Exercises in architecture Learning to Think as an Architect

Architecture is a doing word. You can learn a great deal about the workings of architecture through analysing examples but a fuller understanding of its powers and potential comes through practice, by trying to do it... This book offers student architects a series of exercises that will develop their capacity for doing architecture. Exercises in Architecture builds on and supplements the methodology for architectural analysis presented in the author--s previous book Analysing Architecture (third edition, Routledge, 2009) and demonstrated in his Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand (Routledge, 2010). The three books taken together deal with the three aspects of learning: description, analysis of examples, and practice. The book offers twelve exercises, each divided into a short series of tasks aimed at developing a particular theme or area of architectural capacity. The exercises deal with themes such as place-making, learning through drawing, framing, light, , uses of geometry, stage setting, eliciting emotional responses, the genetics of detail and so forth.

Prelude: The --Architecture-- General Introduction: --Architecting--. Studying the Architectural Mind at Work. Drawing (and its limitations). The Exercises. Interludes and Observations. Materials and Equipment. Keeping a Notebook. Producing Good Work. Section One: Fundamentals Exercise 1: The Substance without Substance Exercise 1a. Imposing an Idea. Exercise 1b. Centre. Exercise 1c. Identification of Place (by object). Exercise1d. Introducing the Person. Exercise 1e. Person at the Centre. Exercise 1f. Identification of Place (by person). Exercise 1g. Circle of Place. Exercise 1h. Threshold. In Your Notebook... (Circles of Place). Exercise 2: Flipping Perceptions Exercise 2a. Container for a Dead Person. Exercise 2b. Pyramid. Exercise 2c. Theatre and House. Interlude: --The Artist is Present.-- In Your Notebook... (Flipping Perceptions). An Observation: Appearance and Experience Exercise 3: Axis (and its Denial) Exercise 3a. Doorway Axis. Exercise 3b. Quartering Exercise.3c. Relating to the Remote Exercise. 3d. Temple Interlude: The Woodland Chapel. In Your Notebook... (Axis in Space). Exercise 3e. Lines of Doorways. Interlude: Lines of Doorways. Exercise 3f. Countering/Denying the Power of the Doorway Axis. Exercise 3g. Make a Senseless Doorway/Axis/Focus Composition... In Your Notebook...(Contradiction of Axis). Summary of Section One. Section Two Geometries of Being Exercise 4: Alignment Exercise 4a. Geometries of the World and Person. Exercise 4b.Geometries Aligned Exercise. 4c.Architecture as an Instrument of Alignment. In Your Notebook... (Instrument of Alignment) Exercise 5: Anthropometry Exercise 5a. A big Enough Bed. Exercise 5b. Some Key Points of Measure. In Your Notebook... (The Size of People) Exercise 6: Social Geometry Exercise 6a. The Social Geometry of a Circular House. Exercise 6b. Other situations in which Architecture Frames Social Geometry. Interlude: Choir Stall. In Your Notebook... (Social Geometry) Exercise 7: The Geometry of Making Exercise 7a. Form and the Geometry of Building Components. Exercise 7b. Putting a Roof or Upper Floor on your Walls. Exercise 7c. Parallel Walls. An Observation: Regarding the Circle. Interlude: A Welsh House. Exercise 7d. Now Redesign the Circular House... Interlude: Korowai Tree House, Farnsworth House. In Your Notebook... (Geometry of Making). Interlude: A Classic Form, with Innumerable Variations and Extensions. Exercise 7e. Spanning Greater Distances. In Your Notebook... (Structural Geometries). Interlude: A Conflict in the Geometry of Making (for a reason) --- Asplund--s Woodland Chapel (again). An Observation: Attitudes to the Geometry of Making. Exercise 7f. Transcending the Geometry of Making. In Your Notebook... (Attitudes to the Geometry of Making). Exercise 8: The Geometry of Planning Exercise 8a. Parallel Walls. Exercise 8b. Multi-Room Buildings. An Observation: Geometries Brought into Harmony by the Rectangle. Interlude: Modifying the Rectangular Geometry of Planning. Exercise 8c. Columned Spaces/The Free Plan. In Your Notebook... (--Free-- Plan) Exercise 9: Ideal Geometry Exercise 9a. A Square Space. Exercise 9b. Extending the Square. Exercise 9c. Cube Exercise. 9d. Problems with Wall Thickness. In Your Notebook... (Ideal Geometry). An Interlude: Sphere. Exercise 10: Symmetry and Asymmetry Exercise 10a. Axis of Symmetry. An Observation: The (Im)possibility of Perfection? Interlude: 9 Square Grid House. Exercise 10b. Subverting Axial Symmetry. In Your Notebook... (Symmetry and Asymmetry) Exercise 11: Playing with Geometry Exercise 11a. Layering Geometry. Exercise11b. Twisting Geometry. Exercise 11c. Breaking Ideal Geometry. Exercise 11d. More Complex Geo

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