The architect at work!

Hello everyone, it has been a long time since my last post, but as we are on finals, everything gets more harder and the time you have to study it looks like only few seconds. Time flies! Anyway today I decided to make a post about architect´s life, what is the true meaning of being an Architect...

Have you ever thought why architects differ from other people, have you ever wondered why an architect´s life is without sleep or without time to do something entertaining?

The architect will have to exercise skills of locational analysis( putting things in the most appropriate places), but so will town planners and geographers.

Architects are concerned with the spatial ability and particularly with his capacity for visualizing or generating three- dimensional forms of spaces .

Architects use four ways of generating 3 dimensional form which start with pragmatic, iconic, analogic and canonic.

Pragmatic design:

Pragmatic design started with neolithic man who started seeing nature and its materials as usable and found ways to use them so they would build tents to live in . The basic reason for building was to modify the given climate as offered by “wild nature “ . Man needed shelter to protect itself from the wild so using flint and tools , mammoth skin he started approaching building . The site offered fails to provide climate over an adequate part of the year still in the broader concept of climate , building’s purpose is still climate modification .

Neolithic people used whatever materials hey found , and later on the neolithic man learned to recognise that certain flint could be used a scraper.

The materials available to these early builders appear to have been: Small Stones, Some Spindy Trees, Bones, Tusks and Skins of Mammoth´s.

The basic reason for building was to modify the given climate as offered by wild nature, which remains the fundamental reason for building.

The mammoth´s hunter´s was the first way of achieving 3d built form was by Trial and Error.

Iconic design:

Iconic design is the fixed mental image of a building form shared by members of a culture where iconic means that an artifact reminds us of its object by some kind of resemblance .

A cultures subsequent generations keep on building that object in the same way and with the same shape. The form of an object becomes so bound up with the way of life of a society that the pressure against changes become rigid.

A way of building is built deep into the tribal consciousness and because each of member of the tribe has a fixed mental image of what a house should be like , we shall call this iconic design.

Analogic design:

Started with the generation of new forms which is very important for the human being . New forms were firstly used by analogical process seen in funerary of king Djoser. The use of new forms aroused by analogical processes are firstly seen in the funerary complex designed at Saqqara called mastabas . Mastabas are flat topped mud brick tombs . To summarize the Analogical design is a structure which includes visual analogies with other structures or natural features .

Canonic design:

Canonic design is the mater of geometry in a highly complex and subtle form .

Generating a three dimensional form requires combining of pragmatic iconic analogic and canonic approaches which clear the act of designing for an architect . Architect should choose the proportional system he is going to use for the design to provide the designer with authority for many decisions such as: the shape of the figure, the size and the shape of the façade.These designer get the authority from Greek mathematicians like Plato who based the universe structure on four elements: air, water, earth, fire each made from regular geometric solids as shown in the image. These solids were formed from equilateral or isosceles triangles.In order to build well we should obtain solidity and unity in our work, units of measurements that are the first condition of all.It should be clear that whatever decisions designer make they should learn from the fathers of modern architecture combined all the designs mentioned above to generate three-dimensional forms.

Hope you have a nice week, and hope we meet as soon as possible.

The next two weeks I will be on a full time holiday so finally I will finish Antonio Gaudi´s book and finally I will be able to share my experience of this book with you guys. Wish me luck on my final project! May your week be as good as its possible!