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Theory of Design

This document outlines various theories of design throughout history. It begins with classical theories from Vitruvius and the Middle Ages where little was documented. During the Renaissance, theorists like Alberti wrote extensively. Structural theories emerged during this time as well as personal style theories. Modern architecture was influenced by industrialization. Functionalism emerged as did postmodernism which questioned modernism. The document provides an overview of many design theories from classical to modern times in a few brief paragraphs on each major era or movement.

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Aniway Escalona
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115 views

Theory of Design

This document outlines various theories of design throughout history. It begins with classical theories from Vitruvius and the Middle Ages where little was documented. During the Renaissance, theorists like Alberti wrote extensively. Structural theories emerged during this time as well as personal style theories. Modern architecture was influenced by industrialization. Functionalism emerged as did postmodernism which questioned modernism. The document provides an overview of many design theories from classical to modern times in a few brief paragraphs on each major era or movement.

Uploaded by

Aniway Escalona
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THEORY OF DESIGN

THEMATIC THEORIES
CLASSICAL
- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
•MIDDLE AGES
- Medieval (read: Dark Age) anonymous tradition of trade
guilds
•RENAISSANCE
- Alberti, Vignola, Palladio, etc.
•STRUCTURALIST
- Galileo Galilei, Robert Hooke, etc.
•ART NOUVEAU (Personal Style)
- Eugene Emmanuelle Violett-le-Due, Le Corbusier, etc.
•FUNCTIONALISM
- Walter Gropius, Louis Sullivan, etc.
- modern architecture
•POSTMODERNISM
- Robert Venturi
•SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE
•ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE

CLASSICAL THEORIES
•Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
- Author of the oldest research on architecture
- Wrote an extensive summary of all the theory on
construction
- Had a thorough knowledge of earlier Greek and Roman
writings
•“Ten Books on Architecture”
- De architectura libri decem
- Consists mostly of normative theory of design (based on
practice)
- A collection of thematic theories of design with no method
of combining them into a synthesis
- Presents a classification of requirements set for buildings:
: DURABILTIY (firmitas)
: PRACTICALITY or “convenience”
(utilitas)
: PLEASANTNESS (venustas)

•Vitruvian Rules of Aesthetic Form


- Based on Greek traditions of architecture
- Teachings of Pythagoras : applying proportions of numbers
- Observations of tuned string of instruments
- Proportions of human body
- PLEASANTNESS : in accordance of good taste
: parts follow proportions
: symmetry of measures

THEORIES in the MIDDLE AGES


- no documents
- no person can be attributed for theories
•Monastery Institutions
- Most documents retrieved from the Middle Ages
- However, archives contain only few descriptions of buildings
- Described only as “according to the traditional model”
- “There’s no accounting for tastes” was the rule of thumb

•Development of Building Style


- With hardly or no literary research present
- Villard de Hannecourt’s “sketchbook” in 1235
- Rotzer’s Booklet on the right way of making pinnacles
- Only through guidance of old masters
- Tradition binding and precise in close guilds of builders

RENNAISANCE THEORIES
•1948 – a copy of Virtue manuscript found at St. Gallen
Monastery
•Leon Bautista Alberti (1404-72)
- Person in charge of constructions commanded by Pope
- “On Building”: De re aedifficatoria
: one of the greatest works of the theory of
architecture
: completed in 1452, published in 1485
: more emphasis on decoration of building
Exteriors

•Sebastino Serlio
- “Regole generall di architectura”

•Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola


- “Regola delle cinque ordini”
- Concise, facts and easily applicable rules of the five column
systems
- Based his design instructions on four things:
: idea of Pythagoras
: proportions of small number
: properties and other instruments
: good taste

•Andrea Palladio (1508-80)


- “I Quattro libri dell’architectura”
- The father of modern picture books of architecture

•Philibert de L’orme
- One of French theorist who are critical of italians
- Prove that Pantheon’s Corinthian columns had 3 different
proportions
- Rejected the doctrine of absolute beauty of measures

CONSTRUCTION THEORY

Building Material Architectural Form


Amorphic material:
Soft stone; snow
Spherical vaulted
construction
Sheets of skin or textile Cone-shaped tent
construction
Logs of wood Box-shaped construction

•Before Written Construction Theory


- Architecture created without the help of architects or theory
- Builders used a model instead of mathematical algorithms
now used in modern construction
- Inverted “catenary” model

•Semi-Circular Vault: Theory by Virtue


“When there are arches… the outermost piers must
be made broader than the others so that they may have the
strength to resist when the wedges under the pressure of the
load of the walls, begins to thrust to the abutments.”

•During Middle Ages


- No written documents survived about theories or models to
describe the magnificent vaults of medieval cathedrals

•During Renaissance
- From Alberti onwards, architects began specializing
- Mathematical models by Francis Bacon and Galileo
Galilei

: considers load and scientific studies


contributed to constructions
- 1675: Marquis de Vauban founded a building depatment
in the French army called “Corps des Ingenieurs”
- 1747: Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees, special school
founded in Paris where new profession specializing in
construction was organized.
--- first engineering school
- Other figures of mathematical construction theory
: Robert Hooke
: Jakob Bernoulli
: Leonard Euier

PERSONAL STYLE
Copying from Antiquity
•
- Architecture form antiquity came to a print of perfection

- Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1863)


: the first theorist who set out to create a totally new
system of architectural forms independent of antiquity
“What we call taste is but an involuntary process of reasoning
whose
steps elude our observation. Authority has no value if its grounds
are
not explained.”
: the foundation of modern
architecture
: did not create a timeless architectural style himself,
he showed others the philosophical foundation and
method that they could use to develop even radically
new form language

- Owen Jones: used forms inspired from nature, especially


Plants

ART NOUVEAU
- The first architectural style independent of the tradition of
antiquity after the Gothic style
- The example set by Art Nouveau encourage some of the
most skillful architects of the 20th century to create them
private form language

THEORETICAL TREATISES
- Five points of Architecture (1926, Le Corbusier)
a. pilotis
b. free plan
c. free façade
d. the long horizontal sliding window
e. the roof garden

- Architecture as Space (Bruno Zeri)


“The crux of architecture is not the sculptural pattern, but
instead the building interiors. These can be seen as “negative
solids”, as voids which the artist divides, combines, repeats
and emphasizes in the same way as the sculptor treats his
“positive” lumps of substance.”

- The “personal style” of architects are not necessarily


based on laws of nature or on logical reasoning. More
important is that they exhibit a coherent application of an
idea which also must be clear that the public can find it out.
An advantage is also if the style includes symbolical
undertones.

MODERN ARCHITECTURE
•Industrial Revolution (1768)
- Arts and Crafts Movement
a. conservative
b. William Morris
c. John Ruskin

- Electicism
a. architecture of borrowing

Fruits of Industrial Revolution


Joseph Paxton – Crystal Palace, 1851
Elisha Graves Otis – Elevator, 1857
Manufacturing of “Rolled Steel”
1870’s
•The Great Fire of Chicago, 1871
- downtown in Chicago was burned and in needs of
construction of new buildings
- place where first tallest building was constructed

•William Le Baron Jenney


- made the first skyscraper

•Daniel Burnham
- “make no little plans, they have no magic to stir man’s
blood”

•Louis Sullivan
- “form follows function”

1880’s
- Chicago School became the concentration of architectural
development
- introduce Chicago Window

1890’s
•The World Columbian Exposition
- built in 1863
- chief architect: Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law
Olmsted

1900’s
- European architecture was notified
- Person to notify:
a. Otto Wagner
b. Adolf Loops “ornament is a crime”
c. H.P. Berlage
d. Frank Lloyd Wright

1910’s
- Office of Peter Behrens
a. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe “less in more”
b. Walter Gropius
c. Le Corbusier
- 2 Art movements that influenced
1. Futurism – simultaneity of movement
2. Cubism – interpretation of space

1920’s
•The Bauhaus
- “Art and Technology, the new unity”

•Established architects
a. Frank Llyod Wright “organic architecture”
b. Le Corbusier
c. Mies Van Der Rohe / Gropius

1930’s
International Style
•

1950’s
•The period of Reassessment
- Universalism
- Personalism
POSTMODERNISM
•The center of Postmodernism:
Robert Venturi “less is bore”
•Philip Johnson
- say that a portion of Chippendale building in New York has
no function

Introduce the element of “Discovery”


SYMBOLIC ARHITECTURE
- “Building as a message”

1. Mathematical Analogy
2. Biological Analogy
- use of plants and ornaments
3. Romantic Architecture
- uses exotic language of form
- vastness; trying to surprise; huge
4. Linguistic Analogies
- grammar; uses words with proper grammar
5. Mechanical Analogies
- Buckminster Fuller
6. Ad Hoc Analogy
- any materials that you can get or available in your
environment such as wood in forest
7. Stage Analogy

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