Analysing Architecture University of Dundee, School of Architecture Simon Unwin Research background Some fields of creative intellectual activity have long-established academic disciplines for analysis. Historically, architecture has not. Research in architecture has tended to be concentrated in the tangentially related fields of architectural history, critical theory and architectural science. The first takes its methodology from art history; the second from philosophy and literary criticism; and the third from science. There have been repeated calls for architecture to have its own analytical methodology since the 1980s. The intention of this project is to find “what constitutes architecture”, to identify and understand “its accumulated powers”, and generally to produce an evolving descriptive theory of architecture, similar to that which linguistics explores in relation to language and musicology in relation to music. Architecture needs to establish its academic credentials as a coherent subject of progressive research, in its own terms, as an underpinning to the professional education and research standing of the subject at university level, and as the basis of consistent criticism of architectural work in the public realm1. Research aims and objectives This research aims to contribute to the understanding of architecture as a creative intellectual activity, by developing conceptual frameworks for analysing examples. This will benefit researchers, architectural students, practitioners and critics, and all interested in the ways people situate themselves in the world and order their activities by means of building. Main aims of this research are:

- To contribute to the understanding of architecture as a creative intellectual activity by exploring and describing its workings through the thematic analysis of examples;

- To contribute to the continued development of analytical research in architecture as

an academic discipline. Institutional structures / funding The work is progressed under the aegis of CARA – The Centre for Analytical Research in Architecture in Dundee University. It has been supported with departmental funds, but application has been made for substantial grant support. Research methodologies / process The research will follow traditional methods. Ideas in works of architecture are generally most clearly represented in drawings – plans, sections, elevations of the works – the media usually used in their conception, and the most reliable means of representing their actuality in abstract form. Architectural drawings are therefore the key material for the proposed research. Published sources will be searched for ranges of examples relating to the specified themes. Plans and sections (and maybe elevations) of selected works will be redrawn – this is important to the process of assimilating the ideas they contain (as well as providing illustrative

1 The field of architectural analysis is not completely new. It is founded on the work of pioneering analysts such as Rowe (e.g. ‘Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’, 1947), Zevi (e.g. Architecture as Space, 1957), Rasmussen (Experiencing Architecture, 1959), Norberg-Schulz (op.cit. and other volumes), though no consistent methodology has emerged. Other writers have also sought to put forward frameworks for understanding or analysing architecture, for examples: Alexander (A Pattern Language, 1977), Ching (Architecture: Form, Space and Order, 1979), Clark and Pause (Analysis of Precedent, 1979), von Meiss (Elements of Architecture, 1986), Baker (e.g. Design Strategies in Architecture, 1989), Hertzberger (e.g. Lessons for Student Architects, 1991), and Evans (op.cit. and Translations from Drawing to Building, 1997).

material for publication). Selection of examples, by individuals and by group discussion, will be based on the strength and clarity of the ideas they present, and the strands they add to the growing frameworks for understanding the chosen themes. Significant examples will be selected, through the above processes, for study visits with the purpose of experiencing the works at first hand, and to supplement the research from published sources with descriptions of examples in actuality, especially the experiences they provide and the contexts in which they sit. At a technical level the purposes of the visits will be: to check the accuracy of published drawings; to make additional measurements and drawings if necessary; and to take photographs for illustrating publications. Using the material collected the selected examples will be ‘interrogated’ in team seminars (applicants, RA and RSs) to draw out and assimilate through discussion the ideas they contain. Broad frameworks of understanding will emerge from these debates. Collected material will be organised to illustrate the frameworks that emerge, as the basis for the published ‘notebooks’. The research method must be open and inclusive. Bachelard2 describes an approach to studying ideas contained in, or represented by, the products of creative minds that is dependent on the researcher’s receptivity to ideas encountered in such products, and consideration of what Bachelard, after Minkowski, calls their ‘reverberation’. The proposed research takes a similar stance. It is ‘teleological’ in that it seeks understanding of the formative processes of architecture through analysis of ‘ends’ – examples of works of architecture. It seeks what might be called the ‘platonic ideas’ of works by studying them through drawings, generally the medium of their conception. The research is also ‘phenomenological’ in that it supplements findings from study of the abstract medium of drawing with direct experience of works in actuality. This combination, with the receptive approach advocated by Bachelard, provides a full and open (non-prescriptive) way into understanding the workings of architecture. The intention is to explore and describe architecture as a creative, adventurous and poetic medium; it is not to prescribe a methodology for doing it. Research outputs / findings / contributions Previous work surrounding this subject developed a conceptually multi-dimensional thematic methodology for the analysis of works of architecture; one that recognises architecture as an intellectual, adventurous and poetic discipline. The book Analysing Architecture begins a description of the workings of architecture, which is seen as a long-term challenge to help those involved in architecture understand the powers involved, the conditions within which they operate, the means at their disposal, and the poetic potential of their work.

2 Poetics of Space (1958)

Doorway in a Buddhist Monastery south of Shanghai Image © Simon Unwin

A 'place' by a doorway in Chania, Crete Image © Simon Unwin