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A Theory of Architecture

A Theory of Architecture is a book on architecture by Nikos Salingaros, published in 2006 by Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, Germany ISBN 3-937954-07-4. Cover recommendations are by Kenneth G. Masden II, Duncan G. Stroik, Michael Blowhard,[1] and Dean A. Dykstra. Preface by Prince Charles, and Foreword by Kenneth G. Masden II.[2] This book is a re-working of previously published articles used to teach a senior architecture studio class. Four of the twelve chapters were originally written in collaboration, and the co-authors include Michael Mehaffy, Terry Mikiten, Debora Tejada, and Hing-Sing Yu.

A Theory of Architecture cover.

Originality edit

This book joins a recent movement to explain socio-cultural phenomena by means of scientific models. Writers who have spearheaded this general effort by writing popular science with serious implications include Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and Edward Osborne Wilson. Ever since Benoit Mandelbrot mentioned that traditional architecture was more intrinsically fractal than 20th century buildings, people have been intrigued about the possibility of understanding architectural form in mathematical terms. The fractal nature of natural structures is evident in topography, and people have noticed that traditional architecture blends better with the landscape.

Salingaros builds upon Christopher Alexander’s work, including Notes on the Synthesis of Form, A Pattern Language, and The Nature of Order. Salingaros has collaborated with Alexander for many years, and was one of the editors of "The Nature of Order". He proposes mathematical laws of scaling, argues for an essential role for fractals in architecture, and describes rules for coherence among subdivisions that can help produce a more pleasing design. He claims that these are, in effect, original aesthetic rules coming from science rather than from any traditional artistic sources. Yet, like Alexander, Salingaros argues that this design theory corresponds more closely to what humans have evolved to appreciate. The book introduces many innovative science-based ways of approaching design, and opposes abstract or formal methods based on imageability.[3]

Influence edit

Prince Charles wrote the Preface to the book, declaring Salingaros to be “an intriguing, perhaps historically important, new thinker”. The book is not about Classical architecture. Like Prince Charles, Salingaros is an admirer of Islamic architecture, and the design theory he presents is claimed to be equally valid for Classical, Islamic, or any other vernacular or traditional architecture.[4] Salingaros’ book presents a different view of architecture and design from the teaching texts used for courses in architecture schools during the past several decades. He criticizes present-day architectural education for continuing to rely uncritically on models that he argues lead automatically to non-adaptivity and unsustainability.

Anthropologists K. Sorvig and J. Quillien commented: “The spirit of Jacob Bronowski permeates the work of Nikos Salingaros. "A Theory of Architecture" takes us directly to the heart of difficult questions. Salingaros explores ways to clarify and formalize the understanding of aesthetic forms in the built environment, using mathematics, thermodynamics, Darwinism, complexity theory and cognitive sciences. He postulates that cross-cultural universals derived from scaling rules in nature govern human appreciation of architecture.” [5]

Architect and educator Ashraf Salama observed: “This book is of great value to architectural educators. It helps them correct some of the misconceptions inherited in architectural education … Knowledge is usually presented to students in a retrospective way where abstract and symbolic generalizations used to describe research results do not convey the feel of the behavior of the phenomena they describe; the late Donald Schön emphasized this view in 1988 … Rather than giving students ready-made interpretations about the work of star architects, this book offers a deeper insight into the understanding of the true essence of architecture...” [6]

Individual chapters have been translated into several languages.[7][8][9][10]

Primary topics edit

Darwinian processes edit

Designs evolve in two ways: in the architect's mind towards a final conception, and by variants of a building typology being built on the ground. A Darwinian process plays a significant role in both design and architectural typologies' evolution (or persistence). Salingaros creates a framework where these mechanisms determine how designs evolve, and outline a detailed model. The key concern is understanding the criteria for selection among competing variants: is selection driven by adaptation to human needs, or is it based upon matching to arbitrary images; what type of architecture results from each?

Salingaros builds on the work of Richard Dawkins, especially the meme model, to explain how architectural typologies and design elements are transmitted in society; an innovative application, but one that underlies a trenchant criticism of modernist, post-modernist, and deconstructivist architectural styles. Salingaros claims they are not adaptive: he argues that they transmit in society like an advertising jingle, and not because of intrinsic worthwhile qualities. Supporting arguments are explored in this book.

Complexity edit

Salingaros uses a model of organized complexity to estimate the degree of “life” in a building, a quantity that measures the organization of visual information. His model is based on an analogy with the physics of thermodynamic processes and extends earlier work by Herbert A. Simon and Warren Weaver. The terminology arises from an analogy with biological forms. Salingaros distinguished between “organized” and “unorganized” complexity, going further to claim innate (biologically based) positive advantages of the former.

The book claims, at least for those who like traditional buildings, the correlation between Salingaros’ “life” measure and the perceived degree of life in a building is high. Minimalist and deconstructivist buildings, on the other hand, rate very low, and this is a point of controversy with most architects. Christopher Alexander reproduces Salingaros’ results in Book 1 of “The Nature of Order”, saying that: “It is telling that a simply constructed arithmetical function, based on the considerations of the nature of the living structure, no matter how crudely, could get these kinds of results at all. It shows that, while the question itself may be a million times more subtle, there is something tangible, and ultimately measurable, in the degree of life the living structure has.” [11]

Emergence and evidence-based design edit

Salingaros describes architecture (or at least architecture that he terms “adaptive”) as a characteristic phenomenon of Emergence. Contemporary architectural thinking has recently been moving in this direction, and this book attempts to advance the field forward. The author claims that Architectural theory has degenerated into a narrow point of view, neglecting architectural space and meaning.[12] In proposing a broader discourse, some contemporary theorists are turning once again to phenomenology. Christopher Alexander and Salingaros claim to move past the limited philosophical tools of phenomenology to derive evidence-based results. Evidence-based design is already being used in the innovative design of healing environments such as hospitals and healthcare facilities.[13] In parallel with intellectual advances in other fields driven by the revolution in scientific research at the end of the last millennium, authors such as Salingaros, Alexander, and others seek to build theoretical knowledge in architecture from experimental findings.

These arguments are now being adopted and supplemented by a group of architects applying biophilia, a term coined by Edward Osborne Wilson to describe an intrinsic, genetic predisposition of human beings towards structures found in other living objects such as animals and plants.[14] The key researchers in biophilic design refer to Salingaros’ work, and to chapters of this book in particular.[15][16]

Pattern languages edit

Salingaros develops pattern languages originally introduced by Christopher Alexander and used in architecture as well as in software design. He earlier wrote an influential paper "The Structure of Pattern Languages",[17] which described the combinatorics of patterns necessary to use them effectively. This applies both to software and to architectural and urban design. In "A Theory of Architecture", Salingaros shows how a Pattern Language and a Form Language combine into an Adaptive Design Method. The discussion, while fairly abstract, digs at the scientific foundations of design, having more in common with Evolvable hardware than with the more philosophical discussions found in contemporary Architectural theory.

The fractal mind edit

The book discusses how the mind perceives and conceives architectural form, and postulates that fractal and other organizational mechanisms play a key role in perception. It then argues that humans naturally prefer fractal, organized structures, based on how the mind works.[18] Most modern evolutionary biologists accept the idea that evolution is dependent on the geometry of the natural environment and thus must be consistent with biological structure and morphology. However, the view that selection has shaped the mind to prefer certain shapes and configurations is more controversial.

Geometrical fundamentalism edit

The phrase "geometrical fundamentalism" in this book was coined by Michael Mehaffy and Salingaros as a provocative way of expressing the dominance of abstract, monolithic forms of Modern architecture. Being easy to build, the author claims that those simple typologies are passed on globally and now dominate world architecture. One of the strengths of the International Style was that the design solutions were indifferent to location, size, and climate. Nevertheless, by not allowing architectural forms the freedom to adapt to a particular set of local circumstances, the built environment has tended further and further away from Sustainability.

Meme encapsulation edit

The book also coins the term “encapsulation” to describe an architectural meme bundled inside a social meme. The model suggests that such memetic replication models human culture, in which building and urban typologies proliferate for reasons other than their utility. The contention is that typologies that are passed on are the ones whose encapsulation is more appealing. Salingaros and Terry Mikiten propose that encapsulation helps an architectural meme to survive and reproduce. In particular, phenomena such as (possibly impractical) architectural fashions, where clients enable certain memes that do not promote mental health and feelings of well-being to reproduce, can be explained as encapsulations helping their enclosed memes to replicate.[19] The converse is also true: an adaptive architectural typology, such as found in older vernacular architectures, is often avoided because it is encapsulated within a socially negative label (e.g. not “progressive” enough). The author claims that when looked at from the point of view of meme encapsulation and selection, many architectural phenomena that were difficult to explain become easier to understand.

References edit

  1. ^ "2blowhards.com". www.2blowhards.com. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
  2. ^ Senagala, Mahesh; Masden, Kenneth (2003), "Interrupted interface on the cybernetics of digital design process", Automation in Construction, 12 (6): 655–659, doi:10.1016/S0926-5805(03)00054-2, S2CID 62115638
  3. ^ . Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2007.
  4. ^ "Architecture, Patterns, and Mathematics by Nikos Salingaros for the Nexus Network Journal vol.3 no.1 Winter 2001". www.emis.de. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
  5. ^ "Notes de lecture". Réseau Intelligence de la Complexité (in French). Retrieved 5 January 2023.
  6. ^ "Architecture-Urbanism: A Theory of Architecture: Nikos A. Salingaros (2006)". Architecture-Urbanism. 28 April 2007. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
  7. ^ Chapter 1: “The Laws of Architecture from a Physicist’s Perspective” in Spanish
  8. ^ . Archived from the original on 8 June 2007. Retrieved 12 May 2007.
  9. ^ Chapter 9: “Geometrical Fundamentalism” in Italian 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Chapter 12: “Architectural Memes in a Universe of Information” in French 28 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ [Christopher Alexander, The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1 (Berkeley, California: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002), page 471]
  12. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 August 2006. Retrieved 12 May 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)(PDF)
  13. ^ Evidence-Based Design Research for Healthcare 16 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ Biophilia in Practice: Buildings that Connect People with Nature
  15. ^ . Archived from the original on 9 June 2007. Retrieved 12 May 2007.
  16. ^ Environment and Planning B abstract
  17. ^ . Archived from the original on 12 August 2007. Retrieved 12 May 2007.
  18. ^ Bieberich, Erhard (2002). "Recurrent fractal neural networks: a strategy for the exchange of local and global information processing in the brain". Bio Systems. 66 (3): 145–164. doi:10.1016/s0303-2647(02)00040-0. ISSN 0303-2647. PMID 12413746.
  19. ^ "Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture: A Memetic Theory of Modernism". cfpm.org. Retrieved 5 January 2023.

External links edit

  • Review by Michael Blowhard
  • Review on Architecture-Urbanism
  • Salingaros’ biography on the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism College of Traditional Practitioners

theory, architecture, this, article, about, book, this, name, academic, discipline, architectural, theory, this, article, tone, style, reflect, encyclopedic, tone, used, wikipedia, wikipedia, guide, writing, better, articles, suggestions, january, 2023, learn,. This article is about a book of this name for the academic discipline see Architectural theory This article s tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia See Wikipedia s guide to writing better articles for suggestions January 2023 Learn how and when to remove this template message This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources A Theory of Architecture news newspapers books scholar JSTOR November 2012 Learn how and when to remove this template message A Theory of Architecture is a book on architecture by Nikos Salingaros published in 2006 by Umbau Verlag Solingen Germany ISBN 3 937954 07 4 Cover recommendations are by Kenneth G Masden II Duncan G Stroik Michael Blowhard 1 and Dean A Dykstra Preface by Prince Charles and Foreword by Kenneth G Masden II 2 This book is a re working of previously published articles used to teach a senior architecture studio class Four of the twelve chapters were originally written in collaboration and the co authors include Michael Mehaffy Terry Mikiten Debora Tejada and Hing Sing Yu A Theory of Architecture cover Contents 1 Originality 2 Influence 3 Primary topics 3 1 Darwinian processes 3 2 Complexity 3 3 Emergence and evidence based design 3 4 Pattern languages 3 5 The fractal mind 3 6 Geometrical fundamentalism 3 7 Meme encapsulation 4 References 5 External linksOriginality editThis book joins a recent movement to explain socio cultural phenomena by means of scientific models Writers who have spearheaded this general effort by writing popular science with serious implications include Richard Dawkins Steven Pinker and Edward Osborne Wilson Ever since Benoit Mandelbrot mentioned that traditional architecture was more intrinsically fractal than 20th century buildings people have been intrigued about the possibility of understanding architectural form in mathematical terms The fractal nature of natural structures is evident in topography and people have noticed that traditional architecture blends better with the landscape Salingaros builds upon Christopher Alexander s work including Notes on the Synthesis of Form A Pattern Language and The Nature of Order Salingaros has collaborated with Alexander for many years and was one of the editors of The Nature of Order He proposes mathematical laws of scaling argues for an essential role for fractals in architecture and describes rules for coherence among subdivisions that can help produce a more pleasing design He claims that these are in effect original aesthetic rules coming from science rather than from any traditional artistic sources Yet like Alexander Salingaros argues that this design theory corresponds more closely to what humans have evolved to appreciate The book introduces many innovative science based ways of approaching design and opposes abstract or formal methods based on imageability 3 Influence editPrince Charles wrote the Preface to the book declaring Salingaros to be an intriguing perhaps historically important new thinker The book is not about Classical architecture Like Prince Charles Salingaros is an admirer of Islamic architecture and the design theory he presents is claimed to be equally valid for Classical Islamic or any other vernacular or traditional architecture 4 Salingaros book presents a different view of architecture and design from the teaching texts used for courses in architecture schools during the past several decades He criticizes present day architectural education for continuing to rely uncritically on models that he argues lead automatically to non adaptivity and unsustainability Anthropologists K Sorvig and J Quillien commented The spirit of Jacob Bronowski permeates the work of Nikos Salingaros A Theory of Architecture takes us directly to the heart of difficult questions Salingaros explores ways to clarify and formalize the understanding of aesthetic forms in the built environment using mathematics thermodynamics Darwinism complexity theory and cognitive sciences He postulates that cross cultural universals derived from scaling rules in nature govern human appreciation of architecture 5 Architect and educator Ashraf Salama observed This book is of great value to architectural educators It helps them correct some of the misconceptions inherited in architectural education Knowledge is usually presented to students in a retrospective way where abstract and symbolic generalizations used to describe research results do not convey the feel of the behavior of the phenomena they describe the late Donald Schon emphasized this view in 1988 Rather than giving students ready made interpretations about the work of star architects this book offers a deeper insight into the understanding of the true essence of architecture 6 Individual chapters have been translated into several languages 7 8 9 10 Primary topics editDarwinian processes edit Designs evolve in two ways in the architect s mind towards a final conception and by variants of a building typology being built on the ground A Darwinian process plays a significant role in both design and architectural typologies evolution or persistence Salingaros creates a framework where these mechanisms determine how designs evolve and outline a detailed model The key concern is understanding the criteria for selection among competing variants is selection driven by adaptation to human needs or is it based upon matching to arbitrary images what type of architecture results from each Salingaros builds on the work of Richard Dawkins especially the meme model to explain how architectural typologies and design elements are transmitted in society an innovative application but one that underlies a trenchant criticism of modernist post modernist and deconstructivist architectural styles Salingaros claims they are not adaptive he argues that they transmit in society like an advertising jingle and not because of intrinsic worthwhile qualities Supporting arguments are explored in this book Complexity edit Salingaros uses a model of organized complexity to estimate the degree of life in a building a quantity that measures the organization of visual information His model is based on an analogy with the physics of thermodynamic processes and extends earlier work by Herbert A Simon and Warren Weaver The terminology arises from an analogy with biological forms Salingaros distinguished between organized and unorganized complexity going further to claim innate biologically based positive advantages of the former The book claims at least for those who like traditional buildings the correlation between Salingaros life measure and the perceived degree of life in a building is high Minimalist and deconstructivist buildings on the other hand rate very low and this is a point of controversy with most architects Christopher Alexander reproduces Salingaros results in Book 1 of The Nature of Order saying that It is telling that a simply constructed arithmetical function based on the considerations of the nature of the living structure no matter how crudely could get these kinds of results at all It shows that while the question itself may be a million times more subtle there is something tangible and ultimately measurable in the degree of life the living structure has 11 Emergence and evidence based design edit Salingaros describes architecture or at least architecture that he terms adaptive as a characteristic phenomenon of Emergence Contemporary architectural thinking has recently been moving in this direction and this book attempts to advance the field forward The author claims that Architectural theory has degenerated into a narrow point of view neglecting architectural space and meaning 12 In proposing a broader discourse some contemporary theorists are turning once again to phenomenology Christopher Alexander and Salingaros claim to move past the limited philosophical tools of phenomenology to derive evidence based results Evidence based design is already being used in the innovative design of healing environments such as hospitals and healthcare facilities 13 In parallel with intellectual advances in other fields driven by the revolution in scientific research at the end of the last millennium authors such as Salingaros Alexander and others seek to build theoretical knowledge in architecture from experimental findings These arguments are now being adopted and supplemented by a group of architects applying biophilia a term coined by Edward Osborne Wilson to describe an intrinsic genetic predisposition of human beings towards structures found in other living objects such as animals and plants 14 The key researchers in biophilic design refer to Salingaros work and to chapters of this book in particular 15 16 Pattern languages edit Salingaros develops pattern languages originally introduced by Christopher Alexander and used in architecture as well as in software design He earlier wrote an influential paper The Structure of Pattern Languages 17 which described the combinatorics of patterns necessary to use them effectively This applies both to software and to architectural and urban design In A Theory of Architecture Salingaros shows how a Pattern Language and a Form Language combine into an Adaptive Design Method The discussion while fairly abstract digs at the scientific foundations of design having more in common with Evolvable hardware than with the more philosophical discussions found in contemporary Architectural theory The fractal mind edit The book discusses how the mind perceives and conceives architectural form and postulates that fractal and other organizational mechanisms play a key role in perception It then argues that humans naturally prefer fractal organized structures based on how the mind works 18 Most modern evolutionary biologists accept the idea that evolution is dependent on the geometry of the natural environment and thus must be consistent with biological structure and morphology However the view that selection has shaped the mind to prefer certain shapes and configurations is more controversial Geometrical fundamentalism edit The phrase geometrical fundamentalism in this book was coined by Michael Mehaffy and Salingaros as a provocative way of expressing the dominance of abstract monolithic forms of Modern architecture Being easy to build the author claims that those simple typologies are passed on globally and now dominate world architecture One of the strengths of the International Style was that the design solutions were indifferent to location size and climate Nevertheless by not allowing architectural forms the freedom to adapt to a particular set of local circumstances the built environment has tended further and further away from Sustainability Meme encapsulation edit The book also coins the term encapsulation to describe an architectural meme bundled inside a social meme The model suggests that such memetic replication models human culture in which building and urban typologies proliferate for reasons other than their utility The contention is that typologies that are passed on are the ones whose encapsulation is more appealing Salingaros and Terry Mikiten propose that encapsulation helps an architectural meme to survive and reproduce In particular phenomena such as possibly impractical architectural fashions where clients enable certain memes that do not promote mental health and feelings of well being to reproduce can be explained as encapsulations helping their enclosed memes to replicate 19 The converse is also true an adaptive architectural typology such as found in older vernacular architectures is often avoided because it is encapsulated within a socially negative label e g not progressive enough The author claims that when looked at from the point of view of meme encapsulation and selection many architectural phenomena that were difficult to explain become easier to understand References edit 2blowhards com www 2blowhards com Retrieved 5 January 2023 Senagala Mahesh Masden Kenneth 2003 Interrupted interface on the cybernetics of digital design process Automation in Construction 12 6 655 659 doi 10 1016 S0926 5805 03 00054 2 S2CID 62115638 Inside Track newsletter Archived from the original on 20 July 2011 Retrieved 12 May 2007 Architecture Patterns and Mathematics by Nikos Salingaros for the Nexus Network Journal vol 3 no 1 Winter 2001 www emis de Retrieved 5 January 2023 Notes de lecture Reseau Intelligence de la Complexite in French Retrieved 5 January 2023 Architecture Urbanism A Theory of Architecture Nikos A Salingaros 2006 Architecture Urbanism 28 April 2007 Retrieved 5 January 2023 Chapter 1 The Laws of Architecture from a Physicist s Perspective in Spanish Chapter 3 Hierarchical Cooperation in Architecture the Mathematical Necessity for Ornament in French Archived from the original on 8 June 2007 Retrieved 12 May 2007 Chapter 9 Geometrical Fundamentalism in Italian Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Chapter 12 Architectural Memes in a Universe of Information in French Archived 28 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine Christopher Alexander The Phenomenon of Life The Nature of Order Book 1 Berkeley California Center for Environmental Structure 2002 page 471 Archived copy PDF Archived from the original PDF on 23 August 2006 Retrieved 12 May 2007 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link PDF Evidence Based Design Research for Healthcare Archived 16 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Biophilia in Practice Buildings that Connect People with Nature WBDG Psychosocial Value of Space Archived from the original on 9 June 2007 Retrieved 12 May 2007 Environment and Planning B abstract The Structure of Pattern Languages Archived from the original on 12 August 2007 Retrieved 12 May 2007 Bieberich Erhard 2002 Recurrent fractal neural networks a strategy for the exchange of local and global information processing in the brain Bio Systems 66 3 145 164 doi 10 1016 s0303 2647 02 00040 0 ISSN 0303 2647 PMID 12413746 Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture A Memetic Theory of Modernism cfpm org Retrieved 5 January 2023 External links editReview by Michael Blowhard Review on Architecture Urbanism Salingaros biography on the International Network for Traditional Building Architecture amp Urbanism College of Traditional Practitioners Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title A Theory of Architecture amp oldid 1167460218, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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