Architectural Precedents Research Articles

Influence and Untimeliness in Modern Architecture: A Conversation between Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Amanda Reeser Lawrence

A conversation between Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Amanda Reeser Lawrence recorded on November 13, 2023 at the Yale School of Architecture. The conversation focuses on their shared interest in twentieth-century American architecture culture, including architectural pedagogy marked by the use of architectural precedents as a generative design tool and the rise of art historical formalism as a dominant method of teaching architectural history. During the discussions the authors unpacked the key concepts and intellectual roots of their respective projects, “untimeliness” and the “usable past” (Pelkonen) and “influence” and “anachronism” (Lawrence) and shared notes on how they approach history teaching in a design school setting so as to make it an integral part of architectural thought.

Graph machine learning classification using architectural 3D topological models

Some architects struggle to choose the best form of how the building meets the ground and may benefit from a suggestion based on precedents. This paper presents a novel proof of concept workflow that enables machine learning (ML) to automatically classify three-dimensional (3D) prototypes with respect to formulating the most appropriate building/ground relationship. Here, ML, a branch of artificial intelligence (AI), can ascertain the most appropriate relationship from a set of examples provided by trained architects. Moreover, the system classifies 3D prototypes of architectural precedent models based on a topological graph instead of 2D images. The system takes advantage of two primary technologies. The first is a software library that enhances the representation of 3D models through non-manifold topology (Topologic). The second is an end-to-end deep graph convolutional neural network (DGCNN). The experimental workflow in this paper consists of two stages. First, a generative simulation system for a 3D prototype of architectural precedents created a large synthetic database of building/ground relationships with numerous topological variations. This geometrical model then underwent conversion into semantically rich topological dual graphs. Second, the prototype architectural graphs were imported to the DGCNN model for graph classification. While using a unique data set prevents direct comparison, our experiments have shown that the proposed workflow achieves highly accurate results that align with DGCNN’s performance on benchmark graphs. This research demonstrates the potential of AI to help designers identify the topology of architectural solutions and place them within the most relevant architectural canons.

Kritikujući kritički regionalizam, formalna analiza kao alternativa - studija slučaja istorijskog konteksta i projekata u Japanu

This paper first provides an overview on Kenneth Frampton's methodology of Critical Regionalism, which is criticised by contemporary scholars for reducing various regional qualities of architecture into its material realm, such as tectonics, architectural details, structures etc. After this, a case study on this matter will be conducted by taking Japan as its main subject. The study explicitly focuses on the mutual process between the establishment of 'Japan-ness' as its architectural identity and the material reduction of its cultural characteristics that are primarily discussed in series of essays by Arata Isozaki. Further developing on the above discussion, the overarching goal of this paper is to seek an alternative method to Critical Regionalism, that could contribute to forming a broader knowledge of the regional subjects. To strategically deviate from the material aspect of architecture, Peter Eisenman's 'Formal Analysis' will be investigated as a potential alternative. The final section will apply this method to two architectural precedents in Japan, aiming to capture the rather abstract concept of Hashi<端>, which would otherwise be muted by the process of material reduction of cultural identities discussed above.

Apartment Façade Design Characteristics for Middle and Upper Occupants with Ecological Design Approach

Social and economic conditions affect people’s behavior and preference for housing and the selection of housing area and its design. People with higher economic and social conditions will choose a better quality of housing and the environment. This decision also influences housing preference for apartment design. The quality of the apartment is influenced by a healthy environment, the use of energy that is efficient and can be recycled, using the eco-design approach, and basic facilities are provided. This study focuses on design-based research for designing an apartment building that suits the preferences of middle and upper occupants with an ecological approach. In this study, middle and upper occupant preference determines the shape of the facade design in buildings. In order to determine design parameters and criteria, this study uses a literature review, data analysis, and architectural precedent study. The result finds that several aspects are synthesized and selected as general design criteria apartment buildings. The important parameters in the design of the facade of the building are attractive façade design and emphasize the changing color through vegetation design inside and surrounding the building facades at each season. The building is designed minimalist architecture with a neutral color selection that is combined with natural colors such as wood and stone. Parts of apartment facilities can also be accessed by the occupants easily. Placement of vegetation evenly gives the impression of being close to nature and provides relaxation for each occupant of the apartment building.

Analysing different aspects and dimensions of rebranding, what is the efficacy of urban rebranding strategies? The efficacy of rebranding through architecture

Rebranding strategies are fundamental to counteracting economic degeneration and improving inter-city competitiveness of urban areas. Iconic architecture is often associated with brand identity in this context. The article outlines three key approaches: market-led, top-down, and flagship rebranding strategies, each with an accompanying unique architectural precedent: Titanic Belfast, Northern Ireland; Turner Contemporary, Margate, England; and Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain. Addressing the reasons for deterioration and investigating the rebranding strategy of each case study, involving the impact of socioeconomic phenomena such as deindustrialisation, globalisation, and gentrification, allows their distinct architectural significance and overall efficacy to be critically assessed. Ultimately, it is concluded that top-down rebranding strategies are comprehensively the most effective and sustainable.

A language-driven reverse-engineering tool for the analysis of architectural precedents: A Palladian case study

The analysis of precedents represents a significant point of departure for design processing. By applying a language/ design analogy, this research introduces a reverse-engineering tool that helps guide the systematic analysis of architectural precedents. The visual tool consists of four main layers: the morphological, the semantic, the semiotic, and the pragmatic. To test the tool?s applicability, a prominent precedent from the Palladian designs is analyzed as a case study. By developing the tool and demonstrating its applicability for the analysis of the underlying regulatory and formative principles of the Palladian design, this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of architectural design by introducing an analytical tool for decoding and externalizing the design language. This tool can be added to the existing toolbox of designers, and it can help reveal new insights into the multi-layered compositional language of precedents and their underlying architectonics. The findings related to the tool?s applicability and the compositional language of the Palladian design and its associative meanings and connotations are explained, discussed and illustrated by diagrams.

Comparing the Rules in Digital Algorithmic Generation Methods for Architectural Designs

The paper deals with digital generative algorithmic systems. Its aim is to investigate the extent to which the difference between rule-based algorithmic systems affects the definition of rules themselves. To achieve this aim, the paper put forward a theoretical framework of rule-based systems including the characteristics of rules, and the way they work. The framework was adopted as a basis for the comparison of four common rule-based algorithmic design approaches in architecture. They are Shape Grammars, L-systems, Cellular Automata, and Swarm Intelligence Algorithm. The results showed that the differences between the rule-based algorithmic systems are slightly reflected in their rules. The similarities are identified in many rule’s properties and their way of work such as: using symbols in the representation of rules, using substitution rules in the generation process, using the same procedures included in rules, the possibility of rule’s repetition and rule’s termination. However, shape grammars showed some individuality, especially in the reference of rules to architectural precedents.

On the Nature of the Conceptual Schemata Development of Architecture Students

Embedded within the theoretical and conceptual frameworks implied by the schemata theory and studies on architectural precedent knowledge, the present study is based on a research that investigates and evaluates two major issues within the context of architectural education. First is the level and characteristics of the conceptual schema of the students of architecture have had just before their education in architecture starts, and second, the nature, and the characteristic of that precise conceptual schema’s development and transformation throughout their formal education. This study, on the other hand, reports a comparative analysis and evaluation of two particular stages: 1 st year, before their formal education starts, and 3 rd year, as it was assumed by the study, as the stage when their disciplinary schemata is already roughly “formed.” Findings showed that students not only developed their conceptual schemata and their existing schemata is transformed into a more specialized and field-specific one, but also they have developed a set of skills which might be called “designerly seeing,” and “designerly thinking.”

The Importance of Architecture in Food and Drink Experiences Within a Tourism Context

This article explores the relationship between spatial settings and food and drink experiences in tourism and hospitality. Food and drink providers often appear unaware or deliberately neglectful of the effects of the environment on food and drink experiences. However, certain tourism and hospitality providers successfully make use of architecture and design, and/or integrated multisensory experiences to enhance customer perceptions and satisfaction. Based on a scoping review and architectural precedents, this article provides unique examples of architecture and design, and discusses their influence on the total tourism and/or hospitality product. Literature from the fields of food sciences, psychology, design, and architecture is used to explain these influences. Taken together, this article highlights how the careful and targeted use of architecture and architectural design can substantially contribute to meaningful and memorable dining experiences in tourism. Specifically, this article illustrates how architecture can help provide multisensory dining experiences. Considerations for future research are provided and include: investigating the differences between permanent and temporary food and drink installations and framing future empirical research with pertinent theoretical frameworks.

A Tale of Two Mosques: Marrakesh’s Masjid al-Jamiʿ al-Kutubiyya

Abstract The Kutubiyya Mosque, the hallmark monument of the Almohad dynasty (1121–1269) in their capital city of Marrakesh, has resisted scholarly interpretation due to its unique plan, featuring two prayer halls wedged apart by the monumental minaret. The south-facing qibla and the architectural use of a prior dynasty’s palatial remains further complicate the narrative surrounding the function of the mosque within the urban fabric and the Almohads’ dynastic self-concept. This article argues that such idiosyncrasies are indicative of the Almohads’ sensitivity to the intellectual, religious, and legal arguments of the day, expressed through a deliberate adaptation or repudiation of the architectural precedents in the Islamic West. The Kutubiyya must be understood as a monumental record of the dynastic shifts in ideology and identity as the Almohads struggled to define themselves against their predecessors and competitors. The site’s unique plan and complex construction history are the physical evidence of this struggle, which makes the role of the Kutubiyya in the urban history of Marrakesh all the more significant.

Designing a Revolutionary Habitat: Tradition, Heritage and Housing in the Immediate Aftermath of the Iranian Revolution – Continuities and Disruptions

For the first decade after its victory, the Iranian revolution (1979) was dominated by an uncompromising Islamist ideology, invoking the Islamic and vernacular traditions. A logical arena through which Islamism could act upon people’s daily lives was public housing, the design and construction of which is controlled by the government, and its constituents are the masses who mostly adhere to Muslim traditions and espouse forms of Islamic identity in their daily life. Referring to a selection of projects from a series of government housing competitions held in 1986, we examine the relationship between the submitted designs and architectural precedents cited as constituting “Islamic architectural heritage.” Elaborating on the heritage processes involved in articulating the past in these designs, we trace the interrelationships between these designs and other, non-Islamic, architectural discourses and design procedures deriving from a Western context. We argue for rethinking the relationship between heritage and architectural design, such that the latter is seen as the process of refashioning fragments of past traditions into heritage, in this case, a purportedly Islamic form. Concurrently, we show the gap between ideological rhetoric and the praxis of design and remarkable continuities between the periods leading up to and following the revolution.

A Proposal for Imitation Phenomenon in Architecture: Meme Patterns and Architectural Precedent Story Concept

A Proposal for Imitation Phenomenon in Architecture: Meme Patterns and Architectural Precedent Story Concept

Calling Rowe: After-lives of Formalism in the Digital Age

Emmanuel Petit recently invoked the work of Colin Rowe to render a discussion of architectural precedent relevant for the digital age. Questioning Petit’s approach, this article explores the implications latent in this invocation. In so doing, it highlights their misalignments with the current concerns of digital design practitioners. The article thus focuses on the question of a possible after-life of Rowe’s formalism for the digital age. It starts by charting its genealogical development from Rudolf Wittkower’s humanist grids to Peter Eisenman’s ‘post-functionalist’ pursuits of autonomous form and Greg Lynn’s ‘pliant’ geometries. This showcases the dual historical effect of Rowe’s analytical formalism. From the late 1940s to the present, his disciples employed it both as a historiographical model and as a generative mechanism for architectural design. The history of Rowe’s formalism is therefore intertwined with the contemporary concerns of digital design practitioners, including Petit’s question of theorising precedent. The digital design practitioners’ assertions of autonomy are historically rooted in Rowe’s analytical formalism. In the final instance, Rowe’s analysis was carried out from the perspective of modernist humanism, and this historically remained the case in its various versions from Wittkower to Eisenman. Updating Rowe, as Petit suggested, would therefore only perpetuate a modernist outlook in a postmodern age. A formalism for the present cannot ignore the enduring points of the postmodern critique that preceded it. In conclusion, a contemporary variant of formalism needs to address the debates around its possible synthesis with contextualist concerns. To do so, it also needs to engage with the poststructuralist critiques of the intervening decades. Some examples from recent literature exemplify such an approach. They could therefore serve as useful precedents towards an integrated formalism for the present.

Mögliche Funktionen der mittelalterlichen Heiligen Gräber

Possible Functions of Medieval Holy Sepulchres. In Western Christianity, the tomb of Christ and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem not only served as an influential architectural precedent throughout the Middle Ages, but also became a defining element of the Good Friday and Easter liturgies. Liturgical sources inform us that in some parts of the Latin Church, beginning in the second half of the tenth century, it was customary on Good Friday to place the Cross and/or the consecrated Host from Holy Thursday into the sepulchrum, the symbolic tomb of Christ. The Crucifix and the Sacrament would be removed from the sepulchre at dawn on Easter Sunday, and the empty tomb became the semantic centre of the Easter ceremony, as evidence of the Resurrection. Sculptural representations of the Holy Sepulchre from as early as the thirteenth century have survived, and it is possible to deduce that they were used to fulfil the function of the sepulchrum during the ceremonies of Holy Week. Liturgical texts do not usually make reference to figural Holy Sepulchres, so they cannot be used as direct sources for this purpose, although they do help us to understand liturgical sepulchres and to determine the role they performed in the liturgical space. The sepulchre was, on the one hand, a tool used in liturgical practice, and the ceremony itself defined the object, its status and its interpretation. A deeper examination of the activities carried out during the Triduum Sacrum, meanwhile, may enable us to determine the active role of the Holy Sepulchre, as an image, as part of the ceremony and for the duration of the ceremony. The use of sepulchres was not limited to liturgical or ritual practice, for certain examples remained visible at other times of the year, and may have provided an opportunity for the images to be used for individual devotion. The unrelated written and material sources may, in the final analysis, lend us the chance to identify the conceptual functions of the liturgical-ritual Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Sepulchre as an image.

Interstitial Occupancies: From Industrialization to Informal Urbanism in Monterrey, Mexico

As the third largest city in Mexico, Monterrey is a manufacturing hub that offers a provocative counterpoint to industrial cities in developed countries. Suburban sprawl, political instability, violence, social injustice, and de-industrialization illustrate increasing fragmentation—or terrain vague—where the conventional urban fabric unravels and less formal occupancies unfold. Defined by Catalan architect and theorist Ignasi Solà-Morales, terrain vague is expressed through obsolescence and various organic practices that react to depopulation and under-productivity. Investigating production and city-building, this article positions post-industrial Monterrey as a place of difference reflecting hybridized Latin American and American normative conditions. It surveys processes of industrialization and changing technology to situate iconic European and American architectural and urban precedents as forerunners of similar conditions in Monterrey.

Sinan and Palladio: A comparative morphological analysis of two sacred precedents

An exploratory study on the design schemes underlying two architectural precedents is presented and discussed. The study compares the formalistic compositions of two prominent precedents on multiple levels. These levels include the morphological, semantic, and pragmatic layers. The morphological aspects of these layers are emphasized. The study aims to identify the commonalities and differences between two cases of classical sacred architecture in terms of their morphometric and morphosyntactic structures. These cases are represented by Palladio׳s II Redentore Church and Sinan׳s Süleymaniye Mosque designs. The scope of the analysis focuses on the syntax and mathematics of the floor plans, and the facade and section of each case are referenced occasionally. Within this scope, the proportional system that regulates the compositions and eidonomy of the precedents are scrutinized. Findings resulting from the comparative analysis are reported and then discussed. The study shows that the two ostensibly different precedents share obscurely many commonalities, which are greater than what their initial appearances suggest.

Climate Discourse and the Architectural Style Debates on Adelaide’s Nineteenth-Century Public Buildings

Climate was frequently invoked as a rationale for architectural design during the nineteenth century. This article examines the way climate discourse was used in architectural debates about appropriate styles for public buildings in the South Australian colony. In Adelaide the climate was defined as Mediterranean and consequently that region was looked to for architectural precedents. It will be demonstrated that architects in Adelaide used this Mediterranean climate to speak about their use of Classical over other styles when it was expedient for them to do so. However, the emulation of styles which occurred in Adelaide had as much to do with creating an identity for the city based on British town form as it did with climate.This article has been peer reviewed.

The City's Architectural Project: From Formless City to Forms of Architecture

AbstractIs the city architecture's nemesis? Formless where architecture requires form, open where building projects require completion and closure; ceaseless in its development – growth and contraction – often simultaneously experiencing decay as well as expansion. Seeking to renegotiate the terms of architecture's engagement with the city, Alexander Eisenschmidt turns to some of the most significant architectural precedents of the recent past that are squarely set within the metropolis.

아산신도시 한옥(韓屋)형 초등학교 계획 연구 - 경주 라궁(羅宮)의 조직성을 활용하여 -

최근 증가되는 한옥 붐으로 인해 한옥 활용의 다양화란 측면에서 각종 공공청사 및 유치원, 도서관 등의 공공시설에 한옥을 활용하고자 하는 요구가 있다. 즉 한옥 형식을 여러 유형의 현대적 건축에 적용해 보려는 다각도의 시도가 요구되고 있다. 본고는 이러한 배경을 바탕으로 충남 아산신도시 지역의 초등학교 부지를 하나의 대상으로 선정하여 한옥을 이용한 초등학교 계획안을 제시해 보는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 계획 규모는 학년별 4개 학급 총24개 학급 규모이며, 교실운영 방안은 1-2학년은 '종합교실형'으로, 3-6학년은 '일반교실+특별교실+다목적실형'으로 설정하였다. 부지 효율성을 도모하기 위하여 저학년동을 한옥형으로 계획하였으며 선례로서 라궁의 조직성을 활용하였다. Recently there have been the various trials going on that public facilities such as city hall, kindergarten, pubic library and so on are designed by Han-ok(韓屋) style. And it is necessary to apply Korean traditional wooden structure to such a various demands. Based on such situation and needs this paper aims to draw a example design proposal for Han-ok style elementary school which is located in Asan new town. The building scope is total 24 classes consist of 4 classes each grade. The Usual type is adopted to the lower grade classrooms which are Han-ok style using the composition of La-gung(羅宮) as a architectural precedent.

On dependencies between architecture and media: considering the remote work

To consider architecture as a communicative medium requires acknowledgment of the necessity of mediating artifacts suchas drawings, models, and photographs, insofar as these artifacts provide structure for communication and discourse. In this essay, I examine the criticality of mediating artifacts to architecture's communicative potential by proposing a tactical identity between the act of architectural design and the study of architectural precedent. In both situations, mediating artifacts incorporate decisions and assumptions about how architectural significance should be communicated.I propose two hypotheses as frames within which to discuss architecture's dependence on mediating artifacts. First, the Neutral Frame hypothesis suggests that significant attributesof a work of architecture are capable of disclosure regardless of the medium through which these attributes are "filtered.” By contrast, the Production Bias hypothesis holds that significant attributes of a work of architecture can be identified as unique to a medium of investigation, and furthermore, that in some cases it may not be possible to disclose a given attribute by any other means. By considering existing photographs of a completed work of architecture (Crown Hall in Chicago,Illinois) in two ways, first through computer-aided manipulation and second by diagramming superimposed fields-of-view of photographs from two distinct sources, I suggest that the Production Bias hypothesis is the better explanation of architecture's relationship to mediating artifacts.