A Theory of Architecture

Description

More than a decade in the making, this is a textbook of architecture, useful for every architect: from first-year students, to those taking senior design studio, to graduate students writing a Ph.D. dissertation in architectural theory, to experienced practicing architects. It is very carefully written so that it can be read even by the beginning architecture student. The information contained here is a veritable gold mine of design techniques. This book teaches the reader how to design by adapting to human needs and sensibilities, yet independently of any particular style. Here is a unification of genuine architectural knowledge that brings a new clarity to the discipline. It explains much of what people instinctively know about architecture, and puts that knowledge for the first time in a concise, understandable form. Dr. Salingaros has experience in the organization of the built environment that few practicing architects have. The later chapters of this new book touch on very sensitive topics: what drives architects to produce the forms they build; and why architects use only a very restricted visual vocabulary. Is it personal inventiveness, or is it something more, which perhaps they are not even aware of? There has not been such a book treating the very essence of architecture. The only other author who is capable of raising a similar degree of passion (and controversy) is Christopher Alexander, who happens to be Dr. Salingaros' friend and architectural mentor. PREFACE by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales FOREWORD by Kenneth G. Masden II AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION Chapter 1: THE LAWS OF ARCHITECTURE FROM A PHYSICIST’S PERSPECTIVE 1. Introduction 2. Rules of beauty and order in past times 3. Laws for architecture * Three Laws of Structural Order. 3.1. Order on the small scale 3.2. Order on the large scale 3.3. The Natural Scaling Hierarchy 4. A classification of architectural styles 5. The unnaturalness of contemporary buildings 5.1. The Emotional Basis of Architecture 5.2. Uniqueness of Structural Order 6. Conclusion Chapter 2: A SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR CREATING ARCHITECTURAL FORMS 1. Architecture and human perceptions 2. The natural scaling hierarchy 3. The origins of scaling in nature 4. Determining the ideal scaling factor 5. Some consequences for architectural design 6. A sequence that defines design subunits 7. The number of different scales in the hierarchy * Ideal number of scales 8. Connecting to the human scale 9. Connecting to buildings via material surfaces 10. The use of models in architectural design 11. A checklist for achieving scaling coherence 12. Conclusion Chapter 3: HIERARCHICAL COOPERATION IN ARCHITECTURE: THE MATHEMATICAL NECESSITY FOR ORNAMENT 1. Attempts to formalize the design process 2. Forms with and without hierarchical subdivisions 3. Architectural scales 4. Simplicity, fractals, and image compression 5. Different scales in a design 6. The emotional impact of architectural scales 7. Hierarchical systems and emergent properties 8. The mathematical necessity for ornament 9. Symmetries generate the higher scales 10. Cooperation among different scales 11. Practical considerations for design 12. The analogy with ecosystems 13. Conclusion Chapter 4: THE SENSORY VALUE OF ORNAMENT 1. Introduction * Eight Cognitive Rules. 2. Visual meaning 3. How the eye scans a picture 4. Neurophysiology of the eye/brain system 5. Visual ordering and patterns 6. Hierarchical cooperation 7. Color and intelligence 8. The value of ornament 9. Ornament and writing 10. Conclusion Chapter 5: LIFE AND COMPLEXITY IN ARCHITECTURE FROM A THERMODYNAMIC ANALOGY 1. Introduction 2. Temperature in architectural design * Twenty-five famous buildings 3. Randomness and harmony in architectural design 3.1. Estimating the architectural harmony 3.2. Architectural harmony and pattern recognition. 3.3. Raising the architectural harmony 3.4. Lowering the architectural harmony 4. The architectural “life” of a building 5. The architectural complexity of a building 6. The evolution of life and complexity in architecture * The Triangle Classification of architectural complexity versus architectural life. * Historical trajectory of styles. 6.1. Difficulties of estimating the parameters 6.2. Analysis of the Carson, Pirie, Scott Department Store 6.3. Some comparisons between buildings 6.4. The universal drive to raise the architectural life 6.5. The limits of architectural life and architectural complexity 6.6. The evolution of architectural styles 7. The thermodynamic basis of the architectural model 8. The link to biological life 9. Conclusion Chapter 6: ARCHITECTURE, PATTERNS, AND MATHEMATICS 1. Introduction 2. A science of patterns 3. Alexandrine patterns as inherited architectural solutions 4. Mathematics and architecture 5. Architectural counter-arguments 6. Classical and modern mathematics: is there an architectural analogy? 7. The anti-fractal movement 8. Post-modernist and deconstructivist styles 9. A mathematical template for our environment 10. Information and complexity 11. Conclusion Chapter 7: PAVEMENTS AS EMBODIMENTS OF MEANING FOR A FRACTAL MIND 1. Introduction 2. Fractals and hierarchical linking 3. The concept of mind 4. Memory and the fractal mind 5. Fractal tuning and communication 6. Problems of miscommunication 7. Shaping the built environment 8. Pavements and hierarchy 9. The importance of meaning structures in the paved surfaces of urban space 10. Connection establishes a physiological state 11. The nature of meaning 12. Conclusion: some guidelines for pavement designs Chapter 8: MODULARITY AND THE NUMBER OF DESIGN CHOICES 1. Introduction 2. Good and bad applications of modularity 3. Christopher Alexander’s office design system 4. The number of design choices in a modular design system as compared to a non-modular design system 5. The number of non-modular possibilities 6. The limit as n becomes infinite 7. Fractality versus modularity 8. Approximating curves as a metaphor for design freedom 9. Modularity and mass production 10. Conclusion Chapter 9: GEOMETRICAL FUNDAMENTALISM 1. Introduction 2. Religious competition 3. Assault on traditional cultures 4. Geometrical simplification versus connectivity 5. Architecture for the new millennium 6. Abstraction and the loss of the smaller scales 7. Le Corbusier’s geometrical fundamentalism 8. Classical architecture 9. Fundamentalism as a defining force in twentieth-century architecture 10. Modularity and homogenization 11. Geometrical fundamentalism versus monumentality 12. Abstractions in creating and destroying buildings 13. Political roots of dehumanizing abstractions in architecture 14. The need for abstraction in destroying classes of society 15. Conclusion Chapter 10: DARWINIAN PROCESSES AND MEMES IN ARCHITECTURE: A MEMETIC THEORY OF MODERNISM 1. Introduction 2. Architectural style and military architecture 3. Design as a Darwinian process 4. Memes and architecture 5. Explaining the unlikely success of modernism 6. Competition among early twentieth-century architectural styles 7. Encapsulation of images in the mind * Encapsulations for Modernist Memes. 8. The two faces of encapsulation 9. A complexity threshold 10. How architecture perpetuates modernist memes 11. Modernism has become an institution 12. Conclusion Chapter 11: TWO LANGUAGES FOR ARCHITECTURE 1. Pattern language and form language 2. Linking pattern language to form language 3. Antipatterns do not define a language 4. Analogies in human communication 5. The internal structure of form languages 6. The transmission of a style 7. Minimal complexity and life processes 8. Architecture as a living process 9. A new architecture 10. Conclusion Chapter 12: ARCHITECTURAL MEMES IN A UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION 1. Introduction 2. Memes and informational viruses 3. An ecology of memes 4. Co-evolution of memes and human beings 5. Memes disguised as playful images in an informational universe 6. Images that define an abstract universe 7. Circumventing our immune system 8. Some architectural memes 9. Monsters and robots 10. Knowledge versus information 11. Conclusion ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CREDITS GLOSSARY REFERENCES REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS