The Proceedings of Spaces of History /

Histories of Space: Emerging Approaches

to the Study of the Built Environment
UC Berkeley

Title:
Formless Diagrams: The Employment of Studio Methods in the History Classroom

Author:
Weddle, Robert, Drury University, USA

Publication Date:
09-15-2010

Series:
Recent Work

Permalink:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3wx721sc

Abstract:
Efforts to cross boundaries separating history classrooms and design studios are hampered by
the very different objectives of historical and design teaching. Whereas design requires synthesis
and clarity, the study of history should challenge and complicate students assumptions about
the relationships between design and culture. More importantly, studio-based considerations of
historical objectsoften through the study of precedentnecessarily emphasize the formal and
instrumental value of a work, while historical knowledge requires instead an emphasis on the
ideological and cultural underpinnings of form. This paper views the productive tensions between
these differing objectives through the lens of the diagram. The potential for diagramming exercises
as components of history-based learning is examined through projects completed by my students
in the context of semester-long historical research assignments. These activities complement
written work with less traditional procedures that apply diagramming processes to diverse non-
formal problems including the evaluation of textual evidence and the mapping of ideological
content.

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The Proceedings of Spaces of History / Histories of Space: Emerging Approaches to the Study of the Built Environment
A Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, April 30 & May 1, 2010

FORMLESS DIAGRAMS: THE EMPLOYMENT OF STUDIO METHODS IN THE

HISTORY CLASSROOM

Robert Weddle

Drury University, USA

ABSTRACT

Efforts to cross boundaries separating history classrooms and design studios are hampered by the
very different objectives of historical and design teaching. Whereas design requires synthesis
and clarity, the study of history should challenge and complicate students assumptions about the
relationships between design and culture. More importantly, studio-based considerations of
historical objectsoften through the study of precedentnecessarily emphasize the formal and
instrumental value of a work, while historical knowledge requires instead an emphasis on the
ideological and cultural underpinnings of form. This paper views the productive tensions
between these differing objectives through the lens of the diagram. The potential for
diagramming exercises as components of history-based learning is examined through projects
completed by my students in the context of semester-long historical research assignments. These
activities complement written work with less traditional procedures that apply diagramming
processes to diverse non-formal problems including the evaluation of textual evidence and the
mapping of ideological content.

INTRODUCTION

This paper centers on one central question: What spaces exist for productive collaboration

between design and history components of architectural curricula? My consideration of this

question is focused through the lens of the diagram, a tool that has been central to design process

for much of the last century, but which has recently been given a new status within contemporary

discourse. Diagrammatic methods, I will argue, are implicated in the most reductive conceptions

of history and its application to practice. On the other hand, as a device that attempts to connect

form with ideas, the diagram offers us a path for the profitable application of studio methods to

deeper historical problems.

 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

I also approach the topic as an instructor of both history courses and studios. This

experience has led me to a holistic view of how discrete subject areas contribute to meaningful

design practice. At the same time, I am skeptical of attempts to level differences in content

through so-called integrative approaches, especially when these imply the elimination of

dedicated history courses and the translation of their content into studio settings. Arguing

against integrated content, my paper proposes instead a synthetic approach to method. In

particular, I ask whether diagrammatic strategies typically employed in the studio can be

profitably transferred to the history classroom. This question implies a second: can the diagram,

which is rooted in formal analysis, be applied to issues beyond form?

DIAGRAMS AND THE CONTESTED HISTORICAL OBJECT

According to theorist Robert Somol, during the second half of the twentieth century

diagrams replaced drawings as the fundamental technique and procedure of architectural

knowledge. 1 For Somol, one path for the diagrams ascendancy was in the writing of Colin

Rowe, for whom the diagram organized considerations of formal or analytical truth.

Similarly, Peter Eisenman has traced the rise of the diagrams explanatory role in Rudolf

Wittkowers well-known nine-square-grid analyses of Palladian villas.2 Both Wittkower and

Rowe provided a means by which history could be appropriated within the design studio,

through an alliance between the diagram and the so-called precedent study. The

institutionalization of these approaches is represented in Roger Clarks 1985 book Precedents in

Architecture, which uses diagrammatic strategies to analyze historical works according to

standardized formal criteria.3 In recent decades, such procedures have become commonplace

within design education, and precedent analysis is now formalized as a specific student-

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

performance criterion for the accreditation of professional programs.

It is important to see the prominence of studio-based precedent studies in the context of

criticisms of the role of history within the discipline. Clark defined the role of precedent as

inherently a-historical, in that it seeks to identify generic solutions to design problems which

transcend time.4 In the studies published by Clark, the goal is to employ design knowledge

through formal analysisas a means of reaching beyond certain limitations of historical

pedagogy. His view is that history can only become a source of enrichment for architectural

design if designers can see between and beyond the layers of historical styles, within which

architecture is generally categorized and presented.5 Diagrammatic analyses of precedents were

the lens through which this clearer view of the historical object could be obtained.

One can take exception to Clarks characterization of the stylistic orientation of history

teaching, especially as it has evolved and expanded in recent decades. It is ironic, however, that

this bracketing of historical context ultimately seeks to re-establish the authority of the historical

object, by illuminating its formal truths, previously obscured by the scholarly apparatus of the

historian. To the extent that analytical engagements with precedent are primarily formal in

nature, precedent studies carry an implicit argument about the role of history in the architectural

curriculum: that questions of ideology and intent, geographical and cultural context, and political

and economic circumstance are all secondary details of concern to the historian rather than the

designer. Whereas the historian endeavors to anchor the work in its historical position, studio

instruction demands its transport into the present, in order to unlock information deemed relevant

for contemporary design.

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

DIAGRAMMING AND HISTORICAL METHOD: RESEARCH MAPS

Architectural historians have varying objectives for design students enrolled in their

courses. Depending on the approaches of individual instructors, historical coursework can

sharpen interpretive skills, foster reflective and critical practice, or trace lines of connection

between architecture and the wider culture. For most historians today, I would argue, the

selection and dissemination of canonical lists of significant monuments is of secondary

importance to these broader goals. Nevertheless, educational strategies within history curricula

still often aim at the formation of skills employed by the professional historian. This approach is

most apparent in traditional semester-long research paper assignments, through which students

model the practices of historians by means of miniaturized works of historiography.

The merit of these assignments is in their intentions: to strengthen research and critical

thinking skills, to build organization and clarity in writing, and to foster understandings of

historical methodologies. I would argue, however, that these objectives are better served when

design knowledge and studio methods are brought to bear on historical issues. One such method

is found in the act of diagramming. In its capacity to merge form with ideas, the diagram is

increasingly considered an essential tool in the development of designers critical capacities. As

we have seen, however, the diagram has also provided a medium for the priveleging of formal-

analytical values over more complex historical and cultural understandings of the past.

To propose ways around this dilemma, I would like to present possibilities for welcoming

the diagram into the history classroom. These examples are drawn from semester-long research

projects in courses on the history of modern architecture and urbanism. In the projects,

diagrammatic procedures are layered onto other activities more typically associated with

historical research.

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

The first of these research projects is aimed at reconstructing formal realities and

discursive narratives surrounding certain key, but vanished works of modern architecture. In the

assignment, students work in teams to research buildings that lived short lives, but that have

nonetheless figured prominently in histories of the period. Aware that their eventual task will be

to build physical models of the vanished building, students initial research is focused on the

challenge of knowing a work using only spotty graphic documentation. Assigning buildings

that cannot be fully known is intended to stand for the historical project in general. The limited

visual evidence counters the more typical experiences of students when they are asked to conduct

precedent research on existing buildings. In the latter cases, the surplus of evidence can make

research too easily and uncritically conducted. Inquiry into the past becomes sharpened when

Flikr albums and Google Earth fly-overs are made unavailable; here only grainy black-and-white

imagery and the odd plan or section act as guides to an ephemeral past.

Written components of the project are aimed at identifying and investigating the dominant

historiographic themes surrounding the vanished building. The process here is clearly spelled

out and comprised of discrete steps. First, pertinent quotations are extracted from primary and

secondary sources, and arranged according to appropriate themes selected by the students.

Arranging the quoted material thematically is the first act of synthesis, but is followed by more

challenging synthetic operations in which the quotations are spatialized through their

arrangement in hierarchical diagrammatic structures. The goal here is to appeal to skills and

ways of thinking normally associated with the design studio: information gathering, spatial

analysis, diagramming, programming.

By applying spatial strategies to the analysis of research materials, these research maps

allow design students to better visualize the subtle connections and disjunctions between

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

collected quotations (Figs. 1 and 2). But the act of spatializing ideas also highlights for students

the precariousness of historical judgment. Is the intention of the quoted thought primarily

descriptive or analytical? Is a textual statement more relevant to the buildings technical

qualities or its cultural position? By attempting to determine precise positions for the quotes,

students confront their own roleor that of the historianin shaping historical meaning.

This exercise also assigns a new role to the formal aspect of the diagram. Whereas

diagrammatic form is most typically linked to building formmaking the diagram primarily an

abstracted representationin this case the formal qualities of the diagram serve to sort through

and arrange ideas. More importantly, as a matrix of qualitative differences, the form of the

diagram asks that research materials by mapped as data points having precise coordinates. The

meaning of a particular quotation, however, cannot typically be designated in this way; instead it

fluctuates in time and space. Moreover, the quotations representation in the diagramits

physical form on the pageis a line or block of text. The design of the research map must

therefore balance the functional requirement of legibility with the experiential fluidity of the

quote.

Only after this diagramming exercise are students asked to bring their own textual voices to

their conclusions, in essays that summarize the narrative roles played by their assigned buildings

within histories of modern architecture. Even here, the essays are intended to be clear and

succinct rather than elaborately argued. The goal is not to mimic the products of professional

historians; rather, historical methods are modeled through analogous activities transferred from

the design studio.

The essays are expected to pursue arguments synthesized from the mapped research, and

they set the stage for a final component of the project, in which teams build physical models

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

intended to reconstruct formal aspects of the assigned building (Fig. 3). As with the project in

general, these models are understood as analogies of historical understanding. Like historical

writing, the models aim at accurate reconstructions of the past, even as they reflect students

awakening sensitivity to the limits of claims of historical truth. As is also the case with historical

writing, the models are expected to have a thesis and to make a clear argument. This allows

discussion and consideration of the subjective points of view that are always embedded in any

representational strategy.

CONCLUSION: THE FORMLESS DIAGRAM?

Ultimately, the point of this project is to re-appropriate the historical example, translating

the studio-based precedent study back into a historical language, and in the process reinstalling

issues of intention, ideology, and culture. The objective is not to firm up barriers between studio

and classroom, or between design knowledge and historical knowledge. Rather, design

knowledge lends essential skills and outlooks to the acquisition of historical knowledge while,

conversely, historical questions help students to become more critical about their application of

design strategies to broader issues.

This premise is tested in the second course in the modernism survey, which extends from

the immediate post-war period to the present day. In this project, students devote the semester to

understanding a single recent building. Once again the research process is highly orchestrated

and broken into distinct activities involving the extraction and mapping of relevant material. The

project culminates in presentations to the class, which are expected to make use of analytical

diagrams developed and refined over the course of the semester. Compared with research maps,

these idea diagrams are more conventional in naturetypically containing a strong

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

representational component (Figs. 4 and 5).

The earlier research maps had suppressed the representational capacity of the diagrams

form, allowing a concentration on the role of the formal design in organizing and conveying

ideas. In contrast, the idea diagrams reinstall representational strategies, but are expected also to

clearly convey the relationships between forms and ideas. The exercise prompts students to

engage that quality that has made diagrammatic thinking so central to recent practice: its position

precisely between form and word.6 Students are challenged to make diagrams that suppress the

formal aspects of the building in question, in order to engage the ideas behind them. They

quickly confront the difficulty of this, since diagrams are inherently dependent on formal

strategies. The formless diagram proves to be an unattainable objective, but its pursuit is not

futile. Struggling against the easy employment of the diagram as a tool of trite analysis or

prescriptive pattern, students discover its more difficult qualities. Neither fully text nor fully

form, the diagram can be a powerful metaphor for a more critical engagement with the pastone

that balances the formal products of our discipline with their ideological and cultural substance.

By struggling to adapt design-based methods to historical questions, students confront the

complex relationships between form and content, in the process unlocking attitudes that are

essential to the critical consideration of history.

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1. Research Map, Ian Lee and Christopher Richards

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

Fig. 2. Research Map, Mary Compton and Micah Gray

Fig. 3. Analytical Model, Devin Barnes and Stephen Clond

Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht, Ludwig Mies ven der Rohe

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

Fig. 4. Idea Diagram, Derek Berry and Roshelle Pfeifer

Villa VPRO, MVRDV

Fig. 5. Idea Diagram, Gregory Wanko and Alex Wiley

Le Fresnoy Contemporary Arts Center, Bernard Tschumi

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 Weddle: Formless Diagrams

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. R. E. Somol, Dummy Text, or the Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture, in

Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (New York: Universe Publishing, 1999), pp. 10-11.
2. Peter Eisenman, Diagram: An Original Scene of Writing, in Diagram Diaries, p. 27.
3. Roger H. Clarke and Michael Pause, Precedents in Architecture: Analytic Diagrams,
Formative Ideas, and Partis, Third Edition (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2005).
4. Ibid., p. v.
5. Ibid., p. xi.
6. Somol, p. 8.

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