The Making of Things

Modeling Processes and Effects in Architecture

Frank Jacobus, Angela Carpenter, Rachel Smith Loerts, Justin M. Tucker, Randal Dickinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000395129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

The Making of Things is about effect and intention in the schematic architectural model, a deep dive into the nature of architectonic form as the underlying syntax for all architectural work. By focusing on primitive geometries alongside fundamental principles of architectural thinking and making, this book enhances the reader's capacity to intellectually and physically craft models that effectively communicate intention.

With over 650 diagrams, this book acts as an expansive visual glossary that reveals the underlying structure of architectonics and acts as an encyclopedia of formal possibilities. Supporting essays in the book explore the nature of perception, abstraction, and metaphor to provide a theoretical basis of formal effects in architecture. This structure enables readers to make clear and direct connections between the things you construct and the reasons you construct them. This book is a bridge from the what to the why of form-making. It is a pedagogical notebook, a design primer that prompts discourse about the nature of objects.

This is a must-have desk reference for beginning architecture and interior design students to stimulate their creative approaches and gain foundational knowledge of the underlying effects of formal typologies and how they manifest themselves in built forms around the world.

1 THE NATURE OF OBJECTS

Form is a language and the architectonic object is a system of communication.¹ Understanding the vocabulary of architectonic forms will help you master the making of things. This chapter explains the elements, attributes, and effects that form the unique identity of any architectural object. We begin by providing a basic definition of architectonics, a term whose complexity and history can tend to obscure its basic operative meaning. Next, we describe the elements that aggregate to form architectonic objects and how these objects become classified into distinct types dependent on their ordering and arrangement. These classifications form the basis for the larger sections in The Making of Things and become the source of the taxonomic organization around which the book is structured. Next, we describe the ways that individual elements can be organized into perceptible orders and describe basic operations that occur within this ordering. Finally, we discuss the attributes that constitute all architectonic form.

ARCHITECTONICS

Throughout your career you will be a part of discussions involving the term architectonics and will hear the term tectonic as a substitute. Our use of the term throughout this text constitutes the formal syntaxes that are specific to architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture as disciplines. The term tectonic is often substituted for architectonic or used as a more general term identifying similar elemental properties and orders that are not exclusive to the discipline of architecture.

You will also hear the term a-tectonic as a counterpoint to the characteristics that establish the tectonic. This relationship has been written about extensively. Heinrich Wolfflin, for instance, referred to the relationship between the tectonic and the a-tectonic as that of the revealed law and the concealed law respectively. For the purposes of this study, tectonic objects obey a strict arrangement of elements whose order is readily discernible and repeatable. The a-tectonic, on the other hand, seems free of any overt organizing principle. Finally, our use of the terms architectonic in this book includes both the tectonic and a-tectonic.²

As mentioned above, architectonics refers to the syntax of architectural form. It is the structural framework on which other forms of meaning-making in architecture are constructed and establishes the underlying basis for formal aesthetics.³ The architectonic object is an assembly, an aggregation of individual elements which communicate through their ordered relationships.

These ordered relationships exist regardless of the time and place that individual buildings were built and regardless of the cultures who built them. They are a universal characteristic of built form and the specifics of their sizing and arrangement are the basis for the instantiation of formal quality.⁴ The interpretation of architectonic form need not privilege cultural phenomenon as an a priori necessity for meaning making. Instead, the basic formulation of tectonic arrangements by themselves, and exclusive of other meanings they may ultimately carry, deliver specific emotive effects.

Kant referred to architectonics as the art of systems.⁵ Every object is a systemic whole which contains elements, attributes, and ordering mechanisms; the unique combinations of which give them their specific identity and endow them with emotive effects. In this way, architectonics constitutes the beginning organization of feeling within architectural objects.

The nature of architectonics, as we explore it in this book, is absent programmatic (or functional) considerations. While the introduction of program certainly influences the choices and ordering of most tectonic objects, we primarily ignore it in this book in order to clarify the effects one can achieve in varying architectonic arrangements in the abstract. Presenting them together would only serve to confuse how architectonics operates as a language aside from the inclusion of cultural phenomena.

The complex content of architecture (program, materiality, structure, history, symbol etc.) can both beautifully obscure or enhance its underlying organization. But our innate response to form is born from the panoply of elements arranged in a specific order. Our constructive impulse relies on this elemental order as a framework upon which we can build the layered complexity which is inherent in any piece of architecture. As architects and designers, it is our responsibility to understand the nature of this elemental order, to be expert in its ingredients, to know how each is distributed and to what effect.

Space is only made possible through the aggregation of smaller elements into an ordered geometric whole. Our focus on object qualities within this book pays close attention to families of geometric elements and how they become integrated to create specific types of spaces and effects. The specific part to part relationship determines the overall character of an object and the feeling of the spaces it creates.

Design elements such as line, symmetry, balance, proportion, scale, and rhythm are used in conjunction with ordering principles to create an object’s persona. As architectural designers our ideas are translated into physical reality using these elements; our mastery depends on understanding their effects. This chapter acts as a relatively quick overview of architectonic elements, attributes, and orders; the genetic underpinning of architectonic objects whose unique combination imbues each object with unique emotive qualities.

ELEMENTS

Architectonic objects are made of elements that are typically referred to as Planes, Frames, and Solids. These specific terms may differ slightly depending on the culture of the setting where their characteristics are being taught. Planes might be referred to as sheets, frames as sticks, solids as masses or volumes, etc. Even so, the general nature of these architectonic elements remains the same. (Figure 1.1)

Figure 1.1: Basic Architectonic Elements (Plane, Frame, Solid)

The classification of individual elements into Plane, Frame, and Solid categories can become a tenuous activity. For instance, a Plane whose narrow dimension becomes wider, begins to appear as a Solid. A Plane whose wider dimension becomes narrower may begin to be read as a Frame. Likewise, a Frame whose long dimension becomes shorter may begin to appear as a Solid. The best way to consider these architectonic elements is that they are all born of the same underlying information and exist in a spectrum which makes them classifiable, with varying degrees of certainty, as Plane, Frame, or Solid. We have to acknowledge grey areas where one cannot discern where a particular element belongs, or where its classification changes because of the size and nature of the elements that surround it. (Figure 1.2)

Figure 1.2: Morphology of Plane into Frame and Frame into Solid

It is also the case that one element may look like a Solid when viewed from a particular vantage point but clearly be Planar when viewed from a different point in space. The exact classification of these elements at a particular time and in a particular space is less important than the effects that they contribute to the reading of an architectonic object. If an element reads as a Solid from a certain perspective, then it is acting as a Solid, meaning we are perceiving or reading it as such and therefore it is giving off that effect. The state of our perception is much more important than the mathematical quantification of the element in question. In fact, architects play the game of obscuring the nature of elements with often beautiful consequences.

The nature of how we identify individual elements and intuitively categorize them is based in part on their size and extents in relation to our bodies. A large enough element that appears Solid, might in fact be the proportions of a Frame were we able to perceive it from a greater distance. Because this book is about the intellectual and physical crafting of the schematic architectural model, we will assume that the definition or categorization of elements is taking into account that we can hold these in our hands, scale them in our minds, and understand them in the round.

Elements that are perceived as Solid are typically volumetrically similar in all directions. If one dimension of a Solid becomes two or three times longer or shorter than any other dimension, then the element typical reads as Frame or Plane. It is important to note that the description of an element as Solid does not imply that it is physically solid, just that is perceptually so. The internal composition of Planes, Frames, and Solids, and of architectural objects in general is not at issue here, it is the perception of those elements that truly matters. (Figure 1.3)

Figure 1.3: Morphology of Solid into Plane and Plane into Frame

When an element is perceived as a Frame it is typically a similar dimension in two directions but at least three or four times longer in one of its directions. The closer the long dimension is in length to the shorter dimensions, the more the frame element looks squat and compressed. The greater the length in the longest direction, and more dissimilar it is from the two shorter dimensions, a feeling of tenuousness and brittleness is the result.

An element that presents as Plane typically has one shortened dimension and two others that are elongated but not necessarily similar. As the shortened dimension lengthens, and to the extent that it lengthens, to that same extent will the element begin to be perceived as solid. If one of the lengthened directions shortens and not the other, then the planar element begins to appear as a frame. (Figure 1.4)

Figure 1.4: The Effects of Proportional Changes on Simple Geometric Figures

CLASSIFICATION

All architectonic objects are composed of an ordered aggregation of the elements above. By combining these elements into ordered arrangements, we make objects that have a unique identity that can also be classified into the categori...