10/30/21, 3:05 PM Archiestudio - Design Systems Through History

 
ARCHIeSTUDIO
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Archiestudio

Aradhana, 151 Priyadarsini Nagar

P. O. Ayyanthole

Thrissur, Kerala 680003

India

ph: +91 487 2381446

alt: +91 9447188446

[email protected]

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10/30/21, 3:05 PM Archiestudio - Design Systems Through History

Design Systems Through History

Two images above are separated by about 42,000 years, representing man's efforts at creating shelter. Essentially they represent
man's skills of locational analysis, of putting things in the appropriate places and concern for structure and environment in which he
lives... The first image is a conjectured one, of a probable shelter design by humans in the period when mammoths existed and
humans had a nomadic existence, hunting for food. The second image represents man's concerns evolved over time... of structure,
material, services, cost, aesthetics and above all the environment, which has remained more or less the constant with seasonal and
geographical variations...

Humans developed, among other skills, since pre-historics times, the skills most unique to be a designer concerned with spatial
ability, capacity for visualizing, generating three dimensional built forms, interior spaces and the spaces between the built forms,
with which they built settlements all over the earth in different and difficult climatic conditions and terrain.
 
Through practical hand on approach, using whatever material was available, trial and error process and discovery, living in caves,
using flint for tools and weapons they developed more than 40,000 years ago, a pragmatic approach to design.
 

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Once a way of building became established, it was often used the same way for thousands of years, repeated over great distances in
space and long periods in time. Was the knowledge spreading from one to other or was it being discovered independently in
different places?
 
Particular building forms are thus repeated in particular cultures because the climate which has to be controlled and the resources
available for controlling it remain the same for long periods for tribes who stay in the same place or nomads for their portable
dwellings.

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In tribes every member would learn and know how to build a shelter for their own region, and do modifications from time to time
according to the climatic changes in the region

Vernacular dwelling types are thus classic examples of Pragmatic Design System that evolved in different parts of the world which
has endured to till this day and have become icons by themselves, representing climate of the place they belong.
 

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Iconic design systems evolve by retaining an established way of building by a community. A craftsman spends long years acquiring
skills, learning nature of materials and developing tools. A master of crafts thus has acquired patterns of coordination between hand,
eye and brain which he will not like to abandon and would like to pass on to the next generation. Thus individual crafts remain
fairly constant and an entire pattern of building based on them remain constant too.
 
Cultural reasons add to this persistence of design system and slowly a formalized design process evolves. Tribes describe their
design process and the origin of their built form through songs, writings, sculpting etc. describing materials, shaping them, putting
together etc. A way of building is built deep into the tribal consciousness and, because each member of the tribe has a fixed mental
image of what a house should be like, it is called Iconic Design.
 

 
 
Instead of starting work immediately, handling real materials in ‘pragmatic’ or ‘iconic’ ways, when a designer prepares drawing or
model first as a representation of his intentions, the process is called ‘Analogic’ design. This began in Egypt around 2800 B.C. And
continues to this day, though mediums of representation in advance have changed.
 

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With time geometry and its principles became the foundation for architectural representation, first through carved drawings on
stone tablets and wooden models, then drawings on papyrus and fabric, now developed in the virtual digital world and printed out,
tomorrow perhaps directly as holographic images on site...
 

 
 
Drawings first became an obsession with designers and a whole new field of descriptive and solid geometry, perspective drawing
and sciography evolved over a period of time. Visible and visual forms that the mind’s eyes see could be produced realistically on a
medium first, as representation of reality that would be.
 
The development of grid was a base for representation of analogic design. Thus slowly the act of drawing began to impose
conventions on the designer, to suggest order and regularity of a kind never envisaged before. Today, whatever design analogues
we use, drawings, models, computer programs, the analogue imposes conventions on our designs.
 

 
 
Analogic design has become the most potent source of creative ideas in architecture- giving rise to excessive, rather over use of the
term “concept”.
 
Once the designer prepared drawings before construction, the drawing and the act of drawing became a fascination, leading to a
concern for pattern, order and regularity, often expressed through an over riding grid. The discovery of proportional system by
Egyptians led to Canonic grids and designs based on them became Canonic designs.
 

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Mathematics has been intimately intertwined with religious thoughts in many societies. It was the Greeks who established
mathematics as an intellectual system, though Hinduism claims to have used numbers and their hugeness to describe the
unfathomable universe much earlier. The Greeks have the crucial insight that mathematical facts are different from facts about
things in the world.
 
Pythagorus in 530 B.C. discovered that phenomena which are first glance quite diverse exhibit deep similarities that can be
expressed mathematically. He noticed this in music and discovered that all harmonies can be derived from the series of ratios 1:2:3:4.
It seems that pleasing sounds are related to numbers in some way. Pythagorus concludes that the ratios themselves are beautiful,
and the harmonies of music simply a consequence of this mathematical beauty. Thus developed a simple idea that numbers may
underlie many other phenomena. Pythagorus is enraptured by this discovery, for he believes that he has discovered the key to the
understanding of the universe.
 
Euclid's 23 definitions, 5 postulates and 5 common notions became the foundation for three dimensional thinking and analogic
design with mathematics as a base. 
 

 
Evolution of a heirarchy of geometries became the large landscape for architectural representation first, and construction later.  Each
age used geometrical systems and knowledge innovatively in architectural design through representation.
 

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The modern industrialized world provided several other parameters that needed attention in architectural representation anddesign
systems.
 

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Today the evolving digital representation systems combined with parametric design systems and 3D printing technologies are
giving shape to computer programming oriented design systems.  

REFERENCES:
 
•Garry Stevens, The Reasoning Architect, McGraw Hill Publishing Co.
•Geoffrey Broadbent, Design in Architecture, David Fulton Publishers
 

Copyright : Dr. Harimohan Pillai . Architect

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Archiestudio

Aradhana, 151 Priyadarsini Nagar

P. O. Ayyanthole

Thrissur, Kerala 680003

India

ph: +91 487 2381446

alt: +91 9447188446

[email protected]

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