Vol. 4, No. 1,
May 1999

Design

Creativity and Materialization

Content

1) Object and Process: The Aspect of Material
- Invention as a Celebration of Materials (Myriam Blais, Montreal)
- Shift of Conditions: Shift the Action, Shift the Meaning (Jorge Carvalho, Porto)
- Architecture and Design Graphics (Valentin Gorozhankin, Kharkov)

2) Design Apprenticeship, Building Process and Architectural Education
- Building Architecture and Design Architecture (Hajo Neis, Berkeley)
- Styles of Teaching and Styles of Designing (Ralf Weber, Dresden)
- Projection and Self-Projection of Architecture (Robert Špacek & Marian Zervan, Bratislava)
- Gestalt-Principles within Design Theory and Vivid Categories (Sander W. Wilkens, Berlin)
- Design and Architectural Education at the Moscow University for Building under the New Economic Conditions in Russia (Aleksej Solovev, Moscow)

3) Phenomenology of Design
- Designing in Design (Burkhart Biella, Duisburg)
- Premises for a Tackle with "Projecting/Designing" (Joachim Ganzert, Biberach)
- Architecture is Design (Alban Janson, Karlsruhe)
- Projecting – An Anticipated Performance of the Architectural Space (Thorsten Bürklin, Karlsruhe)
- The Construction of the Idea and its Tools (Christof Ehrlich, Berlin)

4) Design History
- Beyond Logistics: Architectural Creativity as Technê and Rhetoric in the European Tradition (James McQuillan, Cambridge)
- Architectural Design of Rationalistic Utopia - On an Example of the Ural City Nadeshdinsk, an Industrial Colony of St.-Petersburg (Lyudmila Kholodova & Oxana Makneva, Yekaterinburg)
- Architecture of Intertextuality - Possibilities for Design Presentation (Jury Volchok, Moscow)
- The Term "Design" (Astrid Schmeing & Lena Kleinheinz, London)

5) The Designer
- Architectural Design: Between Normatives and Conception (Svetozar Zavarihin, St.-Petersburg)
- "In which Style should we Design?" (Jörg Schnier, Dresden)
- Taming the Designer (Gottfried Schlüter, Cottbus)

6) Rationality and Process of Design
- Chains of Decisions (Walter Nägeli, Berlin)
- Design between Methodology, Heuristics and Creativity (Gerhard Banse, Potsdam)
- Design in  EDP-Supported Sustainable Architectural Processes (Martin Pfeiffer, Hannover)
- Six Tools for Design (Christian Gänshirt, Cottbus)
- The End - a ´Goodbye´ to Theory in Design (Tobias Hammel, Berlin)
- Freedom to Art (Dörte Kuhlmann, Vienna)
- O.M.A. at Work (Philipp Oswalt & Matthias Hollwich, Rotterdam)

1) Object and Process: The Aspect of Material
Myriam
Blais

(Montreal)

Invention as a Celebration of Materials

This article explores the possibility of thinking about technology as a place for celebration. This proposition relies on the sixteenth-century works of Françis Rabelais, doctor and novelist, and Philibert de l'Orme, architect, for their useful suggestions about providing a space for this celebration.
The first part of my argument establishes the common grounds on which de l'Orme and Rabelais conceived of invention in architecture, especially by defining the "name" and the way of working of the architect. The second part studies specific images that illustrate their views of invention through technology. The third part examines the stories that de l'Orme developed to support the legitimacy of his inventions. I will follow the thread of these stories about invention as they celebrate materials, the architect's "other" in the production of a built work.
Underlying all of this is the relation that Rabelais and de l'Orme believed should exist between their work and the people who will address it. Accordingly, de l'Orme and Rabelais developed images of exchange and of creative encounter between thought and materials, through technology.

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Jorge
Carvalho

(Porto)

Shift of Conditions: Shift the Action, Shift the Meaning

Design is here described as a process deeply intertwined within a cultural framework, but still with its specific difficulties and potentials. The text is written from the point of view of the designer while observing other architects’ conditions of work, intentions and means of expression. It scrutinizes two works, by Fernando Távora and Eduardo Souto de Moura, considering issues of process. Even within a certain conceptual line and working under similar specific conditions, architects develop different meanings for architecture, both conditioned and stimulated by the changes in the generic conditions of work.

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Valentin
Gorozhankin

(Kharkov)

Architecture and Design Graphics

The designer organizes the production and consumption of an object or building by means of graphic modeling of the form. However, his design illustration procedures are the means to create form and become an integral part of an object and its specific attributes. The facade - the materialized part of the drawing - as well as other kinds of projections (axonometric sections and perspectives), have dominated architecture in European culture. The abstract graphic code assumes a correlation with traditional values. The search for such meaning comprises a problem in architecture language.

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2) Design Apprenticeship , Building Process and Architectural Education
Hajo
Neis

(Berkeley)

Building Architecture and Design Architecture

"Traditionally, every era has manifested a unitary organizational strategy called a zeitgeist, or spirit of the times. Architecture has always had the capacity to both mirror and be driven by the zeitgeist... What characterizes the Rome of Sixtus V, Haussmann's Paris, or the work of Le Corbusier, whether mirroring or transforming, is that their plans derived from a singular body politic, an operating and animating principle where a unitary world view was possible. Now, ironically, at a time when the entire world can be seen as part of a singular operating network, such a singular world view is no longer possible. There is no one body politic and, thus, no single zeitgeist." (Peter Eisenmann, "Confronting the Double Zeitgeist", Architecture, October 1994.)
The contrast between what I call 'Building Architecture' and 'Design Architecture' can be considered as a manifestation of the double zeitgeist, in this case the different attitudes, philosophies and practices of our times to design and building. It is these two directions in architecture and design which will be investigated, theoretically as well as in practical examples. Finally, the possibilities of an 'Integrated Process of Design and Construction' will be discussed with their own potentiality and reality for creativity and materialization.

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Ralf
Weber

(Dresden)
Styles of Teaching and Styles of Designing

Different dilemmas of educational structures that have developed out of the process of institutionalization of architectural education will be described, in particular a need for an awareness of problems within design situations, the missing complexity within project processing as well as a lack of evaluation measures for finished projects. It will be argued that the design situation for students are never even halfway near a simulation of design processes in architectural practice, thus the assumption, design situation during student projects would train for real life, is mistaken. At the beginning of a modification of teaching concepts for design must stand the acceptance of the fact that students cannot be taught real life situations with simulations. Yet, universities should recognize their potential to teach students by comparative systematical discussions of different design strategies, enabling them, to come to intelligent and competent decisions.

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Robert
Špacek,
&

Marian
Zervan

  (Bratislava)

Projection and Self-Projection of Architecture

This article will discuss the concepts "project" and "projection" in their general-philosophical, specific-scientifical and architectural meaning. On the one hand a movement from general-philosophical to specific-scientifical meaning can be seen in architectural education and within the architectural realm: Project as a disposition of possibilities, as an intention, has been driven out step by step by the meaning of materialization; similarily architectural projection has become transformed to mere projection: the definite and completeness become attributes of architecture, especially as a technical piece of work. As a consequence, the piece of work will be prefered as an object and the possibility for self-projection of architecture as a discipline will be lost.
In contrast to these tendencies the authors concentrate on such projection strategies, that have recently, in theory, projects and materialisations, directed towards a need for more general-philosophical meaning in projection and project. They try to capture the architectural project and its projection as a process and interim-stage of a process, in which, besides the work attitude as a spectrum of realized and accepted possibilities, one important role belongs to the moment of initiation, of questioning, of openness, of the "unprojectionable"; they try to capture the architectural project as a project for reception opportunities, directly connected to self-reflexion and self-projection of architectural education and architectural thinking.

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Sander W.
Wilkens

(Berlin)

Gestalt-Principles within Design Theory and Vivid Categories

This essay concerns architects and philosophers, critics of art and design. I. In current theory of planning and architecture there is an agreement about conceiving a building from the principles cube, roof, wall, bar and socle (E.Gerber with reference upon M.v.d.Rohe). Their - emancipated - meaning is originating in the philosophy of Bauhaus. II. The coverage is really unlimitied: not only valid for buildings but also for a magnitude of objects by craftsmen and industrial production. III. The philosophical meaning of these principles has to be recognized equivalent to Kant's categories of mind. The conception of Kant´s notion of cognition has therefore to be permuted: the principles have to be regarded as categories of intuition and their efficacy is relying on the convertibility of faculties within the relations of cognition. IV. A mathematical and V. logical proof demonstrate this convertibility out of Gestalt and a plan of Rohe with immediate evidence for planning.

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Aleksej
Solovev

(Moscow)

Design and Architectural Education at the Moscow University for Building under the New Economic Conditions in Russia

Epoches of historical changes are always connected with changing demands for the society as well as growth of creative potentials, mainly based on enthusiasm. Thus in november 1995 the architectural scene in Russia celebrated the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the High Artistic Technical Workshops (WCHUTEMAS), which 1920 enhanced the artistic technical and architectural education in Russia. The new economic situation after communism (1920 began the new economical politics of –NEP- and with that the strong development of the market in Soviet Russia) pushed the development of a new school for design, quite similar to the Baushaus in Germany, connecting art, industry, architectural and artistic ideas as well as the necessary techniques.
In 1994 the renewal of the professional image, created by WCHUTEMAS in 1920, began at the Moscow University of Building. Even the name of the profession "Engineerarchitect" stands for a close connection of architecture and technical innovation.
Recent need in russian building industry demands an education of specialists, who are able to develop architectural concepts, their technical realization as well as project management and building supervision, as a consequence you can now find smaller and specialized offices instead of huge project offices. All Building Universities are highly interested in this new professional profile. The first students have finished their studies in this profession 1998 and are now working in the leading project offices in Moscow and in international building corporations with business in Russia.

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3) Phenomenology of Design
Burkhard
Biella

(Duisburg)

Designing in Design

An architect’s design is an individual measure as well as a standard and offer in a social context, in the context of nature, of technology and culture, offering the development and formation of "the other’s" individuality in dwelling. Designing is thinking about "the other’s" existence, based on the design of "the own" existence. Designing is essentially part of practice (in an aristotelian sense) of architecture, which involves an ethical moment, that obliges the actor to his own and the common human life, even if an agreement is arranged by the supposition of an ideal community of communication. Accordingly a form of Kant’s categorical imperative can be defined for achitecture: Build in a way, that your design creates the openness of space, which allows everybody to develop his individuality just like you wish to develop your own individuality.

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Joachim
Ganzert

(Biberach)

Premises for a Tackle with "Projecting/Designing"

A present tackle with "projecting/designing" has to correspond to the fundamental premise of our modern principle of thought and Gestalt, even though the term "modern" - at the end of this century - should be defined in a different way than at its beginning. The end of the 20th century is characterized by a "globalization-process" which cannot simply be understood as a one-dimensional and economical one, but, corresponding to our context of knowledge, frame of reference and heritage, this process should be understood as multi-dimensional, amplifying and encouraging transformation from narrowed ideological-political perception towards appropriate and more open cultural and historical "spaces". The dimension "time", and that implies "history" and "culture", basically contributes to a definition of such a concept of "space". Consequently "projecting/designing" and "architecture" must be based on such an understanding of space. Within this conception of "space" a mode of perception and judgement has to be developed, where "adequacy" is the crucial intention and a differenciated notion of architecture and design is in demand.

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Alban
Janson

(Karlsruhe)

Architecture is Design

As the basic premise design is considered not as dealing with objects but situations, since our architectural experience aims essentially at an undivided reality of architectural space and our existence in space. A typical feature of architectural experience consists in the aesthetical act of becoming aware of this totality: The way the situation of space and acting is worked out appears for our experience as if it was prepared for us.  Consequently we experience it as appreciation of our situation.
The architectonic character of such a well-thought-of fitting lies in the elaboration of specific architectural aspects, that according to the initial premise should not be restricted to objectbound facts but have to be extended to embracing the existential totality of space and acting.
Thus architectural experience should essentially be seen in realizing the structural conception of space and acting as layed down in the design, and architecture as such would basically be design. It demands of the architect a committment of design capabilities up to detail and execution of work.

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Thorsten
Bürklin

(Karlsruhe)

Projecting – an Anticipated Performance of the Architectural Space

In projecting and providing architectural space the ‚hard‘ facts of financing, construction supervision, etc. are still linked together with a traditionally ‚humanistic‘ subject: building as housing and giving way to man‘s action and behavior according to the characteristic anthropological – corporeal as well as intellectual - modi of knowledge persist throughout all modifications of the construction organization, the process of projecting and the applicated means, etc.. Therefore as a central task of projecting the indispensable fact of being-part of architectural space requires an anticipated performance of the spacial arrangement in the correlative view of the physiological and intellectual disposition of man’s constitution. With the anticipated taking-part of these unalterable conditions one becomes aware of individual and collective action and behavior – especially within every-day routines, i.e. of sitting, walking, coming-in, staying, etc. – as an essential trait of the spacial potential and consequently of the architectural projection.

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Christof
Ehrlich

(Berlin)

The Construction of the Idea and its Tools

Regarding the complaints, architectural design would increasingly become determined by external constraints, rises a position, that claims it would be the same with designing.
From an epistemological point of view design (as product) and designing (as creative act) are fundamentally different, so that not even the same methods of investigation are allowed.
The product in the "World of Knowing" could become a subject of research, yet the creative act remains different from that; as a non-verbal movement of expression it cannot be thought of without the bodily aspect of materialization.
While design primarily belongs to the world of knowing, invention (designing) belongs to the world of skills.
In order to not discuss the expressive, non-discursive moment of creative activity away, or get lost within mythic-esoterical considerations of any sort, the obviously most important connection between knowing and skill have to be considered in more detail: The tool.
The use of the tool must be understood as a constructive epistemological act.

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4) Design History
James
McQuillan

(Cambridge)

Beyond Logistics: Architectural Creativity as Technê and Rhetoric in the European Tradition

The present architectural scene is tainted by feelings of puzzlement and desolation and caught between the glamour of global conquest and regional marginalisation. The great dilemma of modern art is the failure to reconcile the determinism of empirical rationalism and the myth of artistic genius. Some reflection of our earliest recorded thinking about architecture reveals the bonding of quantitative to qualitive thinking or mathematics to rhetoric in the text of Vitruvius. An understanding of the overarching role of Christian and secular universalism up to the 19th. Century is sketched noting the rupture with the world of meaning in traditional mathematics and its mimetic potential after the destruction of the Baroque. The rise of modernity saw the disappearance of sensus communis as the link between imagination and creation and the paper concludes with a call for the understanding of Vico's philology as the domain of the human will and creativity in the field of finitude and the arts.

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Lyudmila
Kholodova
&
Oxana
Makhneva

(Yekaterinburg)

Architectural Design of Rationalistic Utopia
(On an Example of the Ural City Nadeshdinsk, an Industrial Colony of St.-Petersburg)

In this article we will investigate the myth of St. Petersburg, being able to reproduce itself.
We study the potential of a code system of St.-Petersburg to create "affiliated" structures and inspect its development. We consider the informal (folklore) history of the city of Northern Ural (Nadeshdinsk) as an example of such an “affiliated” structure. The intellectuals of St. Petersburg founded this town and became the heroes of local folklore.
We focus on the myths of Nadeshdinsk and their influence on the creation of a certain urban space language. The new city in Ural was built by reformers from St. Petersburg, after the Zar of Russia had realized the creative potential in St.-Petersburg. The history and myths of the industrial colony of St. Petersburg copy a miniature history of the northern capital. The connection of St.-Petersburg and Nadeshdinsk is indissoluble.
The investigation of the myths of the industrial colony and their influence on architectural space allows us to make some conclusions about the usefulness of semiology in the research of existing cities.

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Jury
Volchok

(Moscow)
Architecture of Intertextuality.
(Possibilities for Design Presentation)

The historical world view (as an ´understanding of space´ after P. Florepsky) reveals itself in the true mutual relationship of those eternal key words of architectural creativity "Time-Place-Space" especially in the context of the latest history, which is forming today´s experience of urban planning.
Production of unpersonal houses for the masses in our country have in fact been overdone during the last 40 years, thus breaking this law. Its actual rebirth demands dedicated analytical research before starting with a project.
Philosophy always tried to find a universal interpretation and basic concepts of space. Particularly the form of the parabel expressed an understanding of an open universe (see A. Friedmann), the embryo form ( see A. Gurvich) and urban development (see N. Ladovsky and Doksiadis). The structure of the parable, showing directly the understanding of a universal concept, transports Ladovsky´s resumee of the universal carcass for residential design (in the late 20s). We find a realized pattern at the Expo 1970 in Osaka: the pavillion of the architect K. Kurakava.
During the the third quarter of our century, the concepts "order" and "chaos" have been put on the same level when it comes to guidelines for form-giving. Creative materialization of design projects at the threshold of a new century argue, that it is necessary and practical to search for a harmony within the interaction of order and chaos.
In my opinion an architecture of intertextuality embodies the concepts time, place and space being as one within the image of a possible project of a universal carcass at a specific location. Such architecture realizes the understanding of a specific address-related design, taking into account and summarizing the laws of the general and individual term "Autobiography of the Place"; a term, naurally based on intertextuality.

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Astrid
Schmeing

&
Lena Kleinheinz

(London)

The Term "Design"

Our contribution is based on a number of considerations triggered by the emergence of diagrams as significant elements of the design process in a number of contemporary architectural practices. Operating in a void remaining after changes in the understanding of the relationship of architecture and the (post-)modern subject, diagrams are seen as a possibility of generating variable activity. Future uses of buildings seem no longer determinable and diagrams are catering to requirements resulting from this. After having sketched out these changes in the first part of our paper, we proceed to discuss two different examples of how diagrams are implemented into the design process and what responses they offer.

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5) The Designer
Svetozar
Zavarihin

(St.
Petersburg)

Architectural Design: Between Normatives and Conception

Like any activity architectural design is historically specific and typologically varied. Yet in design there always exist two basic tasks:

  1. the reason, localization and modelling of material, functional, economical, structural and aesthetical parameters of the future object, process and appearance.
  2. the save filing and operation of the materialization processes

The author refers to both tasks and characterizes the particulars of the design by wellknown architects of past and present

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Jörg
Schnier


(Dresden)

"In which Style should we Design?"

This question reveals a fundamental uncertainty about the desirable form of design products. One possible explanation about the origin of this question can be found through an analysis of the theoretical constrains of design throughout history.
During antiquity "beauty" was considered an objective property of the universe, a manifestation of divine order in the world which could only be discovered, but not achieved by men. That means, only a discussion about the best way to discover beauty was possible, the question "In which Style should we design?" was as impossible to consider as the question "In which time should I live".
It was only after scholars like Copernicus, Gallilei, Newton, Descartes and Hume shattered the belief in a divine order of the universe that the concept of a subjective beauty became acceptable and therefore the question of "the right style" had to appear. Deprived of the certainty of the divine order of the universe, the designer seeks to avoid the criticism concerning the subjectivity of his design decisions by referring to "objective" criterias.
Since then the history of architectural styles can be interpreted as a history of justifications of subjective design decisions. Traditions, styles, "Sachzwänge", ideals, science and philosophy among others are the vehicles of these justifications. They are used to narrow the possible solution  and to exempt the designer from the demonstration of having examinated various alternatives. "In which Style should we design?" is as a matter of fact the question of choosing the "appropriate" system of justifications for the design decisions to make.
The neglection of responsibility for personal decisions is one of the primary sources of the aesthetic decay of our built environment. Only the self-conscious analysis of the way design decisions are made, might improve the understanding and the control over the design product.
Therefore in the epoch of the cult of the individualism and the subjective concepts of beauty the question should rather be "What is my style", that means, which qualities do I want to achieve and which decision parameters do I want to use to achieve them.

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Gottfried
Schlüter

(Cottbus)
Taming the Designer

The architectural design process is torn between a claim for creation, social responsibility and the task to solve a given problem; it is torn between rationality and artistic freedom. Browsing through german law regulations concerning the position and demand characteristics of designers, reveals a fundamental discrepancy between private mythologies and objective demands.
Design, whatever it may be, is of course only one problem while producing architectural objects. The academic idea about design in fact being architecture, is mistaken, whereas the end of design or the disappearance of architecture is not nessecarily a consequence of this.
As a matter of fact, reducing the architect to a designer, marks a turning point, where actually a new discussion of the design concept should start...

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6) Rationality and Process of Design
Walter
Nägeli

(Berlin)

Chains of Decisions

design and rationality
We propose here the untimely concept of the possibilty of rational action in architecture.
The notion of rationality ("Vernunft") is not used here in a wider philosophical sense but as a term describing an acitivity that is clearly aimed at the "improvement of life" (according to A.N. Whitehead).
rational is what improves life
One can develop an architectural design, which consists of numerous descrete thoughts and decisions, in such a way that they form a interconnected structure clearly and comprehensibly aimed at a specific purpose, a chain of decisions.
transparency versus unpenetrable fabrics of thoughts
Such a way of designing produces buildings which offer a certain degree of "transparency", because they offer a possibility for the viewer/user to look into their nature, into their inner structure.
They are therefore stronger related to the tool than to the workpiece.
This way of designing is more rare than one would suppose: Many architects refer to a "design concept", but behind this term one often finds only an unpenetrable fabic of spontanous ideas, learned craft and applied knowledge, "Zeitgeist" and individualism freely mixed with objectifiable factual decisions.
In architecture one rarely finds coherence based on chains of decisions, that are not only verifiable but who also contribute to an "improvement of life" in general terms.
Insofar we see the personal, the artistic realization primarily in mastering suitable steps of decisions rather than in the development and application of design intentions.

realization of the architect through chains of decisions
Only the architect is able - through the means of conceptual thinking - to bring together all forces and factors that influence the building process and shape them into a meaningful whole.

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Gerhard
Banse

(Potsdam)

Design between Methodology, Heuristics and Creativity

It is the matter of concern to contribute to the understandig of design (process) by analyzing its intellectual operations. The starting point is the interactive effect of three components of design processes in an analytical as well as synthetical manner: methodical ("logical", "algorithmical", "strong plannable", mostly "over-individual"), heuristical ("non-algorithmical", "fuzzy plannable", mostly "individual"), and creative (intuitive, based on "guided" imagination, subconscious). These three "classes of operations" will be characterized. Finally it will be shown, that in design the "heuristic competence" is the link between "general methodology" and "individual making".

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Martin
Pfeiffer

(Hannover)

Design in  EDP-Supported Sustainable Architectural Processes

An interdisciplinary approach of the Departments of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering started a new research project „ABM" at the University of Applied Science (Fachhochschule Hannover). Funded by the EU (EFRE) and Land Niedersachsen (MWK) experts investigate the various aspects of sustainable developing and re-developing of public and office-buildings. Sustainable development means a challenge for the regions in Europe as well as the process of architecture and urban planning.
This approach with simulations for building and cities, computer-aided design, building system technology and computer-aided management, is an attempt to create better cities and buildings and particularly to improve already existing office buildings. The main area of interest is to get a computer-aided tool for sustainable development, energy saving, well-tempered as well as low-tech building design and construction. Such an integrated system as a tool for architects and planners offers new methods for information administration, communication and, last but not least, a improved work-flow between the building specialists.

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Christian
Gänshirt

(Cottbus)
Six Tools for Design

Working out the design of a building reveals itself as a long process of approaching reality. In order to do so we have six tools that might vary in their effectiveness depending on the demands of the design and the goals of the designer. As a basis for communication about design those tools shall be phenomenologically described and their mutual relationship as well as their individual meaning for the design process will be discussed.
Starting with the "analytical view" as an instrument for individual sensibility and the creative gesture of scetches we wonder where the ideas develop and come from. With the help of mathematical abstraction of the drawing and the spacial model experiment we have means for a more precise representation of the project. Scientific and economic calculation methods help to continuously adjust the right dimensions of the building. Finally the verbal description is a basis for the connection to the social anchor of a project and yet to architectural critique in public.
Wishing to idealize the design process, one could consider it as twofold: As a spiral movement each individual step in the development of a project is confronting those six instances accordingly. Yet one would prefer to work simultaneously on
several aspects of a design project because so many questions are interwined and complex.

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Tobias
Hammel

(Berlin)

The End - A ´Goodbye´ to Theory in Design.

New balls please. The global game after communism: New instructions for mental developers.
to cap it all (hairsplitter’s cut).
150 words are not 150 Words.
mummy’s mother tongue.
The refusal to ferry to the old world.
daddy’s vocabulary:
Guided by the beauty of my weapons: invention, rejection, outrange of the red zone, outline, demolition.
iconoclasm: jus primae noctis.
Language: a self-portrait.
Desire: for which there is always a reason.
Baby food: frankfurters, udders, rockets.
Sermon: the vision as justification.
Fabrication: brand new.
sense and sensations.
The idea as first reality.
terms.
The attitude as benchmark.

significance.
The perception as test equipment.

program.
The design as expression.

for dessert.
Mutti Kaffee. No nada. No rules.

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Dörte
Kuhlmann

(Vienna)

Freedom to Art

The present essay focuses on creativity and its implications for both the social role of the artist and the methods of artistic creation. In western aesthetics and philosophy, artistic creativity has often been identified with a liberation from traditional social, geographical or cultural bonds. Thus, creativity is bound to freedom, together with many other issues in art theory, from the notion of liberal vs. manual arts up to the Kantian perception of free beauty as the sign of art. Given the connections between art, creativity and freedom, recent proclamations announcing the end of art need to be discussed in depth. The latest design strategies in architecture reflect this process in so far as their turn to natural sciences in order to dissolve the object and the author seems to be a final attempt to escape the art world.

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Philipp
Oswalt

&
Matthias
Hollwich

(Rotterdam)

O.M.A. at Work

The authors describe the design process in Rem Koolhaas´ office O.M.A.

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Issue 1/96: Architecture in the Realm between Art and Everyday life
Issue 1/97: Modernity of Architecture. A Critical Recognition
Issue 2/97: Architecture - Language
Issue 1/98:
Architectonics and Aesthetics of Artificial Worlds
Issue 2/98: Architecture and Home. A discussion of Heideggers essay `building, dwelling, thinking` (1951)
Cover