Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760–1834) regarded the Précis of the Lectures on Architecture (1802–5) and its companion volume, the Graphic Portion (1821), as both a basic course for future civil engineers and a treatise. Focusing the practice of architecture on utilitarian and economic values, he assailed the rationale behind classical architectural training: beauty, proportionality, and symbolism. His formal systematization of plans, elevations, and sections transformed architectural design into a selective modular typology in which symmetry and simple geometrical forms prevailed. His emphasis on pragmatic values, to the exclusion of metaphysical concerns, represented architecture as a closed system that subjected its own formal language to logical processes. Now published in English for the first time, the Précis and the Graphic Portion are classics of architectural education.

Revealing Architectural Design examines the architectural design process from the point of view of knowledge domains, domain syntax, coherence, framing, thinking styles, decision-making and testing. Using straightforward language, the book connects general design thinking to underlying frameworks that are used in the architectural design process. The book provides historical grounding as well as clear examples of real design outcomes. It includes diagrams and explanations to make that content accessible. The frameworks and their methods are described by what they can accomplish, what biases they introduce and the use of their final outcomes. Revealing Architectural Design is an advanced primer useful to anyone interested in increasing the quality of their architectural design proposals through understanding the conceptual tools used to achieve that process. While it is intended for undergraduate and graduate students of architectural design, it will also be useful for experienced architectural practitioners. For the non-architect, this book opens a window into the priorities of a discipline seldom presented with such transparency.

This book charls the fascinating history of architectural theory from the Renaissance to the present day. Addressing its subject country by country and featuring over 850 illustrations, it offers a chronological overview of the most important architects and architectural theoreticians from Alberti to Koolhaas. Book jacket.

This book provides an in-depth exploration of the rich and persistent use of analogical thinking in the built environment. Since the turn of the 21st century, “design thinking” has permeated many fields outside of the design disciplines. It is expected to succeed whenever disciplinary boundaries need to be transcended in order to think “outside the box.” This book argues that these qualities have long been supported by “analogical thinking”-an agile way of reasoning in which think the unknown through the familiar. The book is organized into four case studies: the first reviews analogical models that have been at the heart of design thinking representations from the 1960s to the present day; the second investigates the staying power of biological analogies; the third explores the paradoxical imaginary of "analogous cities" as a means of integrating contemporary architecture with heritage contexts; while the fourth unpacks the critical and theoretical potential of linguistic metaphors and visual comparisons in architectural discourse. Comparing views on the role of analogies and metaphors by prominent voices in architecture and related disciplines from the 17th century to the present, the book shows how the “analogical world of the project” is revealed as a wide-open field of creative and cognitive interactions. These visual and textual operations are explained through 36 analogical plates which can be read as an inter-text demonstrating how analogy has the power to reconcile design and theories.

As the official architects of Napoleon, Charles Percier (1764–1838) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762–1853) designed interiors that responded to the radical ideologies and collective forms of destruction that took place during the French Revolution. The architects visualized new forms of imperial sovereignty by inverting the symbols of monarchy and revolution, constructing meeting rooms resembling military encampments and gilded thrones that replaced the Bourbon lily with Napoleonic bees. Yet in the wake of political struggle, each foundation stone that the architects laid for the new imperial regime was accompanied by an awareness of the contingent nature of sovereign power. Contributing fresh perspectives on the architecture, decorative arts, and visual culture of revolutionary France, this book explores how Percier and Fontaine’s desire to build structures of permanence and their inadvertent reliance upon temporary architectural forms shaped a new awareness of time, memory, and modern political identity in France.

Since antiquity, the sciences have served as a source of images and metaphors for architecture and have had a direct influence on the shaping of built space. In recent years, architects have been looking again at science as a source of inspiration in the production of their designs and constructions. This volume evaluates the interconnections between the sciences and architecture from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Architecture and the Sciences shows how scientific paradigms have migrated to architecture through the appropriation of organic and mechanical models. Conversely, architecture has provided images for scientific and technological discourse. Accordingly, this volume investigates the status of the exchanges between the two domains.Contents include: Alessandra Ponte, Desert Testing; Martin Bressani, Violet-le-Duc's Optic; Georges Teyssot, Norm and Type: Variations on a Theme; Reinhold Martin, Organicism's Other; Catherine Ingraham, Why All These Birds? Birds in the Sky, Birds in the Hand; Antoine Picon, Architecture, Science, Technology and the Virtual Realm; and Felicity Scott, Encounters with the Face of America.

While the concept of "type" has been present in architectural discourse since its formal introduction at the end of the eighteenth century, its role in the development of architectural projects has not been comprehensively analyzed. This book proposes a reassessment of architectural type throughout history and its impact on the development of architectural theory and practice. Beginning with Laugier's 1753 Essay on Architecture, Unexpected Affinities: The History of Type in the Architectural Project from Laugier to Duchamp traces type through nineteenth- and twentiethth-century architectural movements and thoeries, culminating in a discussion of the affinities between architectural type and Duchamp's concept of the readymade. Includes over sixty black and white images.