Architectural Precedents Research Articles

Architectural Precedent: The Manchester Assize Courts and Monuments to Law in the Mid-Victorian Era

This article looks at a much-neglected topic in accounts of the modern legal system: the architecture of law courts. It is argued that a closer examination of radical changes to the ways in which the internal space of the courthouse and courtroom were organised in the mid-nineteenth century can tell us much about how lawyers came to dominate the trial. The essay focuses on the design and planning of the Manchester Assize Courts, a building which can accurately be described as one of the first, if not the first, modern courthouse. It considers how the courthouse came to symbolise new ideas about the civic sphere, the increased reliance on the segregation of participants in the trial, and the role of law in Victorian society. Particular attention is placed on the link between new social and cultural movements and the architect, Alfred Waterhouse.

Close encounters of the architectural kind

Throughout their career architects collect an extensive record of architectural cases, which they use as a source of inspiration and knowledge during design. Being novices, student architects do not yet have such a record. In order to compensate for this lack of knowledge, teachers in architecture engage their students into realistic yet simulated projects and introduce them to relevant architectural precedents for these projects. Within the realm of AI, case-based reasoning (CBR) stresses the importance of cases too. So far, however, applications that flow from CBR research have rarely found their way into architecture. The experiment that is reported in this article examines the conditions under which CBR technology can be useful in architectural education. The results show that in order for students to benefit from this technology, it should supply cases that are closely related to the project at hand. These results are consistent with psychological theories of knowledge representation in novices.

Paul Rudolph: the Florida houses

Rudolph, one of the 20th century's most iconoclastic architects, is best knownand most malignedfor his large brutalist buildings, like the Yale Art and Architecture Building. So it will surprise many to learn that early in his career he developed a series of houses that represent the unrivaled possibilities of a modest American modernism. With their distinctive natural landscapes, local architectural precedents, and exploitation of innovative construction materials, the Florida houses, some eighty projects built between 1946 and 1961, brought modern architectural form into a gracious subtropical world of natural abundance. Like the locally inspired desert houses of another modern master, Albert Frey, Rudolph's Florida houses represent a distillation and reinterpretation of traditional architectural ideas developed to a high pitch of stylistic refinement. Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses reveals all of Rudolph's early residential work. Along with Rudolph's personal essays and renderings, duotone photographs by Ezra Stoller and Joseph Molitor, and insightful text by Joseph King and Christopher Domin, this compelling new book conveys the lightness, timelessness, strength, materiality, and transcendency of Rudolph's work.

A hybrid representation of architectural precedents

We present a hybrid representation of architectural precedents that separates precedent instances from the concepts they embody, where the concepts are defined in terms of multiple classification taxonomies. The representation allows us to combine the classical view of concept acquisition with aspects of the probabilistic and exemplar views and to organize the database into the equivalents of “episodic” and “semantic” memory. A first application and test context is provided by the Software Environment to Support Early Building Design (SEED), where precedents are used as prototypes and cases. But the representation is flexible enough to support the use of precedents in other application contexts.

Golders Green Crematorium and the architectural expression of cremation

The history of cremation in Britain is a story of struggle against conservatism, custom and prejudice in the attempt to reform the burial system. Two outstanding events were to make 1902 a milestone in cremation history: first, the Act of Parliament 'For the Regulation of burning of human remains and to enable burial authorities to establish crematoria'; second, the opening by Sir Henry Thompson, then President of the Cremation Society of England, of Golders Green Crematorium, designed by Ernest George and Yeates, one of the leading late Victorian architectural partnerships. Only the seventh crematorium to be built in Britain, Golders Green became the focus of attention among leading advocates of cremation. Designed in four phases, 1901-12, 1910-11, 1912-16 and 1922-28, and employing a modified version of the Northern Italian Lombard-Romanesque style, Golders Green raises a series of important issues. This paper examines the circumstances surrounding the commissioning of the architects and explores the crucial issue of the choice of an architectural style appropriate both for a new building type, for which there was no architectural precedent, and for a movement seeking official and public approval in the face of continued opposition.

Robert Branner's Treatment of Architectural Sources and Precedents

This article begins by examining Robert Branner's use of metaphor on the one hand and the individual architect on the other in the explanation of the dissemination of styles. In the second part Branner's work is considered in a historiographical context and especially in relation to modernism. His ideal of the wholeness of conception within a building is symptomatic of modernist views of architecture, and his emphasis on the role of the individual architect parallels the modernist stress on the great artist and the avant-garde. This line of argument presupposes, somewhat problematically, the will of the individual architect, focused solely on stylistic problems and solutions, as a recall to order. It is contrasted with a more fluid model of the dissemination of style, which also considers the roles of function, ideology, economic circumstance, and local tradition. The author must, however, acknowledge that his critique relies on hindsight.

Representation of architectural concepts in the study of precedents: a concept-learning system

Learning architectural concepts through the study of precedents is a common activity in design studio. Traditionally, an instructor presents a design concept by showing selected examples using slides, photographs, drawings, texts and verbal analyses. This method relies on a linear mode of conveying design knowledge and is time bound. It emphasizes information retention and recall of facts rather than an understanding of information. If information on architectural precedents are represented digitally in a system designed to promote understanding of the material rather than just presentation of facts, then some disadvantages of the traditional method may be overcome and additional advantages may be achieved. This paper describes a computer-assisted lesson system designed to represent architectural concepts related to spatial composition in design by using graphic images and text and reports on its development, implementation and testing. The system relies on many characteristics, such as accessibility, interactivity, flexibility, rapid feedback, etc., which are known to foster effective concept learning. The paper also evaluates the viability and effectiveness of this system from a technological and logistical viewpoint as well as from a concept learning viewpoint, and concludes with a discussion on other potential applications.

Cornerstones of Presidential Power

A concept of presidential administrative power is manifested by the siting of the first permanent office buildings of the federal government in Washington. George Washington was instrumental in laying down this concept, insisting that the first two executive buildings be placed on either side of the White House. Opposing political and economic forces twice sought to countermand efforts to centralize administration around the presidency by placing the executive buildings on Capitol Hill. If that had occurred, American governance might be quite different today. The contemporary grouping of executive office buildings stands as a legacy of these early architectural precedents.