THE DETAIL IN ARCHITECTURE: Comparative Analysis of Built Detail

When Architects and Designers Write / Draw / Build / ?, 2013

2021

Since the Renaissance a number of architect-scholars have created methods of intellectual scrutiny of architectural design that rely upon the interplay of drawings, models, textual analysis, intellectual ideas and cultural insights. Yet there is still no cohesive framework or outlet for design research in architecture. This innovative book series-still the only one of its kind-showcases the very best proponents of architectural design research from around the globe, drawing on a range of exemplar positions between practice and academia. Featuring work from Early Career Researchers and leading architect-scholars in practice and academia, books in the series vary in tone and structure, covering aspects such as design method, visual representation, reasoned critique, social processes and strategies for action. The series is deliberately inclusive to encourage a vibrant, novel approach, and is openly international. Each book combines serious historical or theoretical research with creative propositions expressed through drawings, models or texts; indeed, it is the symbiotic interplay between these components that forms the basis for design research in architecture. Now is a fertile time for design research and this book series acts as the heart of these investigations.

Thresholds, 1996

Research in Arts and Education

This paper discusses how the tension between arts and science inherent in the discipline of architecture, can be traced in architectural representations, which are not neutral but actively contribute to the design process, ranging from highly poetic, subjective, and artistic to more exact and objective. Within this paper, we reflect on how to overcome this restrictive perspective implicit in conventional design media by comparing two elective courses that aim to broaden the traditional architectural perspective. In doing so, we take a position in the broader debate on the role of artistic practices within an academic learning environment.

“Perfect presence space”: Theoretical and practical aspects of the concept, 2024

Due to the potential for creating immersive spaces in which the “function” of attracting and retaining attention replaces traditional calculations of climatic conditions, safety, gravity, etc., there is a need for terms for broader generalisation and evaluation. The purpose was to argue the expediency of using the term “perfect presence space”, as one that can collectively determine the value level of various design attempts to spatially express media and communicative realities, including comparing them with the experience of traditional architectural styles. The main method is a comparative analysis of specially selected architectural phenomena. On the basis of a brief historical retrospective, the tendency to gradually replace the functionalist “rational” substantiation of elements of space (associated with everyday life) with the attraction “irrational” (associated with non-ordinary life) is shown; the presence of experience in the materialisation of non-ordinary states in the architecture of different eras and purposes. Further, a review of several content frameworks that led architectural design to the interpretation of an exceptional or perfect presence is carried out, such as urban-social utopias of “ideal cities”, objects of religious pilgrimages and narrative stories, places of exceptional aesthetic qualities of the natural environment outlined by “paradise” metaphors, and representative and solemn squares of capital cities. The potential of the term “perfect presence space” is shown, which allows effectively operating with the motivational foundations of creating a modern space, which are based on attracting and retaining attention and stay; it provides a conceptual basis for evaluating offers of visual and spatial stay (non-virtual and virtual). The assumption is made about the mechanism of “idealisation” of presence, which is developed through the interaction of three components: person – attention – stay. The practical significance of the study is the opportunity, based on succinct, meaningfully clear and universal terms, to facilitate the perception of the architectural environment and improve the involvement of a wider range of stakeholders and participation groups in the study of design

Architectural Design, 2014

Footprint, 2007

Technology|Architecture + Design, 2020

The Public Value of the Humanities

Architecture is, like all areas of the arts and humanities, a complex affair, and involves a very wide range of people and personalities, ideas and philosophies, theories and actions. But, more than any other artistic endeavour, architecture is also an inherently interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary practice, and is inextricably linked to our everyday world of business, work, leisure, health, environment and social life. We can do almost nothing in our lives without encountering architecture, whether as offices, housing, hotels, sports facilities, hospitals, train and bus stations, or architecture in drawings, fi lms and video-games, or architecture as part of the hidden world of communications and virtual technologies. For this reason, the UK's research into architecture must-and does-deal with a wide spectrum of concerns, all of which have the potential to impact directly on our lives today. Architecture and architects Architecture is perhaps most often thought of as being the product of architects-that is as the product of a single person or of small groups of people, and of their thoughts, designs and actions. One of the most important areas of architectural research is, therefore, into who these fi gures were in the past, and who they are now and in the future. Who is 'the architect' and what does he, she or they do? (Saint Andrew 1993; Hughes 1996; Kostof 1987). There are, of course, many important architects in the UK who have made a major contribution to our society and cities. From Christopher Wren in the seventeenth century and John Soane in the eighteenth century through to Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster today, architects have used their considerable artistic imagination, technical innovation and entrepreneurship to produce some of the most signifi cant and lasting constructions in the contemporary world. These are important fi gures to understand, not only in terms of themselves but also in terms of how their ideas and designs have reached out far beyond their own buildings and have had a pervasive infl uence throughout the world of art, design and the creative industries. Much of what we see and understand as 'architecture' in the world today is because of a relatively few number of architectural designers and thinkers, and, as a result, we need to record and explore this important historical and cultural legacy. The more detailed results of this research are, however, frequently quite surprising, for they tell us that 'the architect' is, very often, not a single kind of person at all. Such research reveals, instead, that an architect might be a builder, a developer or a technician, or that an architect might be an artist,

Architectural Theory Review, 2007