Chelsea Sciortino

AUD 3222 Contemporary Approaches to Architecture 1

Summaries Lectures 1-7

Lecture 1 Traditional Architecture

Hassan Fathy 'Architecture for the Poor' 1969

About:

Born in Alexandria in 1900. He trained as an architect in Egypt,

graduating in 1926.
Egyptian architect who pioneered appropriate technology for building in
Egypt, especially by working to re-establish the use of mud brick and
traditional as opposed to western building designs and layouts.

Theory 'Architecture for the Poor':

'Architecture for the Poor' Is an account of the planning and

construction of New Gourna, a rural village near Thebes and Luxor in
Egypt.

Fathy, architect and coordinator for the project, turned to traditional

forms and methods of construction, seeking both to accommodate the
needs of the community and to 'hint at a way to begin a revived tradition
of building'.
By using traditional building methods and bringing craftsman back into
the team, the architect is relieved of the work that he had unnecessarily
taken over from the craftsman.
Unit of design is the room masons can be trusted to supply it in
standard quality and all sizes.
If Gourna would take 3 years then ideally, construction keeps going till
the very end to alter the design to fit the families that live in them.
However, in Gourna, it was difficult to interest people to their new
houses.
He tried constructing a set of houses so the villagers can see what they
were proposing. Fathy says even the smallest contribution a villager
makes to the design is vital.
Client, architect and craftsman must work together to create a
harmonious design.

An architect is in a unique position to revive the peasant's faith in his own

 culture.
A village craftsman is stimulated to use and develop the traditional local
forms, if he sees them respected by a real architect, and the ordinary
village, the client, is in a position to understand and appreciate the
craftsman's work.
The architecture must be neither fake tradition nor faked modernity, but
an architecture that will be the visible and permanent expression of the
character of a community. This would mean nothing less than a whole
new architecture.

Building the village, without the use of more modern and expensive
materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native
technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian
architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy
worked with the villagers to tailor his designs and their needs. He taught
them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the
buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra
(lattice designs in the mudwork) to adorn the buildings.

Case Studies:

Mosque, New Gourna (below)

Demetri Porphyrious 'Classicism is Not a Style' 1983

About:

Porphyrios (1949-) has an international reputation as an architect and

theorist. He is the principal of Porphyrios Associates.
Earned a Master of Architecture and PhD in History and Theory of
Architecture from Princeton University, Porphyrios has pursued the
Classical both through his writings and practice. He has taught at the
Architectural Association, Yale University and the University of Virginia.

Theory 'Classicism is not a Style':

The only possible critical stance for architecture today is to build an

alliance between building construction and symbolic representation.
It is from this perspective that classicism should be re-evaluated today: It
is not a style. Its lesson lies in the way by which it raises construction and
shelter to the realm of the symbol.
Vernacular has nothing to do with style but it points to a method of
constructing shelter under the conditions of scarcity of materials and
operative constructional techniques.
Beyond appearances, vernacular is market by a number of constructional
elements that are universally phenomenological.
Building involves experiences of load-bearing and load-borne.
Manifestations of which are the column and lintel.
It also involves the horizontal and vertical enclosure, that is the roof and
the wall.
These constructional elements give rise to a set of constructional forms:
gables, pilasters...

Such elements could serve as the core of a common architectural

knowledge.
However, architecture cannot remain at this point. It must raise
construction the realm of the symbol. For example, what distinguishes a
shed from a temple is the mythopoeic power the temple possesses. In
this way, classicism is not a style.

Porphyrios definition of classicism that it is not a style or a narrow

and confining doctrine, but rather the philosophy of free will nurtured by
tradition is indeed at the same time profoundly modern and timeless. It
is his approach that liberates the classical from any preconceived notions
of an aesthetic singularity. In our contemporary culture, with its tendency
to emphasize the differences rather than continuities, Porphyrios
 theoretical and built work provides a renewed testament to creative
invention with its basis in humanity. His work seeks to reconcile history
with design in contemporary architecture practice. Through Porphyrios
interpretation of the classical idea we may see again that the highest
aspirations of humanity expressed in our architecture and cities are
timeless.

Case Studies:

Whitman College (First picture below)

Quinlan Terry 'Architecture and Theology' 1989

About:

Quinlan Terry (1937-) takes a similar position to Pugin in claiming a

connection between religious faith and architectural style. It might be
more correct to say tradition rather than style as for Terry that tradition is
the Classical. Educated at the Architectural Association, whose Modernist
bias he rejected, Terry worked with Raymond Erith from 1962, continuing
to practise under the name Erith and Terry after the latter's death in
1973.
Well known representative of the New Classical Architecture.

Theory 'Architecture and Theology':

His subject is the place where architecture and religion meet. The two
great authorities on this subject from the last century were Pugin and
Ruskin.
We are the victims of a predatory technology that ruthlessly consumes
the resources of the earth. The march of progress has crushed gentler
species of animal and plant to extinction.
The gentlest species are the creative gift of Art and the fear of the
Creator; both of which, have disappeared.
Ancient man harnessed nature and expressed this in his art; modern man
finds himself tragically opposed to nature and has expressed this
defiance in his art. Thus the creative artistic gift must disappear.
This process has occurred in architecture. In the past we were confined to
the disciplines of natural materials brick, stone, timber. Depth was
controlled by natural light and air etc.. But now steel, glass, concrete...
have given us unlimited freedom which we are unable to control.
Cheaper, temporary construction and maximum profit have become our
Gods.
The ability to design and build beautiful buildings has ceased

There is still hope as people try to keep the lamp of traditional

architecture flickering, however small the commission. It is necessary to
bear all the ridicule and scorn that are deployed by the Darwinian
misconception that evolution and progress are mandatory. But like in
theology, so in architecture there is nothing new worth having.

Case Studies:

Brentwoord Cathedral, 1991

Roger Scruton 'Architectural Principles in an Age of
Nihilism' 1994

About:

Born 1944 in the UK.

A professor of philosophy who has written on a wide range of subjects,
Roger Scruton has focused on architecture in a number of essays as well
as in the book The Aesthetics of Architecture. Scruton offers an 'aesthetic
disciple' of fundamental principles as an antidote to the nihilism, rather
than a means for expressing it.
(Nihilism indifference, rejection of all morals, belief that life is
meaningless)

Theory 'Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism':

Modernism's respect for disciple was its sole redeeming feature: but it
was a disciple about the wrong things. It told us to be true to function, to
social utility, to materials, to political principles. At the same time,
modernism threw away, the aesthetic discipline embodied in the classical
tradition.
Post-modernism is a reaction to modernist criticality. It plays with the
classical and gothic details which were forbidden by its stern parent, and
so empties them of the last traces of meaning. This is not the rediscovery
of history, but its dissolution
Such a practice marks a new departure of the nihilistic spirit which is
foreshadowed in modernism.

Our civilisation continues to produce forms which are acceptable to us,

because it succeeded in enclosing its truth in education.
In ninteenth-century Europe and America, an effort took place to
transcribe the values of our culture. Scruton endorsed these principles
and laid down eleven fundamental principles. Then, he added eleven
more specific principles, whose authority is less obvious.

Architecture is judged in terms of its meaning.

To know how to build, you must first understand appearances.
Architecture is useful only if it is not absorbed in being useful.
Purposes change.
Architecture plays a major part in creating the public realm.
The public realm must permit and endorse a public morality.
An aesthetic experience is an inevitable consequence of our interest in
appearances.
We have an overriding reason to engage in the common pursuit of a
 public taste.
A beautiful object pleases us because it reminds us of the fullness of
human life, aiming beyond desire.
Taste, judgement and criticism are therefore immovable components
of the aesthetic understanding.
All serious architecture must therefore give purchase to the claims of
taste.

The problem of architecture is a question of manners, not art.

The first constant is that of scale. You must comprehend a building's
relation to you.
Buildings must therefore have faades, able to stand before us as we
stand before them.
It follows that the first principles of composition concern the ordering
of faades.
Composition requires detail and the principles of composition depend
upon the sense of detail.
The true disciple of style consists therefore in details.
The art of combination relies for its effects on regularity and
repetition.
The true disciple of form emphasises the vertical, rather than the
horizontal line.
Mouldings are the source of our mastery over light and shade.
The building depends on details as well as materials.
The disciple of the builder consists in the ability to perceive, to draw
and criticise details.
Lecture 2 General Philosophy
Christian Norberg-Schulz 'Intentions in Architecture'
1965

About:

Norberg-Schulz was a Norwegian architect, architectural historian and

theorist.
Born in Oslo in 1926, graduated as an architect from the Eidgenoissisches
Technische Hochschule in Zurich in 1947, and died in 2000.
One of the precursors of post-modernism.
His biggest influences are his publications.

Theory 'Intentions in Architecture':

Norberg-Schulz (born 1926) Intentions in Architecture is a reaction

against Modernism, in particular as realised after the War.
He begins the book with an argument suggesting that the perception of
form has a cultural basis and meaning in architecture is the result of
cultural intentions. The task of the architect is then to work within the
network of those intentions.

The theory was aimed to treat architecture not only as an art form but
taking into account social, psychological effects.
It became a seminal text in its search for meaning in architecture.
He said modern architecture lacked a worked-out method based on a
clear analysis of functional, sociological and cultural problems.

Questions raised:
How to make architecture a sensitive medium?
Building form should be according to function but maintaining a visual
order. How?
Formal differentiation for functional differences?
Differentiation should be symbolising?
Definition of our building tasks and the means of their solution?
What purpose architecture has as a human product?
How does architecture influence us?
Why has a building from a particular period have a particular form?

Relation between task and solution:

An embedded method of relations
Solution of concrete problems
Facilitation in historical Analysis
Adaptation in Architecture:
 Conservation of structural principles of traditions rather than its
motives
Primary and secondary wholes function and visuals
Tradition in Modern Aspects:
A modern movement can be a true tradition
Historical continuity doesn't mean to be borrowed
Human values are conquered in new ways
Modern Forms:
Modern forms are experiments
Fight against borrowed motives
Never been ordered
Not a formal language
Robert Venturi 'Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture' 1966

About:

Robert Venturi is an American architect and one of the major

architectural figures in the twentieth century. (b. 1925 Philadelphia)
He helped to shape the way that architects, planners and students
experience and think about architecture and the American built
environment.
He is also known for coining the maxim Less Is a bore, a postmodern
antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum Less is more.

Complexity and Contradition in Architecture:

Published in 1966, he challenged modernism and celebrated the mix of

historic styles in great cities like Rome.
The book demonstrated through countless examples, an approach to
understanding architectural composition and complexity, and the
resulting richness and interest.
Drawing from both vernacular and high-style sources, Venturi introduced
new lessons from the buildings of architects both familiar (Michelangelo,
Alvar Aalto) and then forgotten (Frank Furness..).
He made a case for the difficult whole rather than the diagrammatic
forms popular at the time, and included examples both built and
unrealized of his own work to demonstrate the possible application of
the techniques illustrated within.

Visual Preferences in opposition to modernism:

complexity and contradiction VS simplification
Forced simplicity results in oversimplification.
Aesthetic simplicity which is a satisfaction to the mind
derives, when valid and profound, from inner complexity.
When complexity disappears, blandness replaces simplicity.
Ambiguity and tension rather than straightforwardness
is based on the confusion of experience as reflected in
architecture. This promotes richness of meaning over clarity
of meaning.
'both-and' rather than 'either-or'
both-and is the relation of the part to the whole
eg. Villa Savoye is simple outside yet complex inside
Hybrid rather than pure elements
Messy vitality rather than obvious unity
Case Studies:

Vanna Venturi House, 1964

Duality in interiors
Two vertical the fireplace-chimney and the stair compete, for
central position.
And each of these elements, one solid and the other essentially
void, comprises in its shape and position that is, inflects toward
the other to make a unity of the duality of the central core they
constitute.
 Bifurcation according to needs
The first floor plan contains all the main rooms of the house
master bedroom, full bathroom, caretaker's room, kitchen and a
living/dining. She did not drive, so there is no garage. It is
specifically designed for her needs.
Kent C. Bloomer and Charles Moore 'Body, Memory and
Architecture' 1977

About:

Charles Moore (1925-1993) responded to Modernism with wit, learning

and sensitivity to place.
This essentially Post-Modern combination is demonstrated in both his
writing and his buildings.

Theory 'Body, Memory and Architecture':

Body, Memory and Architecture is a plea for architects to design

structures for three-dimensional user experience instead of two-
dimensional visual appearance.

The authors claim that modern architecture, has become too rational...
too concerned with appearing beautiful in an intellectual way. Modern
architecture should not base itself on some abstract idea since this
causes man to feel alienated from the building. It should consider the
way the building is experienced. How it affects the individual and the
community emotionally, providing feelings of joy, identity and place.
Architecture is about the man... it is making places for man to live in
therefore it should provide comfort to the user, both mentally and
physically. The authors believe that architects should not approach
architectural design in a 2-dimensional manner, but the architect should
imagine being in the space .. s/he should feel the space and work on the
feelings that the user will get from the space. The architect should
consider the holistic experience that the building imparts.

Place, Path, Pattern and Edge

We believe these elements are the only humane starting point for the
organization of the space around us.
Forms like columns, walls and roofs created the first habitation and the
first forms that were important to human kind.
The inhabited world within boundaries then, can usefully be ascribed a
syntax of place, path, pattern and edge. Within each of these four,
architectural ordering arrangements can be considered which are made
to respond to the natural landscape as well as to human bodies and
memories...

Human Identity in Memorable Places

Extending the inner landscape of human being into the world in ways
that are comprehensible. What is wrong with the buildings today that
 have a lack of this?
The authors ask
if architecture is a way for man to express his inner feelings to
the world in the form of spaces for people to live in and that
stimulate their sense...
if as everyone claims, the world is full with examples of good
architecture
how is it then that we find people who do not like the space they
live in?
We must understand that comfort is not achieved by producing a
homogeneous environment.

Case Studies:

Piazza D'Italia Charles Moore, 1978

Lecture 3 General Theory (1)
Kenneth Frampton 'Towards Critical Regionalism: Six
Points for an Architecture of Resistance' 1983

About:

Kenneth Frampton (b.1930) is a British architect.

Critical regionalism is an approach to architecture that strives to counter
the placelessness and lack of identity of the International style, but also
rejects the whimsical indivualism and ornamentation of Postmodern
architecture.
Critical regionalists thus hold that both modern and post-modern
architecture are deeply problematic. It emerged as a concept during the
early 1980s.
How to be modern and to continue the tradition......?
Nothing is invented, there is a past for everything

Theory 'Towards Critical Regionalism: Six points for an Architecture of

Resistance':

It is an approach to architecture that strives to counter the placelessness

and lack of meaning in modern by using contextual forces to give a sense
of place and meaning.
According to Frampton's proposal, critical regionalism should adopt
modern architecture, critically, for its universal progressive qualities but
at the same time value should be placed on the geographical context of
the building. Emphasis should be on topography, climate light: tectonic
rather than scenography and should be on the sense of touch rather than
visual sense.

1. Culture and Civilsation

Frampton discusses the state of building to be 'conditioned' by the
building industry to the point of restriction.
Consciously bounded architecture Critical regionalism manifests
itself as a conciously bounded architecture. Most of the contemporary
buildings do not seem to have any binding to where they are, only to a
blindly borrowed image. This is a glimpse of what is prevalent in other
parts of the city as well.

2. The Rise and Fall of the Avant-Garde

This section is used to demonstrate the role that the avant-garde, an
inseparable aspect of society and architecture in modernization, has
played in the past and its relation to universal civilization.
 Arriere-garde has the capacity to cultivate a resistant, identity-giving
culture.

3. Critical Regionalism and World Culture

Architecture can only be sustained today as a critical practice if it
assumes an arriere-garde position, that is a style that distances itself
equally from the Englightement myth of progress and from the
reactionary impulse to return to pre-industrial styles.
Critical Regionalism as a cultural strategy is as much a bearer of world
culture as it is a vehicles of universal civilization.

4. The Resistance of the Place form

The most important feature is that critical regionalism attempts to
reinterpret vernacular elements in the making of space within and
space without. It endeavors to cultivate a contemporary place
oriented by culture without becoming too simplistic or direct about
formal references or levels of technology.
It claims that one can't replace experiential qualities of space within,
with information. Sensitivity towards local light, ambient sessions of
heat, cold, humidity and air movement are the tools of space making.

5. Culture vs. Nature: Topography, Context, Climate, Light and Tectonic

Form
It looks at architecture as a tectonic fact rather than the reduction of
built environment to a series of ill assorted scenographic episodes.
Like the imagery adopted for these buildings which is then just pasted
on to the urban fabric.

6. The visual VS the tactile

It stresses that the tactile is as important as the visual.
Lucien Kroll 'The Architecture of Complexity' 1983

About:

Lucien Kroll (b. Brussels 1927) is well known for his projects involving
participation by the future users of the buildings. (Participatory design)

Theory 'The Architecture of Complexity':

In The Architecture of Complexity he examines the ways of achieving his

aims within the constraints of an industrialized building process.

Diversity
Diversity encourages creativity, while repetition anaesthetises it.
Often architecture is too homogeneous, sometimes due to an
exaggerated aesthetic commitment (architects' architecture) or because
of a self-centred desire to see buildings apart from their context. This
homogeneity makes it difficult for the users to add anything of their own.

Our Approach to Industry

We have always opposed the alarming spread of heavy prefabricated
concrete systems and their tendency to dominated areas swept clean of
all historical reference.
But yet we have kept our belief that industrial know-how could one day
provide the means for an organic architecture.

Our Sly Engineering

Mass Housing are always worked out in detail and stacked always with
a tree-like hierarchical organisation rather than a network...
This is referred to as 'sewer architecture' repetition of elements that are
stacked according to rules governing roads, sewers and other services...
To avoid the 'sewer' approach set single houses among the blocks of
flats. Then you design the flats but vary them according to size, position,
connection.... Differ orientation, layout and fenestration. Avoid dominant
staircases that tend to position dwellings side and side this make rigid
layouts.

Industrial Components
Before they become a means of construction, components involve a
redistribution of power and roles, reversing the significance of what is
built. If we fail to realise this we shall remain at the mercy of
manufacturers of prefabricated systems who, knowing their products to
be out-dated, yet reintroduce them renamed overnight as
components, taking advantage of the confusion
 Power of the Tool Over the Product
Computer has a tendency to dominate and reorganise things in its own
image.
It is not always the most appropriate approach so how does one resist?
Firstly, one must be determined to disbelieve the precise results. One
must remove the tendency to rely completely. This is done through
making modification of data as easy as its introduction. This will of
course complicate the program
Tools should be adapted to ensure diversity yet take due account of
economic constraints. This diversity could be achieved with
computers.
Preliminary participative consultation and later contacts prepare the
inhabitants to put down roots more easily, to get to know each other
and to discover how to act together upon their environment. In view of
this, we take the trouble to leave space for future extensions and to
organise the rules of the architecture to encourage such initiative. This
will help the neighbourhood to regenerate itself by itself....

Case Studies:

Medical Faculty Housing, University of Louvain, 1970-1976

Eric Owen Moss 'What truth do you want to tell' 1991

About:

Eric Owen Moss (b.1943) describes a series of projects that investigate

ideas of architectural temporality. He contrasts contemporary society's
conception of time in architecture with the notions of permanence found
in the architecture of past civilizations. Eric Owen Moss started his office
in 1973 in Los Angeles, California. The office has developed an
architectural language that reflects an understanding and exploration of
a building's impact on its environment while simultaneously
acknowledging the contributing factors of context, site, client and
program, design and detail in every aspect of the work. The office has
designed and completed a wide variety of projects, involving both new
construction and unusual renovation and reconstitution of existing
structures.
Dismissive of the linear rationality implicit in Modernism yet equally
uninterested in architectural history and quotation, Moss rather seeks to
puncture architectural preconceptions and extend the realms of the
possible.

Theory 'What truth do you want to tell':

Attitudes towards architecture have changed from an attitude that is

extroverted (responding to the world as external stimuli) to one that is
more introverted (trying to understand the world based on one's internal
perceptions). Yet you can't get rid of the external quality entirely.
Architecture has the ability to expand that internal boundary. It can
punch a hole in your sky.
So this is the hole in the sky theory, which is not so much that there is a
right or wrong understanding (of of the impact on a building on people
who experience it) but that there seems to be a number of rights and
wrongs overlapping. This is an infinite number.
There seems to be a need to find an analytical side or a causal
explanation for everything. We need to be able to give things a
sequence, a method, a logic.
The inclinations produced by science in the world is unavoidable because
we all think and we all try to understand everything.
Working on buildings for Moss is like re-writing a text. It's an attempt to
contest the conventions and un-conventions in architecture and the way
people experience their lives.

He uses the railroad car as an example. It is a correlation of the belief in

science and in the ability to make the world conformable. But the
machine moved beyond this. It started to have the appeal of image and
 style beyond its role. This is not the kind of association he's interested in.
He tries to answer the question How does the world really work? And
alter that perception.

Case Studies:

Samitaur Tower, 2006-2010 (first image)

The Stealth, 1993
Lecture 4 General Theory (2)
Aldo Van Eyck 'Team 10 Primer' 1962

About:

Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) was an architect from the Netherlands. He

was one of the most influential protagonists of the architectural
movement Structuralism.

He designed hundreds of playgrounds in his life.

In his playgrounds all elements were equal, not dominated by a
permanent centre. No central hierarchical ordering principle. He also
designed FOR KIDS to stimulate their minds.
His playground compositions are more akin to the work of de Stijl, Joan
Miro'....
He often turned vacant lots in the city centre into temporary play areas.
Hemmed by old walls and ramshackle buildings, these are the best
known of the playgrounds.

Theory 'Team 10 Primer':

Team 10 was originally formed as a working group of younger architects

to prepare for CIAM X, the tenth and last meeting of the Congres
Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. Of the members, Aldo van Eyck
was perhaps the most poetic yet articulate in suggesting ways past the
dull, hygienic emptiness of Functionalism. More concerned with
architecture than urbanism, his work combines Modernist idealism with a
sense of multivalent reading and surprise more characteristic of Post-
Modernism.
Aim to team 10:
utopian
not to theorize but to build to build for them had a particular
meaning ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY

Man is the subject as well as the object of architecture.

Architecture is simply the spatial expression of human conduct.
He agrees with the statement of a house is a tiny city, a city a huge
house. It is ambiguous and consciously so. Its ambiguity is something
he'd like to see transposed to architecture.
Architecture without man has no direction, no purpose. It is like
differentiating between speed and velocity. He laments of how the
fusion of man and architecture in today's world has been lost'.
Case Studies:

Playgrounds all over Amsterdam (above)

Orphanage in Amsterdam, 1960 (below)
Christopher Alexander 'A timeless way of building' 1979

About:

Born 1936 in Austria, Alexander is an architect noted for his theories

about design as well as over 200 building projects around the world.
Reasoning that users know more about the buildings they need than any
architect could, he produced and validated a pattern language to
empower anyone to design and build at any scale.
Currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Theory 'A timeless way of building':

Proposes a new theory of architecture (and design in general) that relies

on the understanding and configuration of design patterns.
It is essentially an introduction to A pattern language that came out later
as well as The Oregon Experiment (third book in the series).
It had a huge influence on creative thinking, especially in the areas of
architecture and software design.
The book is written in a format full of headlines followed by short sections
giving it more detail. Alexander suggests in the forward that you could
read the entire book quickly just by reading the headlines which outlines
the entire book's argument.

The book essentially attempts to redefine the way we create architecture.

In the book, Alexander introduces the concept of the quality without a
name, and argues that we should seek to include this nameless quality
in our buildings.
Buildings, towns, gardens etc... that make us feel the most alive have this
unnamed quality. The person capable of achieving this quality is not a
professional architect, but an everyman and everywoman.
Alexander attempts to define the idea by surrounding it with existing
concepts that reflect a part of the quality with no name but are not
sufficient to define it individually.

The way to achieve the above unnamed quality is through the

implementation of pattern languages. This can be genetic codes of
buildings, simple rules of thumb, relationships between problems and
solutions etc...

Alexander proposes that we first conduct an analysis in this way first

recognise a physical feature in a building instinctually and not
intellectually (what feels right) and abstract it. Second define the
problem that this feature solves. Third, define the contexts in which this
 feature is appropriate. And fourth, name and draw a pattern, so it can be
explained to, and shared with, others.

Patterns are interconnected to smaller patterns that they encompass,

and to larger patterns that they themselves are encompassed. Just as a
language is a set of symbols and rules for those symbols, a pattern
language is a set of patterns and a set of sequential rules, for using those
patterns. So just as an infinite number of one-dimensional sentences
create themselves out of English language, an infinite number of three-
dimensional pattern sentences, or buildings, create themselves out of
pattern languages. When a set of patterns differentiate space in a way
that treats a building as a whole, it is a successful pattern language.

Christopher Alexander foresaw a time when, after having reinternalized

these human pattern languages, we would no longer need, or even see,
the patterns, but instead see reality directly, as other animals do; a time
when we would live so close to our hearts, that language would no longer
be necessary, and we would create from a void, naturally; a time when
human architecture would be just like the rest of the natural world; an
endless play of repetition and variety. The hearts of the previous
generation of architects were closed to this vision; perhaps the next
generation of architects will heed his call.

Case Studies:

Eishin School, 1985 (image below)

Sala House, 1983/4
Charles Jencks 'Propositions of Post-Modern
Architecture' 1996

About:

Born 1939
American architecture theorist and critic, landscape architect and
designer.
His books on history and criticism of modernism and post-modernism are
widely read in architectural circles.

Theory 'Propositions of Post-Modern Architecture':

Propositions summary of the Post-Modern movement, made for

architectural students of UCLA. It collects together in a concise way the
major ideas of thirty years.

General Values
1. Multivalence is preferred to univalence, imagination to fancy.
Literally means, having multiple values
Values in terms of form, function and aesthetics of a building
Modernism focuses on more of the functional value completely
ignoring the aesthetics
2. Complexity and contradiction are preferred to over-simplicity and
Minimalism.
Minimalism considered as boring and bland
3. Complexity and Chaos theories are considered more basic in explaining
nature than linear dynamics; that is 'more of nature' is nonlinear in
behaviour than linear.
4. Memory and history are inevitable in DNA, language, style and the city as
positive catalysts for intervention.
Using elements from the past or inculcating elements of
historical importance in the building.

Linguistic and Aesthetic

5. All architecture is invented and perceived through codes, hence the
languages of architecture and symbolic architecture, hence the double-
coding of architecture within the codes of both the professional and
populace.
6. All codes are influenced by a semiotic community and various taste
cultures, hence the need in a pluralist culture for a design based on
Radical Eclecticism.
Use of elements originating from the tradition or culture
7. Architecture is a public language, hence the need for a Post-Modern
 Classicism which is partly based on architectural universals and a
changing technology.
8. Architecture necessitates ornament (or patterns) which should be
symbolic and symphonic, hence the relevance of information theory.
9. Architecture necessitates metaphor and this should relate us to natural
and cultural concerns, hence the explosion of zoomorphic imagery, face
houses and scientific iconography instead of 'machines for living'.

Urban, Political, Ecological

10. Architecture must form the city, hence Conextualism, Collage City,
Neo-Rationalism, small-block planning, and mixed uses and ages of
buildings.
A building must belong to a city or a place
11. Architecture must crystallise social reality and in the global city
today, the Heteropolis, that very much means the pluralism of ethnic
groups; hence participatory design and adhocism.
12. Architecture must confront the ecological reality and that means
sustainable development, Green architecture and cosmic symbolism.
13. We live in a surprising, creative, self-organising universe which still
gets locked-into various solutions; hence the need for a cosmogenic
architecture which celebrates criticism, process and humour.
Architecture must expand and evolve with time
Lecture 5 Philosophy of Nature
Kisho Kurokawa 'Metabolism in Architecture' 1977

About:

Born 1934-2007, Japan

A leading Japanese architect and one of the founders of the Metabolist
Movement
Graduated in 1957 Bachelors degree at University of Tokyo (studying
under Kenzo Tange). Received his Masters degree in 1959. Started
studying a doctorate of philosophy, but dropped out in 1964.
Conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Architecture by Universiti Putra
Malaysia in 2002
Started the Metabolist Movement with colleagues in 1960 a radical
Japanese avant-garde movement pursuing the merging and recycling of
architecture styles within an Asian context.
Group lasted around a decade (successfully)
Founder and president of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates
(established 8th April 1962)
Became more adamant about environmental protection later on in his
life.
Created the structure of the Anaheim University Kisho Kurokawa Green
Institute in 2007 to help develop environmentally-conscious business
practices
Kurokawa was a stakeholder and founding Chair of the Executive
Advisory Board of the Anaheim, California-based University since 1998
and his wife Ayako Wakao-Kurokawa serves as Honorary Chairman of the
institute.
Wrote and lectured about philosophy and architecture
There are two traditions inherent in any culture: the visible and the
invisible
There is a Japanese aesthetic in the context of his work

Theory 'Metabolism in Architecture':

Seeing the ruins of War, Kurokawa discovered Japanese culture. Since he

studied several works of Ruskin and Morris, he had the idea that
architecture was eternal and it will not lose its quality even though its
destroyed.
Metabolic movement:
Was developed for the World Design Conference
Took two years to set up and prepare the movement
First declaration at the world design conference: Metabolism
 1960 A Proposal for a New Urbanism
Collaborators on the first book: Kiyonori Kikutake, Fumihiko
Maki, Masato Otaka, Misho Kurokawa, and Kiyoshi Awazu
Society learns and grows with time. Design and technology
should denote human vitality.
Two main principles:
Human society must be regarded as one part of a continuous
natural entity
Technology is an extension of humanity
These principles clash with Western belief (modernization = conflict
between technology and humanity)
The architect must help people master technology, and strive to
produce a system whereby changes occur as the result of human
judgement. This is greatly influenced by the population growth,
influencing the nature of cities and the type of residences.
Kurokawa expresses that we need to rethink transport areas
(transitional areas) as spaces we live in [he is referring to Le
Corbusier cities consist of living, working, and recreational spaces
connected by methods of transport].
The street is the most important part of the transport area
not the road
The Metabolists wanted to produce a system where man would
maintain control over technology (fearing a time were technology
would take over the world).
They wanted to implement these principles to avoid: lack of
thought regarding social significate spaces, lack of valued
judgements, and no pleasing symbols.
They proposed a reorganization which divides architectural and
urban spaces into levels extending from the major to the
subordinate and which makes it easy for human beings to control
their own environments.
One must distinguish between what to retain, and what needs to be
changed/ replaced
Beauty is a relationship between the artist and the viewer, not just
the artist creating the art work but also, the viewer who
appreciates and discusses the work.

Media space (en-space): [en means connection or relationship in

Japanese] are important in making the relationship between
architecture, and society and nature an open one
The Metabolists ideas are based on Buddhist principles (samsara and
lakana-Alakanatas) inerchangeability, metabolic cycle etc
This movement is not directed to creating a new architectural style
Relationship between the individual and society the same kind of
relationship should be between architecture and nature, and human
beings and technology

Case studies:
Capsule House K, Karuizawa, Japan 1974
(prefabricated apartment building project: using capsule units)
Kisho Kurokawa 'The Philosophy of Symbiosis' 1987

About:

Born 1934-2007, Japan

A leading Japanese architect and one of the founders of the Metabolist
Movement
Graduated in 1957 Bachelors degree at University of Tokyo (studying
under Kenzo Tange). Received his Masters degree in 1959. Started
studying a doctorate of philosophy, but dropped out in 1964.
Conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Architecture by Universiti Putra
Malaysia in 2002
Started the Metabolist Movement with colleagues in 1960 a radical
Japanese avant-garde movement pursuing the merging and recycling of
architecture styles within an Asian context.
Group lasted around a decade (successfully)
Founder and president of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates
(established 8th April 1962)
Became more adamant about environmental protection later on in his
life.
Ran for governor of Tokyo in 2007, and then for a seat in the House of
Councillors in the Japanese House of Councillors election in 2007; he was
not elected. However successfully established the Green Party to help
provide environmental protection
Created the structure of the Anaheim University Kisho Kurokawa Green
Institute in 2007 to help develop environmentally-conscious business
practices
Wrote and lectured about philosophy and architecture
There are two traditions inherent in any culture: the visible and the
invisible
There is a Japanese aesthetic in the context of his work

Theory 'The Philosophy of Symbiosis':

Hybrid architecture: elements of different cultures exist in symbiosis;

relationship between the environment, tradition and advanced
technology
Machine age architecture = function, therefore life age architecture
= meaning
Differences are precisely the proof of lifes existence; and it is
these differences which create meaning
Architecture acquires plurality through the inheritance of its historical
tradition
Several methods of inheritance:
 Sukiya: historical forms are followed but new techniques and
materials are introduced to produce change gradually
Method of recombining: to dissect fragments of historical forms and
place them freely throughout works of contemporary architecture:
Using this method leads to losing its historical form, but
create a new multivalent significance.
This is nothing to do with recreating historical architecture
Invisible ideas: such as aesthetics, lifestyles and historical mind-
sets that lay behind historical symbols and forms. This leads to
manipulating the forms intellectually, and creating a mode of
expression characterised by abstraction, irony, wit, twists, gaps,
sophistication and metaphor
Age of life architecture: will be open to regional, urban contexts, and
nature and the environment
Symbiosis conditions:
Recognising reverence for the sacred zone between different
cultures, opposing factors, between extremes of dualistic
opposition.
Presence of intermediary space: this allows two opposites to have a
common ground. Kurokawa calls this the tentative understanding.

An intermediate space can sometimes be used to stimulate a

metamorphosis.
In terms of architecture: gates, atriums, street spaces, parks,
waterfronts, city walls, rivers, landmarks etc
One of the challenges would be to express invisible technologies
Kurokawa continued architecture on the following principles: metabolism,
metamorphosis and symbiosis.

Case studies:

Capsule House K, Karuizawa, Japan 1974

(prefabricated apartment building project: using capsule units)
Itsuko Hasegawa 'Architecture as Another Nature' 1991

About:

Born 1941, Japan

Received a degree in architecture from Kanto Gakuin University in 1964
Trained with Kiyonori Kikutake
Entered Kazuo Shinoharas lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in
1969, becoming his assistant (great honour in Japan) after two years.
Formed her own design firm, Itsuko Hasegawa Atelier in 1979
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects
Awards: Avon Arts Award, the Building Contractor's Society Prize for the
Shonandai Cultural Centre, the Cultural Award for Residential Architecture
(Fukuoka, Japan), and a Design Prize from the Architectural Institute of
Japan.

Theory 'Architecture as Another Nature':

Reconsider architecture of the past:

Architecture was adapted based on the climate and location,
permitting humans to coexist with nature, and architecture was
part of the earths ecosystem.
The challenge would be to propose new designs connected with
new science and technology.
Restoring architecture to the people in society who use the architecture
(the occupants)
Applying urbanism: a building that is used by many people, whatever its
scale, ought to be designed not as an isolated work, but as part of
something larger
To eliminate the gap between the community and architecture by taking
such an approach to public architecture and to give architecture a new
social character.
We must consider the topography and space, and see what we can do to
help create a new nature in the place of the one that used to be there:
A new building should commemorate the nature that was destroyed
to accommodate the new development. This serves as a means of
communication with nature. (considering the past)
Theme: architecture as another nature
We must recognize that human beings are a part of nature, and
hence we must stop thinking of architecture as something
constructed according to reason and distinct from other forms of
matter.
Architecture must be responsive to the eco-system
Architecture ought to be such that it allows us to hear the
mysterious music of the universe and the rich, yet by no means
transparent, world of emotions that have been disregarded by
modern rationalism.
Hasegawa frequently takes an ad hoc approach to architecture
 rather than an exclusionary stance (that is an approach with a
particular end/purpose)
She works hard on creating an inclusive architecture: one that can
have multiple uses. (Concept of pop-up architecture)
An attempt to raise the consciousness of as many people as
possible
Kevin Lynch 'the Image of the City' 1960

About:

Born 1918, United States

Urban planner and author
Studies at Yale University under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received a Bachelors degree in City
Planning from MIT in 1947
Started working as an urban planner in Greensboro, North Carolina, but
eventually was recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin.
Became an assistant professor in 1949, was tenured as an associate
professor in 1955, becoming a full professor in 1963.
1954: Lynch (together with his MIT teaching colleague Gyorgy Kepes)
received a grant from the Ford Foundation to study urban form in Italy,
and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study perceptions of the
urban environment and urban form.
Their research was published in 1960 as Lynchs book: The Image of the
City
Lynch analysis was formed by him an analysis used greatly in urban
design nowadays
His books explored the presence of time and history in an urban
environment, how they affect children, human perception of the physical
form of the cities, and the basis for good urban design.
Lynch practiced planning and urban design in partnership with Stephen
Carr (they both founded Carr Lynch Associates in Cambridge,
Massachusetts).
Died 1984, United States

Theory - The City Image and its Elements:

This analysis limits itself to the effects of physical and perceptible objects
Other things influence a space, not just its imageability; (a phrase that
Lynch coined) such as the social meaning of the area, its function,
history, or name.
It is taken for granted that in actual design form should be used to
reinforce meaning, and not to negate it.
Five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and
landmarks (in the lynch analysis)

Paths:
Channels in which the observer moves. Example streets,
walkways, canals, and railroads.
Predominant elements in many peoples image
Edges:
Linear elements not used or considered as paths to the
 observer.
Bound between two phases, linear breaks in continuity.
Example: shores, railroad cuts, and walls.
Can be barriers, more or less penetrable. Can be perceived
edges.
Not as dominant as paths
Important organizational features.
Holding together generalized areas
Outline of a city by water or wall
Districts:
Medium-to-large sections of the city
An observer mentally enters inside of
Have some common, identifying character
Nodes:
Strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter
Intensive foci to and from travelling purposes
Example: junctions, piazzas, places of break in transportation,
a crossing, convergence of paths, street corner, or an
enclosed square.
Landmarks:
Another type of point reference, in which the user does not
enter within them they are external
Usually a simply defined physical object: building, sign, store,
mountain etc

These elements are the building blocks in the process of making

firm, differentiated structures at the urban scale

Theory - City Form:

Imageable landscape: visible, coherent, and clear

A city is a multi-purpose, shifting organization, a tent for many
functions, raised by many hands and with relative speed.
Expressive city forms: circulation, major land-uses, and key focal points.
If the environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the
citizen can inform it with his own meanings and connections. Then it will
become a true place, remarkable and unmistakable
A city should be made by art, shaped for human purposes
We are accustomed in adjusting or habits to fit our environments
(survival and dominance)

Theory - Form Qualities:

Based on the following:

Singularity of figure-ground clarity
Form simplicity
Continuity
Dominance
 Clarity of joint
Directional differentiation
Visual scope
Motion awareness
Times series
Names and meanings
Lecture 6 The City (1)
Jane Jacobs 'The Death and Life of Great American
Cities' 1961

About:

Born: 1916, United States (nee Butzner)

American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist best known for her
urban studies
After graduating high school, Jacobs worked as an unpaid assistant to the
womens page editor at the Scranton Tribune
Moved to New York City in 1935 during the Great Depression, working
mainly as a stenographer and freelance writer (frequently writing about
districts in the city)
" gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what
business was like, what work was like." Jane Jacobs
Worked as a secretary, and moving on to editor for a trade magazine
Sold articles to the Sunday Herald Tribune, Cue magazine, and Vogue
Studied at Columbia Universitys School of general Studies for two years,
studying geology, zoology, law, political science, and economics.
Started working at Iron Age magazine
This fuelled her activist in her
Petitioned the War Production Board to support more operations in
Scranton
Equal pay for women
Major influence on decentralist and radical centrist thought
The Rockefeller Foundation created the Jane Jacobs Medal to recognize
individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about
urban design, specifically in New York City
The Canadian Urban Institute: Jane Jacobs Lifetime Achievement Award
Jacobs received the second Vincent Scully Prize from the National
Building Museum in 2000.
Died: 2006, Canada

Theory - The Peculiar Nature of Cities:

the uses of sidewalks: safety

must have three main qualities:
there must be a clear demarcation between what is public
space and what is private space
there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those
we might call the natural proprietors of the street
the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously
the uses of sidewalks: contact
 these are the small change from which a citys wealth f public life
may grow
The uses of city neighbourhoods
The problem: neighbourhoods in cities need to supply some means for
civilised self-government
Seeing the neighbourhoods as organs of self-government:
The city as a whole
Street neighbourhoods
Districts of large, sub-city size, composed of 100,000 people or
more in the cases of the largest cities

Theory - The Conditions for City Diversity:

The generators of diversity

To understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or
mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena
The need for primary mixed uses
Condition1: The districts and other parts, must serve more than one
primary function (ideally more than two). To insure the presence of
people going outside during different times of day, and are using
the spaces for different reasons.
The need for small blocks
Condition 2: most blocks must be short: i.e. streets and
opportunities to turn corners must be frequent
The need for aged buildings
Condition 3: the district must be compromised of different buildings
from various eras and conditions
The need for concentration
Condition 4: the district must have a good dense concentration of
people (regardless of their purpose there) including people that
reside in the area
City planning deals with the life of individuals
A city cannot be a work of art
The kind of a problem a city is
Cities = problems in organized complexity (similar to life sciences)
They can be analysed into many such problems or segments are
also related to one another.
The problems are interrelated into an organic whole

The most important habits of thought (with regards to

understanding cities):
To think about processes
To work inductively, reasoning from particulars to the general
To seek for unaverage clues involving very small quantities,
which reveal the way larger and more average quantities are
operating.
Aldo Rossi 'The Architecture of the City' 1966

About:

Born 1931, Italy

Italian architect and designer many achievements in theory, drawing,
architecture and product design.
Studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and graduated in 1959.
Started writing for Casabella magazine in 1955, and became the editor
during 1959 - 1964.
A poet who happens to be an architect Ada Louise Huxtable
Awards: Pritzker Architecture Prize (1990)
Died 1997, Italy

Theory - Urban Artifacts and a Theory of the City

When he talks about the city, hes referring to the architecture, and by
architecture, he also includes the construction of the city over time.
This addresses the ultimate and definitive fact in the life of the
collective, the creation of the environment in which it lives
Architecture has been deeply rooted in shaping our civilization and is a
permanent, universal, and necessary artefact.
Two permanent characteristics of architecture: aesthetic intention, and
the creation of better surroundings for life.
The city grows upon itself, acquiring a consciousness and memory.
Records of vision: images, engravings, photographs of the disembowelled
cities
Signs of urban dynamics: destruction and demolition, expropriation and
rapid changes in use.
Monuments will act as a primary element, and a fixed point for urban
dynamic
Important to have rituals in collective nature, to help preserve myths
which constitutes a key to understanding the meanings of the
monuments and their implications for the city in an urban context.
We must judge the quality of a space
Why we dont go to certain places because it evokes a particular feeling,
or reminiscence of previous experiences.

Theory - Typological Questions

First houses built were to protect the users from the elements man used
what he could control at the time. As time progressed, the villages
expanded like an urban nucleus. Changes can be seen as far back as
Neolithic villages. Therefore the concept of type became a basis for
 architecture.
Rossis definition of type: something that is permanent and complex, a
logical principle that is prior to form and that constitutes it
Type is the very idea of architecture
Imposing itself on the feelings of reason as the principle of
architecture and of the city

Theory - Critique of Nave Functionalism

Some of the principle questions in relation to an urban artefact:

individuality, locus, memory, and design itself.
Function has nothing to do with it
Otherwise this stops us from studying forms and knowing the world
of architecture according to its true laws

Theory - Monuments and the Theory of Permanences

Historical science does not equal to urban science

In this case, we need to consider urban history (research purposes)
We experience a sense of permanences though streets and plans which
link us to the past in some cases.
The city is the biography of humanity

Case Studies

Teatro del Mondo, Venice, Italy, 1979

Lecture 7 The City (2)
Robert Venturi et al 'Learning from Las Vegas' 1972

About:

Born 1925, United States

American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown
and Associates.
Coined the phrase Less is a bore
Graduated from Princeton University in 1947, where he was a member-
elect of Phi Beta Kappa and won the DAmato Prize in Architecture.
Received his M.F.A. from Princeton in 1950
Briefly worked under Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1951,
and later for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia.
Taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1954 1965) (where he met his
wife/partner Denise Scott Brown); Yale School of Architecture (lecturing
with Scott Brown); visiting lecturer at Harvard Universitys Graduate
School of Design (2003).
Awards: Pritzker Architecture Prize (1991), Vincent Scully Prize, Twenty-
five Year Award

Theory - A significance for A&P parking lots, or Learning from Las

Vegas:

Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for

an architect to question how we look at things.
Commercial strip at Las Vegas:
Challenges the architect to take a positive view
Modernism is dissatisfied with existing conditions.
Withholding judgement may be used as a tool to make other judgements
more sensitive

Some definitions using the comparative method

Argument is based on comparisons: to show what we are for and what we
are against, and ultimately to justify our own architecture. Or in other
words, simply for banalitys sake.
Emphasize image over process or form
Used two manifestos for his arguments
The duck and the decorated shed
Paul Rudolphs Crawford Manor vs. Guild House (in association
with Cope and Lippincott)
Heroic and original, or ugly and ordinary
Ugly and ordinary as symbol and style
Against ducks, or ugly and ordinary over heroic and original, or think little

Theory - High-design architecture:

 Peoples architecture as they want it does not stand a chance against
high-end designers and urban renewal until it is acceptable to the
decision makers.
Social classes rarely come together, but a temporary alliance in design
can help everyone.
Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter Collage City 1975

About (Rowe):

Born 1920, United Kingdom

British-born, American naturalised architectural historian, critic,
theoretician, and teacher
Major intellectual influence on architecture and urbanism (city planning,
regeneration, and urban design)
Education: Warburg Institute, University of Liverpool
Taught at the University of Texas most of his life; University of
Cambridge, England, for a year.
Awards: Royal Gold Medal (1995) by the Royal Institute of British
Architects (highest honour)
Died 1999, United States

Theory - Collision City and the Politics of Bricolage':

A collision of points of view is inevitable and acceptable

He proposed to allow a theory of contending powers (all of them visible)
as likely to establish a more ideally comprehensive city of the mind than
any which has, as yet, been invented
Criticism is encouraged as to view all possible outcomes
17th Century Rome was simultaneously a dialectic of ideal types plus a
dialectic of ideal types with empirical context

Theory - Collage City and the Re-conquest of time:

Refers to a Picasso art work (Bulls Head 1944) [bicycle seat that looks
like a bulls head, therefore metaphor]
Exploitation and recycling of meaning
A dialectic between past and future
What is true/ false?
What is antique/ new?
Therefore concluding to a collage
Collage both as a technique and a state of mind
Ultimate problem: utopia versus tradition
Introducing a social collage: anything can be: aristocratic, folkish,
academic, popular etc
Societies and persons assemble themselves according to their own
interpretations of absolute reference and traditional value; up to a point,
collage accommodates both hybrid display and the requirements of self-
determination.
Can help deal with utopia as an image
Dealt in fragments
SITE Notes on the Philosophy of SITE 1980

About:

SITE: Sculpture in the Environment

An architecture and environmental design organisation
Founded in 1970, Wall Street, New York
Aim: to unite building design with visual art, landscape, and green
technology
Principal: James Wines (born 1932, Illinois)
Also includes: Emilio Sousa, Alison Sky and Michelle Stone

Theory:

To explore new possibilities for changing professional and popular

response to the sociological, psychological, and aesthetic significance of
architecture and public space.
Their work is a hybrid fusion of both art and architecture intentionally
eliminating the conventional distinctions between them.
Architecture is the subject matter (or raw material) or art, therefore not
the objective of a design process.
Instead of imposing a new design on an existing site, SITE expands/
inverts its already established meaning (of the building) by changing the
structure very little on a physical level, but a great deal on a
psychological level.
SITE rejects modern designs traditional ideas about form and space but
rather go for architecture as information and thought (a shift in priorities)
physical to mental.
Architecture is the only intrinsic public art.
Reversing the appearance of institutional security and replacing it with a
message of ambiguity and equivocation.
SITE frequently use the following concepts as a source for architectural
imagery: indeterminacy, entropy, fragmentation, and disorder.
A building is conclusive at that moment of its greatest indecision.
De-architecture