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The thesis asks whether the constrains imposed by complex functional programs and associated design guidance limit the ability to deploy design languages with entail their own precise compositional requirements. The Islip Federal Courthouse designed by Richard Meier under the General Services Administrations Design Excellence Program is chosen as a...
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This article investigates whether and under what conditions Public Accounts Committees (PACs) are able to scrutinize government accounts. In doing so, we analyze survey data from 51 Commonwealth countries collected by the World Bank Institute in 2002. We find that the relationship between the formal powers of the PACs and their successful performan...
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... Meier's style involves the interaction spatial motifs, spatial themes, and formal syntax i.e. a formal design language. Meier's themes include: modulation and proportionality, layering, reversal and twin phenomena, promenade architecturale (Deamer, 2001;Meier, 2003;2006;Dahabreh, 2013). Elements of Meier's syntax include 'stairwells and ramps', 'squared white enamel panels', 'nautical railings', 'expansive glazing with aluminum mullions', 'glass blocks', and brise-soleil among others, giving his buildings a clean abstract 'machine-like' aesthetic (Rykwert, 1991;Hutt, 1999). ...
... Elements of Meier's syntax include 'stairwells and ramps', 'squared white enamel panels', 'nautical railings', 'expansive glazing with aluminum mullions', 'glass blocks', and brise-soleil among others, giving his buildings a clean abstract 'machine-like' aesthetic (Rykwert, 1991;Hutt, 1999). Through the syntactic logic of his form, Meier aims to create distinctive architectural atmosphere, while comprehending the totality of any architectural work through the crafty articulation of the pragmatic dimensions of buildings (Dahabreh, 2006). The Rachofsky house is selected because as Meier commented about the design of the house "'The Rachofsky House is an ideal -an investigation into all of the possibilities of house as a building type without many of the usual compromises. ...
... Furthermore, as architectural design can be interpreted both as a verb denoting an activity or process and as a noun denoting a product or artifact (Dahabreh, 2006), the aesthetics of architecture can be examined from two distinct perspectives: the philosophical dimension of intellectual form and the psychological dimension of sensory or corporeal form (Davis, 1990;Davis, 2002;Stecker, 2010). The psychological dimension aligns with the 'functionalist approach' to aesthetics, which assesses art based on its capacity to offer a pleasurable aesthetic experience, without necessarily being intentionally regarded as art. ...
... Nevertheless, they problematize that this might only be possible because the examples are on a small scale, and a good deal of data on the use of space is readily available. Contemporary studies have advanced in this area, with experiments proving that the same syntactic configuration analysis can then be applied to other types of buildings (Dahabreh, 2006;Grasl et al., n.d.;Park & Economou, 2019;Peponis et al., 2003). The main difference is processing the data on the use of space, which appears in complex buildings as the spatialization of the architectural program. ...
... Justified graph analysis is frequently implemented in space syntax studies about complex buildings, configurational analysis, and genotype characterization. Some methodological reference examples are a thesis about the design formulation of the Islip Courthouse by Richard Meier (Dahabreh, 2006), an article that discusses Malay vernacular architecture (Asif et al., 2018), another article examining the transformation process of Lisbon's housing typologies (Eloy, 2016), and an article reading the spatial logic of Mamluk Madrassas (Malhis, 2017). Some other studies are also worthy of mention as methodological and theorical references such as an article discussing the representation of geometric properties of connections between spaces (Ham & Lee, 2018), another one about neo-rural houses of the Msilien Guebla in Algeria (Boutabba et al., 2020) and an extensive article regarding Bill Hillier's legacy, even including an empirical application of basic concepts (Yamu et al., 2021). ...
Buildings are objects of design, which means that they express human intent. The way that space is structured into architecture impregnates it with social and cultural information. So, not only is a heritage building an open door to past societies' way of thinking, but a public heritage building will speak volumes about the ideologies of the government they served. The Old Oporto Jail and Appeal Court Palace was purpose-built in the second half of the 18th century as a representative of the Portuguese monarch and has embedded within its spatiality values related to the practices of law and imprisonment at its time. This paper proposes a quantitative analysis using Space Syntax Theory to help extract some of these values to derive spatial meaning. A graph-based configurational analysis is performed in two steps. The first with the aid of semi-automated computer processing, applying a grasshopper routine. The second is through a mathematical examination based on extracted syntactic measurements, which, according to Space Syntax Theory, act as bases of interpretation for the social logic of space. The results proved to be aligned with previous historical analyses of the building and complemented them with expressive spatial data.
... Yapı gruplarını ve onların kendine özgü karakterini oluşturan farklı bölümlerin birbirlerine bağlanmaları veya karşıtlıklarının yarattığı estetik duygular ve uyuma özellikle dikkat edilmelidir. konumlanan Bloch Binalarının tümü çok yüzeyli (polihedral) formdadır (Stephens, 2007:92-101 Müzenin beyaz rengi ve şeffaf yüzeyleri, güneyindeki meydanın (Plaça dels Angels) koyu renkli granit zemin kaplaması ve çevresindeki binaların koyu rengiyle zıt bir birliktelik oluşturmaktadır (Dahabreh, 2006). Bu çerçevelerden bakıldığında MACBA aykırı yaklaşım yöntemi ile tasarlanmış ve tarihi çevreye farklılaşarak eklemlenmiştir. ...
Sosyal, ekonomik ve kültürel değişimler, değişen ihtiyaçlar, nüfus artışı gibi etkenler tarihi çevrede yeni yapıların yapılmasını zorunlu kılmış, korumacılık olgusunun ortaya çıkışından bu yana tartışılan bir konu olmuştur. Özellikle mevcut dokuyla uygunsuz yeni yapı tasarımı tarihi çevreyi fazlaca tahrip etmiş, mevcut değerler yok olma tehlikesiyle karşı karşıya kalmıştır. Bu nedenle tarihi çevrede yeni yapı konusunda uluslararası tüzükler, bildirgeler, ilkeler standartlar yayınlanmıştır. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye, ABD ve Avrupa’dan toplam beş adet tarihi çevrede yapılan yeni müze yapısı; tarihi çevrede yeni yapı tasarım yöntemi belirlenerek uluslararası tüzük, bildirge, ilke ve standartlar doğrultusunda belirlenen kriterlere göre değerlendirilmiştir. Bahse konu standartlarda tarihi çevrede yeni yapı ilkeleri araştırılmış ve ilgili maddeler üzerinden belirlenen kriterlerin değerlendirilmesiyle farklı bölgelerden seçilen tarihi çevrelerde bulunan müzelerin bu kriterlere uygunluğunun tespiti amaçlanmıştır. İncelenen müze yapılarında tarihi çevrede yeni yapı tasarım yaklaşımı olarak geleneksele öykünme, saygılı yaklaşım ve aykırı yaklaşım yöntemlerinin kullanıldığı belirlenmiştir. Her üç yaklaşımla da yeni tasarımların kesin ve açık bir şekilde ifade edilebildiği ve tarihi çevrenin sürdürülebilirliğinin başarı ile sağlandığı gözlenmiştir. Ayrıca, koruma ilkelerinin yol göstericiliğinde tarihi çevrenin değerini destekleyen özgün tasarımların ortaya çıktığı ve farklı bölgelerden seçilen yapıların değerlendirilmesi ile tarihi koruma açısından evrensel bir ortak dilin var olduğu da ortaya konulmuştur.
... [8] Dahabreh tried to elucidate that Langer's notion of 'logical form' implied to some formative ideas transcend the physical form as he contended," to have knowledge about an object, one has to understand its form, but the understanding of 'form' should be stretched beyond the common connotation of geometric or physical 'shape'." [9] Accordingly, Langer's notion of 'logical form' brought forward the idea that congruency of formal configuration is contingent upon underlying and somehow concealed logical structure. This means that, it pinpoints conceptual structure whereby formal elements even if they seem ostensibly incoherence had been put together in logically congruent manner. ...
In facing with an architectural work, to wit viewing particular formal configuration, observer usually tries to understand underlying logical structure transcending the material condition which can be counted as 'architectural concept'. This notion corresponds to an evolutionary process through which 'formative idea' (subjective realm) developed to 'preliminary formal configuration' (objective realm). This evolutionary process is called 'process of conceptualization'. Any assessment that dismisses this engagement of the architectural concepts with a kind of evolutionary process, will goes wrong in presenting a proper description of the notion. One of the major confusions in this regard are some improper assessments that bound the architectural concepts to objective realm and parallel them with preliminary formal configuration. Consequently, there is a flaw in existing literature in terms of distinguishing between the notion of 'architectural concepts' and the notion of 'preliminary formal configuration'. Thus, this qualitative documentary research based on literature survey will concern itself to review some of the most significant and didactic reflections which help to clarify the differentiation between the notion of 'architectural concepts' and the notion of 'preliminary formal configuration'. The theoretical focus of this documentary descriptive analytic study is to demystify the subtle distinction between these two notions and therefore other aspects of the notion of architectural concepts will not be addressed in this paper. Considering the importance of the notion of architectural concept in theoretical discourse of architecture in terms of both design and analysis, conducting this kind of study will contribute to advancement of theoretical knowledge of design and criticism in architecture.
... En el caso del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (Macba) el edificio se caracteriza por la yuxtaposición de formas, ubicadas sobre una retícula generada por las características del lugar (Figura 7). El uso de círculos, líneas diagonales, líneas curvas y la retícula está regulado por el uso de la geometría y los sistemas de proporción (Dahabreh, 2006). La retícula ortogonal se impone ante las demás formas que en cierto modo quedan subyugadas por la misma. ...
... Y se crean capas distintas. Estas capas visuales expresan la zonificación funcional, las divisiones de las distintas salas de exposición y los espacios de circulación y recorridos (Dahabreh, 2006). ...
El collage es una técnica común en el arte moderno y contemporáneo, incluso en la creación de cine. El collage combina motivos pictóricos y fragmentos de origines desconectados dentro de una entidad sintética que otorga nuevos roles a esas partes. En el diseño arquitectónico esta técnica genera nuevas narrativas, diálogos, y yuxtaposiciones que ayudan a la capacidad de imaginar el espacio. El proceso de creación de collages utilizado por el arquitecto Richard Meier es de gran importancia en la concepción general y diseño arquitectónico de todos sus proyectos. Cada collage cuenta una historia mediante unos principios organizativos, un manejo del espacio basado en figuras geométricas, retículas, proporciones que deben ser precisamente estudiadas y calculadas. La maravillosa estética, forma y organización espacial de los proyectos de Meier radican en la abstracción de una idea en una serie de collages. El recorrido por el análisis de los collages de Richard Meier, nos permite concluir que, en el proceso de creación de Meier, el collage, existe como gesto inicial arquitectónico; no existe improvisación en las ideas que lo generan y no es solo un elemento primario de comunicación sino de creación.
... En el caso del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (Macba) el edificio se caracteriza por la yuxtaposición de formas, ubicadas sobre una retícula generada por las características del lugar (Figura 7). El uso de círculos, líneas diagonales, líneas curvas y la retícula está regulado por el uso de la geometría y los sistemas de proporción (Dahabreh, 2006). La retícula ortogonal se impone ante las demás formas que en cierto modo quedan subyugadas por la misma. ...
... Y se crean capas distintas. Estas capas visuales expresan la zonificación funcional, las divisiones de las distintas salas de exposición y los espacios de circulación y recorridos (Dahabreh, 2006). ...
El collage es una técnica común en el arte moderno y contemporáneo, incluso en la creación de cine. El collage combina motivos pictóricos y fragmentos de origines desconectados dentro de una entidad sintética que otorga nuevos roles a esas partes. En el diseño arquitectónico esta técnica genera nuevas narrativas, diálogos, y yuxtaposiciones que ayudan a la capacidad de imaginar el espacio. El proceso de creación de collages utilizado por el arquitecto Richard Meier es de gran importancia en la concepción general y diseño arquitectónico de todos sus proyectos. Cada collage cuenta una historia mediante unos principios organizativos, un manejo del espacio basado en figuras geométricas, retículas, proporciones que deben ser precisamente estudiadas y calculadas. La maravillosa estética, forma y organización espacial de los proyectos de Meier radican en la abstracción de una idea en una serie de collages. El recorrido por el análisis de los collages de Richard Meier, nos permite concluir que, en el proceso de creación de Meier, el collage, existe como gesto inicial arquitectónico; no existe improvisación en las ideas que lo generan y no es solo un elemento primario de comunicación sino de creación.
... To examine the space area distribution in courthouses, we reviewed the area program of representative low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise federal courthouses in GSA [34]. Figure 9 compares the space area distribution in these courthouses. It shows courtrooms occupying 14-19% of court USF; judges' chambers, 13-18%; detention areas, 5-6%; and offices, 63-67% (including 13-23% for clerk, 13- These variations demonstrate how multiple blocks of courtroom functional sets, comprised of two courtrooms and associated spaces, can be arranged in linear or concentric pattern of recursion [45] and stacked on different floors (and supplemented by proportional change in the area of support level(s) which houses clerk's office, jury assembly, security, etc.) to develop smaller or larger courthouses. ...
... 12, x 12 of 27 non-jury courtroom floors in the high-rise courthouse; and off-the-perimeter location of courtrooms in all courthouses.These variations demonstrate how multiple blocks of courtroom functional sets, comprised of two courtrooms and associated spaces, can be arranged in linear or concentric pattern of recursion[45] and stacked on different floors (and supplemented by proportional change in the area of support level(s) which houses clerk's office, jury assembly, security, etc.) to develop smaller or larger courthouses. ...
Buildings currently consume 36% of the world’s energy and contribute nearly 40% of CO2 emissions. Many countries desire to generate virtual models of their nation’s buildings in order to coordinate research activities and inform market opportunities for a more sustainable built environment. The United States Department of Energy uses a suite of Commercial Prototype Building Models, which currently includes 16 building types and covers 80% of US commercial floorspace. Efforts are underway to expand this suite by developing prototype models for additional building types. In this paper, we outline a systematic approach to defining the building, collecting relevant information and creating a flexible model while doing so in the pragmatic context of a courthouse building. Informed by building design guides, databases, documented projects and inputs from courthouse design experts, we define a small, 69,324 ft2 (6440 m2), four-courtroom, low-rise courthouse as the prototype to represent an average-size courthouse in the US. We present building characteristics relevant for energy model development and provide the rationale for their selection. These details combined with climate- and construction-vintage-specific requirements for the building envelope and systems from building standards will be used for developing the courthouse model for the Commercial Prototype Building Models suite. The comprehensive information presented will also guide model modification to capture the dynamics of smaller or larger courthouses more accurately for building or system size-specific research.
... For Tzonis (1992) to the core of any intelligent design system should describe significant aspects of how artifacts work, how they are made, what they do in respect to what is expected, how they fit into the surrounding environment, and how all these aspects relate to each other. Nevertheless, describing architectural works is not an easy task; buildings can be described according to the context in which they operate, according to their features and properties as designed artifacts, and/or according to the function they have to perform (Dahabreh, 2006). Hillier, Hanson & Peponis (1984) defined buildings as cultural artifacts that can be regarded as material constructions, spatial arrangements, and objects in a particular style. ...
... As projected buildings do not exist in reality, building programs are the means through which building sponsors or owners describe and/or prescribe their future buildings to designers, and communicate them to users and other stake holders in the projected building (Dahabreh, 2006). According to (Capille & Psarra, 2013) program is both transpatial and spatial manifestation: "the transpatial aspect defines purposes, activities and roles for different groups of people. ...
... In that sense, architecture can be regarded as an intellectual activity consisting of an underlying conceptual systems (Unwin, 2008) that structure these elements and organize the material construction, generate the formal properties of the building, and accordingly subdivide the space of the building into a spatial pattern. This distinction between the abstract and the material was made 500 years ago by Alberti in the 15th century in his Ten Books on Architecture; Alberti distinguished between geometry and material construction of the building where the function of geometry, lineaments in Alberti's terms, is to "prescribe, and appropriate place, exact numbers, a proper scale, and a graceful order for whole buildings and each of the constituent parts" (cited in Dahabreh, 2006). ...
... For a long time, many studies have been conducted to generate a phylogenetic tree or a classification of architectural plans, especially in the context of architectural history and theories (Alexander 1979;Caniggia and Maffei 2001;Franck and Schneekloth 1994;Madge 2007;Rapoport 1969). As biological terms are commonly used to describe concepts and elements of hierarchical structures in many fields of study, such as inheritance, class, family, child node, and parent node in computer science, the previous studies on phylogenetic trees and classifications of architectural plans also commonly borrow terms from biology, such as genotype (Bafna 2001;Dahabreh 2006;Gero and Ding 1997), ancestor, decedent, child, and parent. ...
... Such manual analysis processes are time-consuming and may produce biased or inconsistent results. To overcome these limitations, several efforts have been undertaken for developing a quantitative floor plan analysis (Manum 2005;Markus 1993) and classification method (Bafna 2001;Bandyopadhyay and Merchant 2006;Bustard 1999;Dahabreh 2006;Guney and Wineman 2008;Hanson 2003;Hillier and Hanson 1984;Lee 2004;Seo 2005). Still, the generation of a phylogenetic tree of architectural plan types in these efforts also depended primarily on the qualitative judgment of researchers and was also time-consuming. ...
A method has been developed for automatically generating a phylogenetic tree of architectural plans based on graph theory, according to the properties of the plans and the timing of their appearance. A phylogenetic tree of architectural plans is a branching diagram that shows transitions of the architectural plans by period. In previous studies, researchers analyzed structural similarities and differences between architectural plans by comparing one floor plan to another. Such manual classification processes sometimes result in inconsistent classifications and are inefficient, especially when a large number of plans are compared and analyzed. In this paper, a new algorithmic approach is proposed, termed the time-based joining (TBJ) method, for quantitatively evaluating structural similarities between architectural plans and creating a phylogenetic tree of the analyzed architectural plans. The validity and consistency of the TBJ method's results were tested by generating a phylogenetic tree of 422 collective housing unit plans in Seoul, South Korea, constructed from 1970 to 2010.
... Meier's architectural practice has a clear set of spatial themes and organizational principles (Deamer, 2001; Meier, 2003; Dahabreh; 2006; Dahabreh; 2013). Through the syntactic logic of form, Meier aimed to create distinctive architectural atmosphere, at the same time he understands architecture as a totality because he didn't ignore the pragmatic dimension of buildings (Dahabreh, 2006). The museum is selected because it's one of Meier's masterful manipulations of form and space; it's a work of modern art in itself. ...
... Herein, the systematic investigation of the perceptible form is classified as architectural morphology that uncovers the underlying organizing principles (Dahabreh, 2006). Through relational and constructive morphology the organizational principles that govern the overall form of the museum are synchronically and diachronically investigated in 2-D drawings and 3-D axonometric diagrams. ...
... In view of the fact that architectural design can be understood as a verb to indicate activity or process or as a noun to indicate product or artifact (Dahabreh, 2006), architecture can be aesthetically approached according to the philosophical dimension of the intellectual form or the psychological dimension of the sensible or corporal form (Davis, 1990; Davis, 2002; Stecker,2010). The psychological dimension follows the 'functionalist approach' of aesthetics which aims to evaluate art according to its ability to provide pleasurable aesthetic experience without being intentionally approached as art. ...
This paper investigates the aesthetics of architectural form by addressing 'when' this form becomes aesthetically distinctive. The theoretical foundation of this paper is based on Nelson Goodman's exemplification, density and repleteness as necessary symptoms for any form to function as a work of art. The aim is to introduce this philosophical view to architecture in order to understand how the aesthetics of architectural forms can be inferred from these three symptoms. To pursue this aim, this paper looks at Richard Meier's Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art where besides its architectural function, the design of the museum with its formal language is considered a work of art in itself. Through morphological analysis and analytical drawings the three symptoms of aesthetics are investigated within the form of the building and identified. The paper concluded that architectural work is aesthetically pleasing when formal design language is syntactically dense, its content is semantically dense, and the design process is replete. The findings of this research encourage a rational understanding of the aesthetic judgment in architecture and provide a major asset in architectural pedagogy. Therefore, when students and instructors go through it, students' right to develop their own aesthetics is preserved.
