The Architectural Project

Introduction

3 Design Processes Introduction Design is the invention of a new object through the mediation of another object that precedes it in time. The designer operates on this, the project, modifying it, confident that it is satisfactory. Then its characteristics are translated into a code of instructions that can be understood by those in charge of realizing the second object, known as “the work” or building. A design process, then, has as its result the production of an ensemble of representations and specifications circumscribing the construction of the object they represent.The ways of representing and specifying vary through time and from one cultural environment to another but are always conditioned by two factors. () The separation of designers and executors, as different persons or groups,began in the Renaissance.This division of responsibilities created the need to make the ideas of designers explicit and to have them stated in a language that executors can understand. As Richard Neutra notes: Historically speaking, drawings and blueprints are a rather recent development. In past periods, the originator of a design usually communicated his idea directly to his working crew, and clarified it by showing them what to do. His success in effectuating his design depended also on imponderables of personality. Musical productions long followed a similar pattern of immediate transference. The first full score of a composition, leaving almost nothing to be filled in and “ornamented” during execution, is only about two centuries old.1 () The need for a design arises, depending on the complexity of the object being designed and its greater or lesser degree of novelty compared to others existing in the same class: that is,its proximity to a known“type.” Graphic representations of the future object constitute the main part of the project. They are made by using projections in plan, façade, and section, which have been described since antiquity and were made rigorous by descriptive geometry in the eighteenth century.2 4 The Architectural Project The representation of the project displays the properties of the object as such, the physical object: its forms, dimensions, and materials. It does not include what the designer imagines as the use of the building, the actions of its future inhabitants.3 This manner of representing buildings, in which geometrical qualities and reference to materials dominate all stages of the design, is strictly necessary for communicating with builders. Because of this, the building as object is predominant in the mind of its designer, quite independent of its practical and social objectives. The architect tends to work like an artist, concentrating on analogic models.4 For architects, the function or use of the building is part of the external relations of the work, in spite of the fact that they need those relations to bring a creation into being. The designer invents the object in the act of representing it. That is, a designer draws a nonexistent object, repeating the process with everincreasing precision. This precision depends on an increase in detail, always within the rules of the representational system. Design is therefore the progressive description of an object that does not exist at the beginning of the process. This progress in the knowledge of the future object has its correlations in the stages of the design process. Those suggest moments in the communicative interchange with the client.The client is first shown preliminary drawings, containing the general idea of the design, then a schematic project, and finally the working drawings. The architect’s fees are generally coordinated with these stages of the process. The working drawings are intended to facilitate construction. As we can see, the ideational process advances from general schemes to particulars of the object, ending in defined detail of configuration of parts and materials. Following this pattern, the final design is derived from a schematic design,and this in turn has an“essential structure,”which was traditionally called a“parti”(from the French prendre parti, taking a decision between possible alternatives). From the same parti, different projects can be developed. The design process then is a progression from stages of greater generality and lower definition to others of high definition.Definition means a finer specification of parts and their relations. Generality points to the extension of the field of objects that could be designated by the same program.The greater the precision,the more the field of possible objects will be circumscribed. Finally, the project will point...