For the purposes of the analyses presented here, the architectural project is understood as a thought process through which reality is transformed to allow for beautiful human life on earth and under the sky. This presupposes an understanding of the spatial and geographic conditions in which one lives, but it also implies the recognition of a temporal condition, since when projecting, one alludes to a future seen from a present that comes from a past. In short, it is assumed that, when projecting in architecture, geographic space and history are organized to allow for organized habits. In this sense, the architect, through the project, acts as Heidegger’s bridge, bringing together time and space, the divinity of the sky and the community present on earth, orienting life through events arranged in sites that, once transformed, become recognizable or habitable places. As Salmona reminds us, architects must transform rather than modify. A subtle difference defines two approaches to project planning. It is therefore important to emphasize that prior knowledge of the environment is required to transform, whereas modification refers to capricious acts that do not correspond to the information from the environment but rather respond to the unfounded impulses of the operator’s good taste. Without posing a prior problem to guide the information, the form abandons its universality and becomes personal, approaching art but distancing itself from architectural form, which has its own accumulated knowledge. In this sense, analysis in the architectural project allows us to understand the information of the site, life, and technique through the study of the formality of each separately and of all interacting, given that these factors together become the basis of the architect’s knowledge and therefore the origin of the architectural form.
“(…) The architect who modifies destroys an urban landscape, a natural landscape; the architect who transforms enriches it.”[1] ROGELIO SALMONA
In this order of ideas, the first step is to be informed in order to transform. Analysis is then presented as the beginning of a process from which the project is approached in architecture. Information is the raw material of form, decompressed and recomposed through the project, in a simultaneous interaction of analysis and synthesis that leads to responsible technical responses that arise from the form while generating new ones. This is the value of analysis: collecting, organizing, and prioritizing information about a given situation to prescribe a statement that guides decisions. Through analysis, a problem is formulated to which the project responds, and an opportunity is discovered.
Formulating and Conforming Form.
Since the project gives form to human life, the first step is to formulate and therefore diagnose the site and then the type of ritual to be implemented there. Then, when the problem is understood, form emerges, to reconcile a conflicting relationship established between human activity (stable) and the nature (variable) in which it takes place. Technique brings humankind and nature together, so form is not an end, but a means that enables this communion; it is a result of the process, not its beginning. The first step is to formulate the problem. Where is life established? What types of rituals are important? How can these rituals be achieved in this place? The site, the activity, and the technique allow us to formulate one or more paths.
To analyze, it is necessary to direct our gaze. The fundamental and non-negotiable aspects of the project must be investigated, then the proposed path must be carefully considered, arguing for intuitions and abandoning unconvincing paths. Prioritizing information is easier once a problem statement is formulated that attempts to address aspects of the territory and culture for which one is working. In response to a posed problem, one or more strategies organize the operations of the project’s time and the form posed within it. This is done in order to respond to human needs. Therefore, one must be concise to be analytical, but above all, one must be analytical to be concise. What should I analyze? What should I synthesize in the proposed forms? That is the quest of the project, so it is good to remember Le Corbusier when he said that the architect does not answer questions, but rather knows how to clearly pose problems.
To organize the path, the first thing is to find its beginning. Problems are the beginning of the project; they reveal the spirit of an era. Possibly, problems have always been the same; what changes is the way they are solved. The main problem is finding an ideal way of life. Utopia is always a quest; it is the minimum we can propose to begin planning.
In that sense, historically, we have been presented with different ways of approaching our craft. Humankind has always reflected on the most pertinent techniques, tectonics, and technologies to achieve the dreams of a better world. This characterizes every period in our history and, consequently, every architecture. From the first agricultural settlements, through the stone temples of classical Greece, to the diaphanous spatiality achieved through the use of glass, steel, and concrete of the modern movement, all human efforts are directed toward expressing a way of living. Answers that have been recorded in the consistencies of space expressed by architecture, becoming a path already begun by others who, with their efforts, have consolidated a legacy that must nourish our knowledge. Architecture is learned by seeing architecture. The form of all times and all places, as well as the parts that comprise it, are like words and letters in a conversation sustained by man and the world, a conversation of which our works are a part. Therefore, we must begin by recognizing this prior information, analyzing it, and incorporating it into the project. The upright being and the horizon that houses it converse and guide our path.
The architectural project, as presented in the information contained in this text, is not assumed as a commission, but as the continuation of a larger project, the human project. In this sense, the architects’ own desire to be original seems authentic, insofar as this concern should place us at the very origin of our craft, leading us to seek answers in past experiences, in information protected from the veils of fashion and close not only to the beginning, but above all to the meaning of our work. Architecture astonishes us, reveals hidden worlds, presents ways of life, shining a light that moves us and moves us toward a future from the past. Geography and culture meet in architecture. Architectural form re-presents a site, making it understandable by its spatialization. The project enters the scene because it allows us to decompress the information accumulated in this historical search. Beauty is sought through the human delimitation of space stolen from the ecosystems of wild beasts. They appear distinct, and the secrets of poetry are revealed to us. Le Corbusier says in “Precisions” that: “Technique is the very basis of lyricism.” This maxim constitutes the very foundation of the Advanced Unit Analysis course, whose product is a contribution to the project, making it a consistent technical document that supports the architect’s decisions regarding form, that is, regarding the reorganized natural space. This way of analyzing, in order to understand and organize thought and, consequently, space, is what is presented in the following pages. The systemic approach becomes a path to address this task.
“Such a unifying approach does indeed exist. It has emerged over the last thirty years from the fertilization of several disciplines (…) it is the integration of disciplines carried out in their context. This transdisciplinary approach is called the systemic approach. It is the one I symbolize in this book by the concept of the macroscope. It should not be considered a “science,” a “theory,” or a “discipline,” but rather a new methodology that allows for the gathering and organization of knowledge for greater effectiveness of action. The systemic approach is based on the notion of a system. This notion, often vague and ambiguous, is nonetheless used today in a growing number of disciplines for its unifying and integrative power.”[2]
In the following lines, we explore the spirit of our times. Beyond the ancient laws that regulate the territory, the architect trains himself, using his own means, to confront reality through the questions of the project, organized by the formulation of a problem that gives rise to it. To this end, the project is approached from a systemic perspective, allowing us to understand complexity through the interaction of its component parts rather than through their composition. Thus, the systemic approach, unlike scientific analysis, does not separate things in order to understand, but rather attempts to account for the dynamic whole and its systemic operation. In this way, a systemic understanding of the space-time in which we architects work is assumed, in a complex and dynamic reality in which the natural and built environment is altered by the systems[3] that organize it. We work on a chain of containment levels that include the atmosphere, geography, the altered landscape of the nearby environment, the city, the vegetation and surrounding topography, the building facades, the skin, the organs and cells with the membranes that form and contain them. A systemic whole, in which a constant exchange of energy and information is generated. A whole in which architecture is inscribed as one system within a larger whole while also containing other systems. As the body that sustains life itself, a way of being human on the planet is then systemically mediated. The words sustainability and bioclimatic appear on the scene, and like beauty, these are emergent properties[4] of the systemic operation enabled by architecture.
The delimitation of space arises from a response to a conflicting relationship between the natural and the human. A crisis arising from the encounter between the variable external climatic conditions and the stable internal conditions sought by the body to live comfortably. Spatial stability achieved through homeostasis, which implies comfortable living (bioclimatic), and which uses minimal resources without compromising the future, meeting the needs of the present (sustainable). The spatial orientation of these two words is complemented by beauty, a notion that reminds us of other things, granting a temporal orientation given by memory.
These themes are presented in the systems and subsystems operating through the projects and their analyses compiled in this publication. Interpreted by students in the Analysis course, the collective knowledge of a semester is synthesized through images that, as techniques, allow for the shaping of intuition by utilizing the technologies and tectonics of the projects and their representation. Based on the certainties built during this period, the information organized here provides insight into the problem that guides past and future degree projects.
Students approach a site and, using the information from it, create a topographic plan. Like a map, it captures a view of the site, aimed at revealing answers originating in the question “where?” Then, through matrices that seek to quantify and qualify other architectures, the aim is to recognize how the same human activities have been configured in other times and latitudes, answering the question “what?” Finally, a series of formal structures are assumed, supported by supporting structures, that take up typologies, archetypes, and other universal categories of architecture to guide the instructions generated by the inquiries regarding the “how”? A logical sequence that organizes the students’ time in a project that begins with the study of the site and then continues with the analysis of the possible activities established therein, bringing these two factors, site and rituals, together through technique. A tetrahedron that takes the formality of these factors as its basis to understand their organization. The form is centered on this analogous model taken from the book “The Building Systems Integration Handbook” by Rush Richard. Recalling previous experiences of two professors from the Department of Architecture at the Universidad de los Andes, Camilo Villate and Rafael Villazón leave as a legacy the analogous model that, modified by each student in the analysis course, contains and organizes general information about the site and then about the project or other projects studied, allowing us to understand systemic relationships between dyads and triads of themes that operate on the reality studied.
After the students have recorded the information they have studied, matrices are generated in which each student presents tests of their own project. Like a kind of simulation, they attempt to verify successes and failures in one way or another regarding the aspects that concern each student, both in their own projects and those of others. The tetrahedron is a tool for viewing the site, other architectures, and, incidentally, the project itself.
Analysis is, therefore, a way of understanding reality and how the architectural project transforms it. Furthermore, it is the name of one of the three courses that comprise the Advanced Unit, which replaces the former degree project. The Analysis course is thus a subsystem of the Unit’s system; it interacts with the other courses, which are simultaneously systems of the same whole. The Workshop gathers knowledge while generating projects, based on the technical foundation offered by the analysis course, which addresses specific issues in each case, and the theory course, which addresses the universal issues specific to our profession and to the profession itself in Colombia. A unit is then formed, made up of three parts brought together by the project itself, which, like a machine, incorporates and generates information from its form. Next, the machine in operation.
[1] Rogelio Salmona: open spaces / collective spaces; museography by José Ignacio Roca; curatorial consultancy by Jean Dethier; photography by Enrique Guzmán. [et al.]. Bogotá: Colombian Society of Architects, 2006.
[2] Taken from: THE MACROSCOPE, towards a global vision. Joël de Rosnay. Madrid: Editorial AC, c. 1977.
[3] “A system is a group of parts and objects that interact and form a whole or are under the influence of forces in some defined relationship.” Johansen Bertoglio Oscar. Introduction to the general theory of systems. Limusa, Mexico 2002.
“…when we have a totality endowed with synergy, that is, when the sum of the parts is different from the whole, we can speak of a system.” Taken from “Introduction to Systems Thinking.” Juan Carlos Osorio Gómez. Universidad del Valle Publishing Program. Santiago de Cali 2007. Page 14.
[3] “According to the most common definition, a system is a set of interacting elements.” A city, a cell, an organism are systems. But so are a car, a computer, or a washing machine! It seems that a definition like this is too general. Furthermore, no definition of the word system can be satisfactory. Only the notion of system is fruitful. Provided, of course, that its scope and limits are measured,” and further adds, “There are other definitions of the word “system” apart from the one given at the beginning of this chapter; the most complete is the following: ‘A system is a set of elements in dynamic interaction, organized around a goal.’” THE MACROSCOPE, Towards a Global Vision. Joël de Rosnay. Madrid: Editorial AC, 1977.
[4] Systems have emergent properties that are not found in their component parts. The properties of an entire system cannot be predicted by dividing it and analyzing its parts. If a system breaks down, its essential properties will not be found in any of the resulting pieces. These properties only emerge when the entire system acts. Only by putting the system into operation will it be possible to know its emergent properties, which are also the very essence of the system. As Joel de Rosnay mentions: “Evolution and emergence. Living systems can adapt (within certain limits) to dramatic changes in the outside world. They possess detectors and comparators that allow them to capture signals from the outside or inside, and compare these signals with equilibrium values. When divergences occur, the emission of error signals allows them to be corrected. If it cannot reach its former state of homeostatic equilibrium, the system, through the complementary play of loops, seeks new equilibrium points and new stationary states. The evolution of an open system is to integrate these changes and adaptations (…) This evolution materializes through hierarchical levels of organization and the emergence of new properties (…) At each level, new properties “emerge,” which cannot be explained by the sum of the properties of each of the parts that constitute the whole. There is a qualitative leap (…) The property of emergence is linked to complexity. The increase in the diversity of elements, the number of links between these elements, and the interplay of nonlinear interactions lead to behaviors that are difficult to predict.” Taken from: THE MACROSCOPE, TOWARDS A GLOBAL VISION. Joël de Rosnay. Madrid: Editorial AC, c. 1977.
