Wright

Chandigarh Le Corbusier
The Freestanding Building/ FunctionalismSigfried Giedion (Space, Time and
Architecture)
The Ideal City- Ludwig Hilberseimer
City of Setback Skyscrapers- Louis Sullivan
Garden City-Ebenezer Howard

URBAN DESIGN CONCEPTS

A series of discontinuous movements in the

19th and 20th centuries;
opposes both the Zeitgeist and the Single
Strand theories that propose continuous
evolution of styles.
Modernism is characterized by
multi-valence or by the presence of
multi-valued levels of meaning

MODERNISM

ISSUES:
relativity
evolutionary
diversity

MODERNISM

COMMON NOTIONS
soulless container
absence of
relationship with
the environment
arrogant

unarticulated
monstrous
speculative
mass-produced
MODERNISM

ASSOCIATED TERMS:

Functional
Industrial
Innovative/ Novel
Technology
Revolutionary and Opposing

MODERNISM

Modernism is marked by the following:

Renunciation of the old world

Addressed mass housing

Explored potentials of materials and new forms
Technological determinism and structural rationalism
Aesthetic self-expression

Belief in the power of form to transform the world

Sleek machined surfaces
Mass production and cost reduction
Skyscrapers and capitalism
Grand urban projects

MODERNISM

Van Doesburg:
Every machine is a spiritualization of an
organism the machine is par
excellence, a phenomenon of spiritual
disciplines The new spiritual artistic
sensibility of the 20th century has not only
felt the beauty of the machine but also
taken cognizance of the unlimited
expressive possibilities for the arts.

MODERNISM

The Metaphysical School of Architecturethe quasi-mystical spirit of what the

building wants to be.

Les Corbusier:
The frame of a building or buildings is
like the laws that govern society. Without
these laws there is anarchy and without
the frame there is visual anarchy.

MODERNISM

Thomas Ava Edison

experimented with Portland concrete and
subsequent mass production of prefabricated houses made of concrete.
Then came the technology of casting with
the use of scaffolding that allowed for
variation and alteration

MODERNISM

A diverse and unstable concept that

started in the United States after

1965 then spread to the rest of the

industrialized world.
Post-modernists focused on the
differences and brought to fore that which
had been marginalized by dominant
cultures. In other fields, the movement is
characterized by a rejection of a unitary
world view

POST-MODERNISM

Architecture came with cartoonlike trivialization and packaging

POST-MODERNISM

Urban planning under postmodernism celebrated

heterogeneity in place of
central, grand statues

POST-MODERNISM

Venturi:
An Architecture of complexity and
contradiction has a special obligation
toward the whole- its truth must be in its
totality or implications of totality. It must
embody the difficult unity of inclusion
rather than the easy unity of inclusion

POST-MODERNISM

Venturi and Scott Brown:

the architects task was to express
meaning to the general public,
whether in the design of a house or
a civic building; people became
mobile bearers of meaning.

POST-MODERNISM

Jacques Derrida- the founding

father of Deconstruction
Something has been constructed, a
philosophical system, a tradition, a
culture, and along comes a deconstructor (who) destroys its

stone by stone, analyzes the

structure and dissolves it
One looks as systems and examines
how it was built, which keystone, which
angle supports the building; one shifts
them and thereby frees oneself from the
authority of the system.

DECONSTRUCTION

DECONSTRUCTION

DECONSTRUCTION

Structuralism- study of
relationships between say, words in
a language, etc.

Post-structuralism- was
concerned with questions of
meaning and how individuals order
the world. In architecture, PS
focused on meaning rather than
process.

STRUCTURALISM & POST-STRUCTURALISM

Fordism- refers to the stateregulated system of mass production

and mass consumption which,
undergirded by welfare and security,
dominated advanced capitalist
societies in the west, roughly from
the Depression to the crisis of the
1970s.

FORDISM AND POST-FORDISM

Post-Fordism- characterized by:

flexible communication
niche market consumption
flexible machinery equipment that can
be adapted to different tasks relatively
quickly
flexible accumulation of goods in order
to respond quickly to demand
more temporary and part-time labor
geographical clustering of information,
transnational cultural and population
flows
information superhighways

FORDISM AND POST-FORDISM

ELEMENTS
OF CLIMATE
NEEDED IN
DESIGN

Dry-bulb Temperature (DBT): This is

the measurement of the temperature of the air
and as far as possible excludes any radiant
temperature
Relative Humidity (RH): The amount of
water in the air
Precipitation: This is mainly rainfall but
could also be dew
Sky: Cloud cover
Wind: The direction, frequency and force of
the wind throughout the year

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS

COMFORT ZONE: The range of

conditions under which most people feel
comfortable;
It is a function of many variables, among which
is the annual mean temperature

ENVIRONMENTAL
CONCEPTS

CHARACTERISTICS OF
TROPICAL CLIMATE
Warm Humid: High Temperature; High RH;
Heavy rains esp. during monsoon
Hot Dry: Very high DBT; low humidity; low
precipitation; little or no cloud; sparse/bare
ground

Composite: mixture of warm, humid and hot/dry

Macro and Micro: region and site

ENVIRONMENTAL
CONCEPTS