Theory of Architecture 2 Prelims

Copyright 2025 by University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture TOA 2 Sub-cluster. Updated done by CPSantillan

Balkrishna Doshi

“Architecture is Ethical and Personal”

Balkrishna V. Doshi

“Architecture is Service to Humanity”

Riken Yamamoto

“Kinship between public and private realms”

Riken Yamamoto

“Architecture is the background and foreground to everyday life”

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal

“Never Demolish”

Practical Approach

Type of Design Approach;

Traditionalist strategy—Most used approach

Basically problem-solving—using the most practical materials, the most efficient design, and overall a traditionalist strategy.

Usually the most cost-efficient approach (and thus, often the most popular)

Reasonable solution to design everyday buildings.

Experiential Approach

Type of Design Approach;

Extremely immersive approach—takes into account the end user's experience

Building is designed as an experience—taking into consideration every impression visitors will have on the building

Goal: Creating a fully immersive experience.

This design approach is first and foremost about aesthetics.

Integrated Design Approach

Type of Design Approach;

Brings together a wider range of experts to contribute to the project as a team

Experts can be multidisciplinary

Early integration is crucial to reduce the potential for expensive conflicts

Helps ensure a holistic outcome rather than a culmination of interdependent elements

Sustainable Approach

Type of Design Approach;

To achieve a green + eco-friendly building, you need to incorporate sustainable design from the very beginning.

Involves designing buildings to minimize any negative environmental impact.

This approach is oftentimes validated by a LEED Certification

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

LEED Meaning

Design Strategy

An overarching plan

Guides the development of a project from concept to execution

Encompasses a range of considerations that influence the design process

Paradigm

A typical example or pattern of something; a model.

A Pattern Language

Presents a framework for designing buildings, cities, and communities based on recurring design solutions or "patterns" that address human needs and enhance quality of life.

Christopher Alexander

Who wrote “A Pattern Language”

Architectural Paradigm Shifts

A change in architecture. Multiplicity of identities rather than fixity and oneness. Presents a distinction from acquired historical, morphological and typological preconceptions and classifications that are well known in architecture and urbanism. A new form of knowledge that dismisses oppositions and forms resolutions

1. Pre-Design

2. Schematic Design

3. Design Development

4. Contract Documents

5. Bidding/Negotiation

6. Contract Administration (construction)

7. Post-Occupancy

Enumerate 7 Stages of the Architectural Design Process

First Model

Iterative Design Process - For Theoretical Use

Testing Phase

Iterative Design Process - For Actual Use

Modern

relating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past.

a person who advocates or practices a departure from traditional styles or values.

Modernism

Aesthetic practice of modernity

Architectural period that is difficult to define

Although some say it is rooted in the Period of Enlightenment, it is mostly a 20th century construct

Cultural Transformation

Transformation; New societal needs = new building types

Cultural Transformation

Transformation;

Government buildings and facilities

Mass production (factories, warehouses, etc)

Commercial buildings (multi-level department stores, etc)

Transportation and communication (trains, newspaper press, post offices, telegrams, etc)

Cultural Transformation

Transformation;

Post-Renaissance Period

Revolutions; Revolts against the monarchy

Rococo and Baroque: symbolized excess, artifice, and corruption

People were looking for new meanings

Return to the essentials of architecture

Classical Order

Strongly associated with government buildings

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux

River Inspector's House at the source of the River Loüe, Chaux France. Is a concept by?

Territorial Transformations

Transformation;

New political states = volatile growth

Unprecedented technical and socio-economic forces

Led to expansion and “uprooting societies” due to long-distance steam navigation

Streatham Street Flats

Stacking apartments in pairs with a common staircase

Henry Roberts

Streatham Street Flats is by?

Streatham Street Flats

Early example of working-class architecture

Georges-Eugene Haussmann

He converted Paris into a regional metropolis, linking opposite cardinal points and districts

Frederick Law Olmstead

General Plan for Riverside Illinois was made by?

Ebenezer Howard

Garden City Diagram is by?

Structural Transformations

Transformation;

Use of New Materials such as Structural Steel, Reinforced Concrete, Glass Innovations, Aluminum, Asphalt and Bitumen for building Structural Systems

Structural Steel

Replaced cast iron as a primary structural material

It enabled the construction of skyscrapers and long-span structures.

Francois Hennebique

During the late 19th century, Concrete with Steel Reinforcement was Patented by who?

Precast Concrete Elements

Allowed for faster and more efficient construction.

William Le Baron Jenney

He built the Home Insurance Building in 1884

Skyscraper Construction

Steel framing + Reinforced Concrete

Curtain Wall Systems

Non-load-bearing facades

Hallidie Building

Curtain wall systems were used in the _____ (1918) by Willis Polk in San Francisco.

Suspension Bridges

Advances in steel cable-making allowed for longer-span suspension bridges

Elisha Ortis

He invented the first safety elevator

Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, Paris

Made by Pierre Francois Henri in 1801-1875 (What is the name of the Building?)

St. Pancras Station

Covering the tracks, it had a clear span of 71.3 meters

Palais des Machines

This Building at Paris Exposition (1889), had a span of 115 meters.

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

“Architecture is the will of the people translated into space”

Walter Gropius

“…from the vagaries of mere architectural caprice to the dictates of structural logic, we have learned to seek concrete expression of the life of our epoch in clear and crisply simplified forms”

Heinrich Wofflin

“... architecture expresses the attitude to life of an epoch”

Peter Behrens

Central figure for Jugenstil (youthful style) in Munich, Germany

Abstract geometrical forms

One of the founders of Deutsche Werkbund, an organization of architects, artists, designers, craftsmen

Peter Behrens

Designer for the German General Electric Company

Peter Behrens

Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, and Charles Edouard Jeanneret work under his Office

Walter Gropius

He sets up own practice with Adolf Meyer

designed the Fagus Shoes Factory

Fagus Shoes Factory

Inspired by Behrens’ AEG Turbine Factory, has aFlat roof, Curtain wall, and a Mechanized architecture

Bauhaus

School of Arts and Crafts at Weimar + Weimar Academy of Fine Arts

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

The concept of the artist as “agent of the taste of the age”

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

“Architecture being an expression of technical power”

Walter Gropius

“The Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it.”

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Architect of Lake Shore Drive Apartments

Werkbund Housing Exhibition, Stuttgart, Germany

Exhibition of the best in housing design

Avant-garde architecture

White Hoes Estate by Mies

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

The Architect of German Pavilion at Barcelona Internation Trade Fair, aka Barcelona Pavilion

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

“Architecture is the will of the people translated into space”

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

“... create form out of the nature of the task, with the means of our time”

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

“Less is more.”

Le Corbusier

Worked for Auguste Perret in Paris

Worked for Behrens in Berlin

Toured a lot; was captivated by the sharpness of forms under the crisp Mediterranean sunlight

Settled in Paris, published L’Esprit Nouveau (New Spirit), a journal containing theories of socially responsive architecture

Le Corbusier

He wrote Vers Une Architecture - Toward a New Architecture

“The house is a machine for living in”

Pilotis, Open Plan, Free design of the Facade, Horizontal Ribbon Windows, Roof Garden

Enumerate Le Corbusier’s 5 points of Architecture

Pilotis

A grid of slim reinforced concrete pylons that assume the structural weight of a building. This frees the ground floor circulation. (5 points of Architecture according to Le Corbusier)

Open Plan

The absence of load-bearing partition walls affords greater flexibility in design and use of living spaces; the house is unrestrained in its internal use. (5 points of Architecture according to Le Corbusier)

Free design of the facade

separated exterior of the building is free from conventional structural restriction, allowing the façade to be unrestrained, lighter, more open. (5 points of Architecture according to Le Corbusier)

Horizontal Ribbon Windows

these light rooms equally, increasing sense of space and seclusion (5 points of Architecture according to Le Corbusier)

Roof Garden

flat roofs with garden terraces serve both harmonic and domestic utility (5 points of Architecture according to Le Corbusier)

Cass Gilbert

One of the first “celebrity” American architects

Cass Gilbert

He is most famous for the Woolworth Building

Woolworth Building

Gothic Skyscraper. a residential building; the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1929.

Cass Gilbert

He pioneered cladding a steel frame that became a model for skyscrapers

Cass Gilbert

He believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the established social order

He was also well-known for his design of public and government buildings in the US

Cass Gilbert

Architect of the US Supreme Court Building (1932)

Cass Gilbert

Architect of Minnesota State Capitol (1905)

The Beaux-Arts Alexander Hamilton U.S.Custom House

What is the name of this building by Cass Gilbert?

Auguste Perret

Was a student at École des Beaux-Arts

Although his early work was Nationalist Romantic Style and Art Nouveau, his main interest was the structure of buildings and the use of new materials, such as concrete

Rue Franklin Apartment Building, Paris

What is the Name of this Building? One of Perret’s early concrete experiments, where the concrete structure, instead of being concealed, was clearly visible and was a part of the exterior design

Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy

Name of this Building made by Auguste Perret? Is a Monument to modernism and the use of concrete, may have inspired the work of American Architect Antonin Raymond.

Antonin Raymond

This American Architect was inspired by Perret’s Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy in designing Tokyo Women's Christian University Chapel and the tower of the Chapel of the Angry Christ in Victorias, Negros Occidental

Auguste Perret

Architect of Conseil Economique Social et Environnemental (Economic, Social and Environmental Council Building),

Louis Sullivan

“Form follows function”

Louis Sullivan

He is called the Father of Modernism

Louis Sullivan

He worked with William Le Baron Jenney, a Mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, an inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School

Louis Sullivan

He Rejected borrowing classical Greek and Roman elements

Louis Sullivan

He partnered with Dankmar Adler establishing a firm together

He studied at MIT and Ecole de Beaux Arts

He Made use of the fireproof steel frame; Optimum development (more vertical space), Multi-storey rentable space

Guaranty Building, Buffalo, New York

Name of this Building which makes use of fireproof steel frame for optimum development or more vertical space, a muiti-storey rentable space

Auditorium Building

Adler and Sullivan became well-known for their work on the _____ in Chicago.

Today the building now owned by Roosevelt University

Louis Sullivan

“It is the nature of our task that in seeking the form we will find the function.”

Louis Sullivan

He strongly advocated for the development of uniquely American architectural forms

He used natural ornament as a metaphor for a democratic society

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Store

Now known as Sullivan Center, The building is remarkable for its steel-framed structure, which allowed a dramatic increase in window area created by bay-wide windows, which in turn allowed for the greatest amount of daylight into the building interiors. This steel framed structure uses the post-and-lintel technique to provide a strong, light, and fireproof steel skeleton.

Adolf Loos

Influential European theorist and a polemicist of modern architecture.

He Developed the “Raumplan” (lit. spatial plan) method of arranging interior spaces

Influenced by Sullivan & Chicago School

Adolf Loos

““Ornament is a crime”

Villa Muller

This building embodies Loos' ideas of economy and functionality. The Raumplan is evident in the multi-level parts of individual rooms, indicating their function and symbolic importance. Raumplan is exhibited in the interior as well as the exterior. (name of the building?)

Froebel Gifts

Educational play materials for young children, originally designed by Friedrich Fröbel

Frank Lloyd Wright

Organic Architecture

“We have primarily the new ideal of a building as organic. A building should be as dignified as a tree in the midst of nature.”

Organic Architecture

harmony between human habitation and the natural world.

Site-sympathetic design approaches

Buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.