As we enter the 21st century, it is fashionable to think of architecture through the veil of literature. Indeed, it can be argued that the practice of architecture is hardly supported by close correspondence with the theory, and the designers were text for a creative spring board to their fertile imagination, not more drawing to precedents, ingenious buildings and projects.
This is just an observation, not an argument against a fledgling architectural designer adopting the simplest theoretical position. It also does not deny that a small number of original texts have a serious impact on the development of architecture in the 20th century, because there was a close correspondence between some of those texts and icons that appeared as a result of the construction.
But even the most basic theoretical stance must be supported by some basic aphorisms that inexperienced designers can point in the right direction to appeal acceptable architectural solutions.
About the Book
The book seeks to provide support not only by offering some accepted aphorisms and design orthodoxy, but also by suggesting how it can inform the important decisions faced by architects engaged in the design act.
Since this text is not theoretical, we will not try to add it to enough literature surrounding architectural theory. Rather, it aims to provide students engaged in building design with a framework of accepted ways to see what supports and informs their experimentation and exploration during the so-called “design process.”
Numerous literature on “design processes” and “design methodologies” is a fairly recent phenomenon that gained momentum in the late 1950s, and in these early explorations, design was promulgated as a linear process from analysis to evaluation through synthesis, as if fitting in to a certain universal sequence of decision-making.
In addition, design theorists urged designers to delay as much as possible the creative leap to “form-making” until all aspects of the architectural problem were thought to be clearly understood.