The Architectural Project

CHAPTER 2 Description Generation

25 Description Generation CHAPTER 2 Description Generation It is the function and duty of lineaments, then, to prescribe an appropriate place, exact numbers, a proper scale, and a graceful order for whole buildings and for each of their constituent parts, so that the whole form and appearance of the building may depend on lineaments alone. Since that is the case, let lineaments be the precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the learned intellect and imagination. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books Design is the description of an object that does not exist before that description .This description is achieved by successive approximations.The first descriptions refer to the behavior of the new object in the world— the contextual relationships it has to enter, the needs it has to satisfy. These descriptions are verbal or written and parts of them will be registered in the design program. After this approach some graphic attempts are made to suggest the kind of object intended. These graphic attempts simulate the kind of drawings usually made to represent existing buildings , but the building represented will be new, with characteristics of its own. The result of the design process is an object,or rather the description of an object. This description consists of an ensemble of analogical representations : drawings, models, and specifications about the materials proposed for the building.The invention of the object is achieved through the use of these “representations” of the as yet nonexistent object. The representations are coded not very precisely in a graphic system,the syntax of which“resembles”that of the drawings that will be made for building . Each new representation is commenced to solve an aspect of the 26 The Architectural Project problem as perceived by the designer upon beginning that particular drawing or model.The designer’s understanding of the problem changes with completion of each of these tentative solutions. Producing each drawing results in a representation in which the designer reads more information than he or she introduced. This new information deals with possible spatial configurations,compatibilities or incompatibilities between partial solutions, and new formal proposals. In the process, the designer also finds unexpected kinds of kinship in the growing solution with other already familiar but for the moment forgotten, architectures recalled, which that from now on will constitute a part of the context of the new design. Michael Graves said, “That a certain set of marks on a field can play back into one’s mind and consequently bring forth further elaboration is the nature of this quite marvelous language.” Ideally, the process will continue by increasing the definition of the object. As the graphic syntax becomes more precise, the possible number of objects represented by the models is reduced; in the end it comes down to a single one. Each drawing added to the growing project implies discarding many possibilities that are no longer compatible with this new drawing. The new drawing also opens many options for the development of the final object; among these possibilities the designer must choose. The final complete representation of the architectural object , then, is not only a determination but also the elimination of other future objects that will not be born. If from the beginning we try to represent the object as if we were sure of it, either the process will fail completely or the new object will be impoverished. This also happens when the designer concentrates on a single projection—usually the plan—and expects to have the plan fully defined before tackling the other projections. Premature definition can likewise result if we try to draw what little we know with precision. In that case the object would “crystallize” too fast, losing its flexibility to incorporate into the design all the aspects of the brief,because only some aspects will have been taken into account in arriving at a first scheme or parti. This could occur either because we extrapolated what appeared to be the essence of the program (as in Viollet-le-Duc’s account) or because in response to the proliferation of requirements,we may have paid attention only to the most evident. If we pay attention only to the plan, we will likely produce a scheme with walls, which will satisfy only the most elementary connections and measurements. This is the meaning of Viollet-le-Duc’s criticism of the first schemes of his architect, which he calls...