Book Outline

Architecture as System – Book Outline

SUBJECT AREA:                     Architecture, Cultural Evolution

NO. OF WORDS:                       95,000 approximately

              

AIMS AND SCOPE OF THE BOOK:

The book proposes a theory and model of systematic evolutionary change in architecture based on a definition of architecture as a dynamic and self-regulating complex cultural system. Stylistic change and development are explained as a cumulative result of the selective forces which arise in the normal processes of communication and exchange between architecture’s many practitioners. The book offers a radical interpretation of architectural history centred around the emergence, development and transformation of the basic unit of architectural reproduction: the Style, the ‘typical set’ of elements or paradigm which acts as the template for the production of many individual works of architecture. Style is explained as an emergent phenomenon arising out of collective selection-combination of diverse experiences. 

In this book historical change in architecture is explained using evolutionary theory combined with other communications-based approaches such as theories of representation, semiotics, linguistics, rule-governed behaviour and adjacent theories of cultural and social evolution. Ultimately the book proposes a meta-theory within which particular architectures and historical periods can be objectively understood without recourse to ‘heroic’ or individualistic modes of interpretation.

KEYWORDS

Architecture, style, articulation, decoration, the Type, systems, cultural systems, Meta-system, communication and exchange, cumulative selection, paradigms, behavioural routines, representation, modelling, development, involution, code - message, integration, plurality, organisation, emergence, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, denotative and connotative, context, ambiguity, the marginal, analog, digital, classification, probability.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK:

Given the purpose of the book described above, the contents are arranged as follows:

CHAPTER ONE: Architecture as a complex, self-regulating cultural system. Architecture and style as a relation of similarity of form between a great number of individual buildings. Systemic processes underlying the formation of similarity. The cultural algorithm of selection and combination of forms - the Typological Process - produces a typical set of forms - out of the diversity of many individual buildings. Meaning as a function of probability or recurrence of forms. Style as a collective template. Variety as a result of recombination of typical elements in particular contexts. Architecture as representation or modelling of an environment. The human agent and System: individual and collective activity. Periodization in history. Random relation between the form of architecture and other social or political forms. Society as a constellation of different cultural systems.

CHAPTER TWO:  The evolutionary model of architecture. Architecture as a cultural system - network of communication and exchange within a confined environment producing uniformity of characteristics. The emergence of a dominant stylistic paradigm - the Meta-system, assimilation or compression of diverse behaviours - the cumulative experience of many individual works stripped of circumstantial elements into a typical or canonical set. The meta-system as context-free code, the buildings as messages. Invariable typological process permutated with the variable environments to produce three possible states in architecture: Evolution - stylistic diversity; Development - convergence around a single style (the classical architecture); Involution - stereotyping of forms and eventual fragmentation of the dominant style. The need for decoration to alleviate semantic crisis in Involutionary phase. The rise of ambiguity and the triumph of the marginal - the para-system - with the semantic collapse of the meta-system.

CHAPTER THREE: The Typological Process as representation, classification or modelling of particular environments. Coding and de-coding. The mind as a typological machine. Reduction in number of elements by selection - increase in signifying power. Learning hierarchies, reflection, adaptation. Survival or extinction of styles as a matter of chance relations with a variable environment. Style as code, buildings as message, Different time scales in architecture. Synchrony, diachrony. Recursive action of typological process. Symbol and style as a condensation of signs, unique instances. Style as pattern, plot or myth. Levi Strauss, group identity by clearing the space between distinct characteristics. From analogue to digital classification. Precision and the Post Classical phase as bureaucratization of a style – over-articulation Uniformity no matter what the context. Concentration of meaning into fewer number of elements. Self-reference and aphasia. The typical set condensed out of existance - volatized. 

CHAPTER FOUR: The building as a variation on a theme - the Style or the Type. Style as a virtual reality distributed throughout production. The Type as a resource for maintaining learned experience. The Platonic analogy between Style as ‘Ideal’ - (a compression of all experience) and building or the ‘Real’ as inherently improbable versions of that singularity. Plural and Integrated socioeconomic conditions. Style as a reduction of differences. Metonymic process of selection produces a metaphor - a representative image. The convergence towards a classic architecture. Difference of context achieved through manipulation of standard elements. Continued and recursive typological activity will reduce the number of options available for combination to a point where the Style in Involution cannot represent differences of context. Architecture as a rule-governed system. Recursion and simple rules with complex results. Variant and invariant processes.

CHAPTER FIVE: The symbol as a node of associations and memories. With a classic architecture the associations produced are highly predictable. It does not refer to particular times or places, but is context-free and transcends experience. It is in an evolutionary dead end. The Type is in a pathological phase where it does not represent anything but itself. There is a conflict between the signifier and the signified, between the metaphor (unlabelled as such) and what is meant. Analogies with the dream state: unconstrained typological activity, condensation of experience into a few highly-charged composite symbols which cannot refer to anything in particular. The Involutionary architecture is everywhere similar and coordinated leading to communicational paradox. Displacement of meaning into secondary activity – decoration -‘portable context’. ‘Total administration’ produces a parallel world of decoration, slang and the marginal.

CHAPTER SIX: Decoration as determinative signs marking actual similarities or difference between buildings, as allegorical function which deflects criticism of inert primary forms. Its origins in marginal, ambiguous and circumstantial forms ejected from the developmental synthesis of the classic type. Now re-introduced to alleviate the stereotyped forms of that type. Uniform decoration in the diverse conditions of an Evolutionary phase. Fluid in the rigid conditions of an Involutionary phase. Real, Symbolic and Imaginary as classifications. Decoration fulfils the ‘quota of meaning’ required for accurate representation of experience. Decoration as an attempt to maintain communication with limited expressive means. The unconstrained reduction of many experiences to one set results in the production of decorative compensation which allows the Type to speak of particular contexts. The typical forms of the Type are overwhelmed by decoration.

CHAPTER SEVEN: The establishment of the Classic Type as trauma around which all further activity is centred. Further learning and behaviour no longer open to new experience. One limited set of behaviours substitutes for the whole of experience. The introduction of ‘masks’ (decoration and articulation) which alleviate communicational problems. The role of the avant garde to re-establish the authenticity of architecture and to maintain its plasticity in the face of experience. Different critical methods, Rationalist or Utopian during different phases of architecture. The limits to avant garde activity. Change is a result of different socioeconomic conditions. The effects of economic growth and recession on architecture. Implosion or explosion of formal possibilities within an existing developmental trajectory. Extinction of architecture as total semantic collapse. Architecture as a pure creation of the mind.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Representation reveals and disguises the ‘way things actually are’. The Type cannot suitably respond to signals from its environment. This is the pathological condition. The environment is inherently complex and ambiguous. Strategies for dealing with ambiguity with a limited repertoire of behaviours. Displacement of meaning into peripheral behaviours and gestures. Pathology as learned behaviour in an environment of mutually contradictory demands. The ‘Double Bind’. Attempts to resolve impossible demands. The confusion of literal and contextual messages. The splitting of connotative and denotative modes of communication. With loss of context words and things mean nothing in particular. Stereotyping – precise naming - produces an aggregate of autonomous forms. Involution as schizoid state. The critic unravels and reveals the multiple sources behind rigid typical forms. The critic as analyst forcing the Imaginary One to become the Symbolic Many.

CHAPTER NINE: Post-Modern architecture as Involution. As ritualistic behaviour. Development telescoped by post-war socioeconomic circumstances. The production of an ‘organized aggregate’, an ‘organized nowhere’. The demand for precision in a scholastic phase. Technology reinforces atomistic analysis of experience. Allows total coordination of production. Disarticulation of form with digital gaps. Technology as decoration emphasizing the ‘assembly’ of the building – its making, its rationality and ritualizing its volumetric organization as Functionalism. In urban terms, strict zoning of the city.  The splitting of experience into typical (stable) and variable components. Descartes and the Mind/Body relation. The schizophrenic state: Self-False Self (Type-Decoration). The latter becomes more and more autonomous as Involution progresses and eventually takes over the communicational functions of the Type. Fragmentation of the Type into a ‘gigantic useless machine’.

CHAPTER TEN: The development of the Renaissance Type over time into variations on variations of itself. Too many different ways of expressing the same thing. Involution as ‘internal evolution’. Mythic and musical transformations analogous to architecture. The ‘purely formal functioning of the human mind’ on architectural and musical form. Transformational rules. The coordination of language and the origins of Discourse proper. Syntactics replaces pragmatics as the primary semiotic or communicational function with a totally predictable and redundant set of forms. For the Involutionary model, ‘truth’ is the elimination of ambiguity. Truth is clarity. Ambiguity is a recognition of the ultimate futility of representation. An attempt to suggest the ‘something lost’. Ambiguity as the systematic noise of the act of representation. A subsidiary sign.

End