Spatial Models Design Reasons and the Construction of Spatial Meaning

Philosophica 70 (2) (2002)
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Abstract

Based on architectural projects which interpret literature as program we discuss design reasoning when no routine models of problem solving apply. We address three aspects of formulation: defining the design charge so that it can be retrospectively stated independent of the actual proposal; defining a language of formal operations; and defining the intrinsic aims of design that are only intimated through the proposal itself. The coherence of the project is a function of the way in which formal properties interact, and the way in which they sustain analogical or metaphorical relationships to text: how the patterns of subdivision, connection, differentiation, positioning, movement or perception associated with built space relate to textual figures, concepts, structure, or narrative. The possibility of constructing architectural meaning in this way implies an underlying model of space as a morphic language which works primarily through the constitution of generic and significant relationships rather than the combination of previously objectified elements. The gradual articulation of the design charge is mediated by a process of diagramming. Diagrams express as spatial constructions the conditions and concepts abstracted from text; also, they act as notations of constructive operations which are themselves spatial. Diagrams can be abstractive or pictorial, dense or discrete. They document two aspects of an integral process of reasoning: First, an exploration of how concepts, whether directly, analogically or metaphorically transferred from text to shape, may relate to produce a more complex idea; second, how formal properties co-vary and how an emergent design proposal engages and activates a field of formal possibility.

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References found in this work

The logic of sense.G. Deleuze - 2000 - Filosoficky Casopis 48 (5):799-808.
Abduction, Reason, and Science.L. Magnani - 2001 - Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
The Child's Conception of Space.Jean Piaget, Baerbel Inhelder, F. J. Langdon & J. L. Lunzer - 1957 - British Journal of Educational Studies 5 (2):187-189.
Models of Discovery, and Other Topics in the Methods of Science.Herbert A. Simon - 1979 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30 (3):293-297.

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