Structuralism in architecture: a definition

Abstract

What structuralism in architecture aimed at has often been misunderstood. Structuralism was not about democracy, giving the users of a building the possibility to make changes in it. On the contrary, structuralism aimed at expressing social patterns and relations and these were apprehended as permanent and invariant and definitely not possible to change. Architects and city planners organized buildings and cities on the basis of communication routes, streets, and squares, what in a structuralist analysis constitutes the invariant structures of a city.Social patterns were apprehended not only as invariant but also as complex and, therefore, ideal buildings and cities should be complex, often visualized as a jumble of corridors, roads, underground-tracks, and footbridges in different levels connected by escalators, stairs, and elevators being stressed by their size, color, or material.To stress binary pairs was another aspect of structuralism in architecture. Outside/inside and nature/culture are examples of this. It lead architects to use materials we normally would associate with exteriors in interiors such as “raw” concrete; that is, concrete walls with no plaster or stonepaving.