Design strategies
The act of making an architectural decision can perhaps be stripped
of its mystique, while some far more viable set of operations is seen
to add up to something - not a style, not even a discipline, but some
indefinable aggregate of operations which have been intelligent and
appropriate and have given a situation its fourth dimension.Howell describes exactly such a process in his own words:
While thinking about structural economy, the relationship of internal
partitioning to downstanding beams, the relationship of cladding to the
structure, and so on, you are taking decisions which affect the relationship
of the anatomy of the building to its site and to its neighbours.Bill Howell (1970) described how his practice
of Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis developed a philosophy of
building they called 'vertebrate architecture' in which 'the interior
volume is defined and articulated by actual, visible structure'.Heuristic strategies
An examination of protocols obtained from such closely observed
design sessions reveals that most designers adopt strategies which
are heuristic in nature.The calculations give a depth
of timber which will not deflect more than 0.003 of the span and
will not cause the bending and sheer stresses to exceed the permitted
levels.The student architects
designing a building for a county administrative authority used
a variety of generators relating to the radical functions, user constraints
and external constraints of the site.Mario
Bellini the designer of the Olivetti golf-ball portable typewriter,
emphasises the difference between designing static artefacts such
as furniture, and mechanical or electrical goods in this respect
(Bellini 1977).The public is well used to Armani's own restricted
palette of plain-coloured fabrics in soft textures and colours largely
restricted to fawns, beiges and browns.Richard MacCormac has convincingly
argued that this quality of design would have been extremely
unlikely to emerge if the designers had changed between the
outline and detailed design stages as is now common in some
methods of building procurement.The life of the primary generator
So far we have seen how both empirical research and the anecdotal
evidence gathered from practising designers suggest that the early
phases of design are often characterised by what we might call analysis through synthesis.If we are to gain any real
insight into the complexities of the design process then we must
study not only what theoreticians say but also what practitioners do.
The early years of the design methodology movement were
characterised by a tendency to look for common features in the
design process or at least to classify design strategies.Thus the architect/
engineer Santiago Calatrava with his guiding principles of dynamic
equilibrium is likely to use practical constraints about the structure
of his building.In the programme
he wrote that 'the formal artificiality of the work is part of its essential
mechanism, for it demonstrates reality without slavishly representing
it. It is an argument as opposed to a report - an epigram
rather than a memo'.Eventually the upper
floor began to float free of the structure supporting it. However,
it was not until the design team were considering such detailed
problems as the resolution of balcony and staircase handrails that the team finally understood the idea and made explicit the notion
of the congregational space being a 'vessel' (Fig.By way of illustrating
this we might consider how Arthur Erikson, who has a very different
set of guiding principles about structure, describes his design
process for his Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver:
As with all my buildings, the structure was not even considered until the
main premises of the design, the shape of the spaces and the form
of the building, had been determined .In the first, theoretical method, calculations are
performed using the known compressive and bending stress capabilities
and elasticity of the timber.The rule of thumb is also much more
practical in that timber does not come in an infinite range of
depths but is commonly available in multiples of 25 mm.
This rule of thumb provides a good model of the heuristic strategy
so commonly employed by designers.They had done a literature review of all the
research they could find on office space and had arrived at a
sketch design of a 'typical bay' showing the structural and
service systems for providing shelter, power, comfort and light
while maintaining a relatively uninterrupted floor space to give
flexibility of layout.The third group,
when questioned, saw no conflict between these and felt that the
physical expression of the organisation achieved in their building
would not only be easy for the taxpayer to relate to but would also
lend a sense of identity and belonging to the employees, thus
creating a good social working environment.In the experimental studies mentioned earlier
both Eastman's and Agabani's results show the combined use of
evolutionary and revolutionary modifications of early solutions.The view
expressed by Michael Wilford describing his work with James Stirling,
is reflected by many architects and designers:
We have found over the years that the ideal brief is probably one or
two pages even for the most complex project.The calculations are based on established theories of
structural mechanics and would be performed by structural engineers
and required for building regulation approval.Taken together with the banks of trees, south-facing slope and
considerations of screening noise from the busy roads this enabled
our second group to develop proposals for the siting and massing
of their building.With all the
technical and financial power of the Royal Opera behind him,
Miller chose this simple and consistent message which effectively
conveyed his interpretation of 'demonstrates reality without slavishly
representing it'.He transferred the idea of using a
spherical wheel from some previous experience and adapted the
shape of the body of the barrow to make it more suitable for mixing
cement and for tipping.Murray worked out the gains in time from the lighter load and
calculated the maximum time he could allow for refuelling whilst still
gaining an advantage.Sources of primary generators
In the examples considered so far those constraints have been mainly
radical in function, that is to say, they are considerations of the
primary purpose of the object being designed.In this case, orientation of major spaces
towards the protected and sunny side of the site followed by a
consideration of vehicular access was quite fundamental in organising
the overall form.(Fig. 11.2) The suburban
parkland site was located between two major radial roads
connected by a footpath.This group were
anxious to avoid what they saw as the usual failings of such buildings,
that is, presenting large inscrutable facades with unclearly
structured interiors in which it is easy to get lost.The primary generator
We have seen how the range of possibilities can be restricted by
initially focusing attention on a limited selection of constraints and
moving quickly towards some ideas about the solution.(Lawson 1994)
For the experienced designer, then, the guiding principles when set
against the local external constraints may often create the material
for the collection of issues which primarily generate the form of the
solution.The industrial designer James Dyson is famous for a number of
innovative domestic products and is perhaps most well known for
his revolutionary 'Ballbarrow'.The architectural
student groups designing a county administrative building focused
their attention on providing satisfactory working conditions and internal
communications.The design of the Severins Bridge across the Rhine in Cologne, which was illustrated in Chapter 6, is a very
good example of a central design idea emerging from external
constraints.One area particularly
popular during the modern movement was that of structure, with the
notion of 'structural honesty' forming an important part of many architects'
guiding principles.Perhaps clients feel that they must have a clear definition
of the problem before they commission a designer, but this is
not so. In a study of architects and their clients, most of the architects
argued that they preferred to be involved with the project
from the very beginning (Lawson and Pilling 1996).(Lawson 1994)
Protocol studies
To find out how the design process actually begins to develop the
brief and formulate a solution we need to turn to some of the
many studies on design process protocols.In one of
the earliest of these studies, subjects were asked to design a new
bathroom, and they invariably began drawing solutions almost
immediately (Eastman 1970).One experimental technique used to
externalise and reveal design thinking is to use groups of subjects
and record their conversations.A notable contribution to the field has been
made by a conference at which all the contributors had analysed
the same two video-recorded design protocols.Both were industrial
design problems, in one case tackled by an individual who was
asked to think aloud and in the other case was worked on by
a group (Cross, Christiaans et al. 1996).Finally, researchers concentrated on the inadequacies
of the protocols themselves to properly represent real
design activity (Lloyd, Lawson et al. 1995).To illustrate this principle let us look at two methods of sizing
timber floor joists.However, not only
does the method go straight to the solution, but it is educational in
the sense of clearly identifying the critical relationship between
depth and span of the joist.Such rules as those relating depth and span clearly cover the critical
aspect of the problem of sizing a joist.Here, then, rather than working on
protocols we can analyse the presentations made by the design
students at an early interim criticism session with their tutors.Each section and department were to be clearly articulated
using a hierarchy of open spaces linked by well-defined routes to a
central entrance court.The first and last group
concentrated on the way the building should be organised by
focusing on internal constraints while the second group looked at
the external constraints imposed by the site.The first group gave
priority to the efficient control of the working conditions and thus
recognised mainly radical constraints.We have seen in the last chapter that designers develop their
own sets of guiding principles and these often set the direction for
the primary generator in any one design project.His production of Cosi fan tutte was set in
modern times and relied upon costumes exclusively designed by
Giorgio Armani.It was surely the determination with which he
resisted any temptation to depart from this one simple single idea
which made this production so memorable visually.The architect Ian Ritchie explains the importance
of this to the whole process:
Unless there is enough power and energy in this generative concept,
you will actually not produce a very good result, because there is this
three years or so of hard work to go through and the only sustenance,
apart from the bonhomie of the people involved, is the quality of this
idea, that is the food.The architect Richard MacCormac
describes this search:
This is not a sensible way of earning a living, it's completely insane,
there has to be this big thing that you're confident you're going to find,
you don't know what it is you're looking for and you hang on.
(Lawson 1994b)
The central idea may not always be understood immediately it
begins to appear.This was
then to work its way right through to inform the detailing of the
constructional junctions which articulate the upper floor as if it
were a boat floating (Fig.Howell
showed how this led to a design process in which architect and engineer
worked in close dialogue to develop the anatomy of each building.This suggests
a design process which is guided by a general set of principles about
the role of structure, and in which the primary generator is likely to be
the structural form of the building.The sequence of drawings shown
here, drawn during the design process for Howell's University Centre
building in Cambridge, rather tend to confirm this (Fig.The primary generator and crucial constraints
At this point we should examine the importance of the concept of
constraints.In
the evolutionary phase the designer is really following his or her
nose, gradually modifying the embryonic design as it is tested to
see if it satisfies constraints and is found wanting.Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling
Theory and practice
In the last chapter we saw that it is common for designers to carry
some set of guiding principles with them through their working
lives.This intellectual baggage is most frequently gathered during
that career, with each project contributing to it in some way.This hopefully acts as a counterbalance to the
earlier part of the book when emphasis was laid on the more theoretical
writings of design methodologists.They speak less of clearly defined
routes and rather more of their own individual interests, approaches
and strategies.We saw that design problems
cannot be comprehensively formulated and that solutions cannot
be logically derived from them.In,
for example, architectural competitions there may be a site, a schedule of accommodation and a set of requirements all laid out
quite explicitly.The architect and interior designer Eva Jiricna tells how,
in her experience, 'we never, ever get a brief from a client which we
can start working on' (Lawson 1994).The Malaysian
architect Ken Yeang, even prefers to start with what might be called a
'mission statement' of just a few sentences.One such study of architectural
students designing a nursery school was video-recorded and then
analysed for both words and actions.It was rarely very long in
these protocols before the subjects began to use such phrases as
'this suggests' or 'we could try'.Some researchers tried to
break down the process into sequences, others looked to classify
the kinds of cognitive activity they thought to be revealed.Thus there was sufficient
material here to publish a book larger than this one just on two
design protocols!Heuristic strategies do not so much rely upon theoretical first principles as on experience
and rules of thumb.There are many possible rules
such as 'the depth of 50 mm wide joists at 400 mm centres is
25 mm for every half metre of span'.A rough idea is quickly developed
for the most significant elements of the solution which can then
be checked by more precise methods and adjusted as necessary.The first group started by describing how they felt that the
environmental requirements of the office space were the critical
factors (Fig.The building, they thought, could be
assembled by replicating these bays as desired and as the site
permitted.This group had noticed that the competition
brief had stressed the importance of not presenting a remote
or forbidding image to the ratepayers.In each case a group of sub-elements of
the overall problem have been clustered together and elevated to
the role of form generator.The first and second
groups looked at constraints generated by two different types of user, the employee and the local taxpayer.What is used as a primary generator is also likely to vary to some
extent between the different design fields and problems.However, he has himself noted that this is not
enough, and that it is the highly specific and local external constraints
which often help him to create form:
I can no longer design just a pillar or an arch, you need a very precise
problem, you need a place.This simple idea was
carried through into the colours and textures of the set, itself very
simply arranged using a large backdrop wall with an opening
surrounded by a suggestion of a classical architrave.Dyson had experience of using a
traditional barrow and found it frequently got stuck in the muddy
ground of a garden (Fig.It was Murray, when working for the Brabham formula
one team, who first introduced the idea of refuelling pit stops
since adopted by all his competitors.This itself can vary considerably.(Lawson 1994).11.1).11.3).11.4)...11.6).11.7). 11.8).11.9)...