Reasearching the Other in Value-Based Architectural Paradigmes
As. Prof. Dr. Constantin Spiridonidis,
School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Introducing the OtherArchitecture and the City are perpetually dependant upon the Other. The Other is the permanent reference point of any intervention on urban and architectural space. It is the source of inspiration of the architect, the energy of the project, its primary material, its intellectual motivation, its main objective. The Other is the desire, the utopia or the heterotopia, the expectation, the wish, the hope but at the same time the rule, the order, the principle, the law, the ‘arche’, that is to say the principle and sometimes the model, the standard, the ‘prototype’, the image, the archetype.
At the same time the city itself is the ‘mother’ of the Other. Its resistance to change, its conflicting nature, its internal contradictions, its passive inflexibility, its rigid materiality, its uninspired inclination to power become the threads that weave around the Other a web of desirability; fascinating but at the same frustrating; attractive but remote, intriguing but unattainable.
The history of the City and its architecture runs parallel and interdependently to the history of the Other. Both are constructed socially and culturally and they create an inseparable complex of two different substances so that it is impossible for us to understand the one without understanding the other.
But what is the Other made of? What is its substance?
The Other consists of values and their virtual formal aspects. It is structured by ‘arches’ and has its own intellectual tectonic, its Archi-Tecture. These values represent a particular vision of the world and more importantly a particular conception of the human being and a particular view of the City and the Architecture within the framework of this vision. This is why the City and Architecture have always had the human figure as a distant prototype, loved and admired for its beauty (classic period), for its functional perfection (modern movement), for its social differentiation (early seventies), for its cultural identity (post modern), for its unique biological encoding (digital era).
Architectures of valuesIn the early eighties, we have experienced an emphasized redirection of the main focus of design theory and research from the investigation of design methodology to the values navigating the act of creating architecture and, for this reason, responsible for the selection of the applied methods (1) . This innovative, for its time, approach opened up new horizons to the debate on the design activity as the process of creating spatial forms introducing radical changes in our understanding of architecture. The shift of focus from the method to the values underlying the design activity had as a direct consequence the redefinition of the design process as an open platform. This platform could assure the spatial manifestation of values and was no longer a normative path going from facts conceived as problems to their rational ‘solutions’. In the same time, the definition of values as the starting point of the creative process and of architecture as a culturally defined self-expression of the architect, opened up the way to the awareness of distinct architectural paradigms(2) structured on the basis of values with different contents and/or references.
If architecture is about values, changing values should affect the way we define architecture and architectural design, the way we organise the design process, the selection of tools and means we use in the creative act, the arguments we use to legitimize our decisions on formal choices and last but not least, the way we teach architecture. In this introduction to the contents and main directions of the e-archidoct module we will approach values as the energy of the design process and will investigate how changes in values affected the entire development of architectural creation in the last fifty years.
The shift of interest from the method of the design process to the values underlying in this process was based upon a fundamental philosophical shift established in the mid seventies according to which the awareness of the differences between similar (socio-cultural) phenomena makes a more significant contribution to the understanding of the world than the record of their similarities (3) . In architectural debates, the search for timeless characteristics of architecture objectively defining a ‘good’ architecture has progressively faded away to be replaced by the search of the coherence between expression and content, form and meaning, materiality and values. In this context, the demand for a rational method assuring a systematic manipulation of stable and predefined (by the designer) parameters and performing a transparent and linear process of decisions concerning architectural forms is progressively discredited. It is now replaced by the search of divergent personalized and individualized processes of assuring the translation of values (defined by the architect) to spatial forms. In this new context the whole loses its dominance on the parts, the latter being always defined according to the former. The part appears more significant and powerful to influence the definition of the whole and to be elaborated as a freestanding element with limited or intuitively defined contextual relations.
The movement from the method to the values was developed upon the critical possition of the researchers on the plethora of proposed methods in the sixties and seventies. It is interesting to note that the number of proposed design methods in this period was enormous (4) . The researcher and even more the reader could very easily get lost in the extended bibliography of this period and in the articles of the reviews focused on design theory (5) , when an operational epistemological view was not available to assure a grounded grouping.
Values based architectural paradigmsThe debate about the role of values on the act of making architecture and their decisive role on the formulation of architectural paradigms, raise the question ‘what these values are and what they stand for’. What do we mean when using the term ‘value’?
Values are conceptions of quality driving human actions. Values obtain their operational expression through principles. In architectural terms, principles as expressions of fundamental values constitute the philosophical background of the creative act, its own beginnings, its own internal law dominating, leading and legitimizing any decision related to the designed form. Values and principles are the ‘arche’, which in Greek also means the beginning as well as the top of a hierarchical system. We could argue that the Greek word architecture also means the construction of ‘arche’, the building of principles. It is interesting to note that these values and principles always represent a particular view of the world, a particular understanding of reality.
As architecture has always got to do with human beings as a reference point to which it is addressed, a central position in this worldview is given to the human being. This is why the city and architecture have always had the human figure as a distant prototype, loved and admired for its beauty (classic period), for its functional perfection (modern movement), for its social differentiation (early seventies), for its cultural identity (post modern), for its unique biological encoding (digital era). According to Jean Pierre Boutinet(6) , it is not possible to think about a project without thinking about the subject, that is to say the person, the human being, who will experience the proposed space; that behind any architectural project there it always exists in the background, a conception of the human being, which directs all actions in the design process. It is equally impossible to think about a project without thinking about the object, that is to say, the substance, the nature and the meaning of what we are trying to do, what we are trying to create. But when we think about the object and the subject, that is to say about the city, architecture and the human being, we have already started thinking about the traject, the trajectory, the design process through which we will achieve the possibility of having this object for that subject. Behind any design process, which by reflecting different conceptualizations of architecture arrives at specific design proposals, there is a reject or rejection always implicitly present. Our design proposals are always rejected and replace something already existing, already established as form and meaningful content. We always have to reconstitute, to change, to develop, to replace, to overcome with our proposed project, something that is insufficient, inadequate, incompetent, and for this reason disqualified.
Speaking about architectural paradigms we mean a characteristic spatial manifestation of a set of values and principles, which is achieved by the use of specific means and tools and is supported by a particular discourse grounded on a specific scientific discipline or doctrine. The contents and the meanings attributed to the subject, the object, the traject and the reject are the fundamental components of an architectural paradigm and at the same time the reference points of any formal expression which visualize and conceptualize that paradigm. As each paradigm has its particular way to understand architecture and architectural design, it becomes apparent that it is accompanied by a particular way to understand architectural education and the teaching of architectural design.
Architectural paradigms are theoretical constructions. For this reason it is very difficult to find them in pure form in architectural practice. They always incorporate aspects, ideas, references, views and tools of other paradigms but they have always some distinct basic conceptions from which their identity emerges. They are seemingly creatively provocative or experimentally innovative, distant from reality or overemphasizing some particular aspects of our social lives, strongly critical to other existing or past paradigms. As established approaches they develop their efficiency to respond to the demands of people, the market and the current debate on architecture. However, due to their exposure to the cultural and financial reality as well as because of the shift of ideas and priorities in our fast changing world, they become the subject of strong critics, which contribute to the generation of a new paradigm.
In the last fifty years we can distinguish six different paradigms in the architectural production. This plethora of worldviews, conceptions of the human being, definitions of architecture and understandings of architectural design perfectly express our changing world and explains the reasons of the growing difficulty to construct a coherent and broadly accepted theoretical discourse on architecture and architectural design.
We will investigate these paradigms by examining the conception of the human being each one of which has as a reference point. We will also consider the way each one defines architectural design as the act of creating architecture and the way these paradigms understand the role of the architect. Finally, we will survey the focus of the theoretical discourses they develop and the disciplines to which they ground their arguments for the qualities of their proposed forms. We will also briefly illuminate how the above paradigms are translated into teaching practices and how the tutors maintaining them indoctrinate their students with different principles, values and conceptualisations of the spatial manifestation of our social and cultural life.
The rational paradigmFor the rational paradigm a human being is primarily a biological being. All humans have the same needs, which architecture has to assure regardless of geography and culture. This is why architectural design is led by an abstract human figure (like Le Corbusier’s modulor man), which can provide the necessary measurements for the design constraints in terms of basic functions and the necessary ergonomics . Architectural design is considered as a decision-making problem solving activity. In order to solve this problem the architect must firstly analyze rationally the information presented in the brief that is to say to de-compose the space to be created in distinct elementary functional units and to identify the relations existing between them. The definition of the main characteristics of those units together with the relations between them gives to the designer the possibility to recompose the analyzed space in a new rational order. Functional diagrams and tables of ranked functional relations are the most frequently used tools in the design process. Rationality and transparency are two fundamental values of the rational paradigm. Architects must be rational.
The main emphasis of the theoretical debate on the design activity focuses on the design process and the design method. The pioneers of this paradigm(8) consider that the act of design is the same in any of its forms and for this reason a universal design method is possibly formulated on the basis of a rational design process. In order to support the formulation of this process, they are based on systems theory, decision theory, mathematics, management techniques and ergonomics.
In the domain of education the most significant competence, which students have to achieve is to be rational, to be objective. Since design is considered as a problem-solving activity, design educational process is mostly focused on the design process. The design studio course is conceived as a scientific laboratory, similar to the one of the positive sciences, where students guided by their tutors, develop rational methods of solving design problems. The main pedagogical orientation to the design education is to teach how to apply design methods.
The creative paradigmThe creative paradigm is structured upon the critics to the previous one(9) . For this paradigm, the human being is not primarily a biological being, but a psychological being; so the building and the city do not constitute a purely functional system, but a system of functional and behavioral units, that are connected by different types and qualities of relationships. Architecture must not function but must facilitate behaviors to develop. Architects must be creative, innovative, subjective, not objective. Design is now considered as an activity of creative expression. Design investigation and research must focus on the designer’s mind and his thoughts as an architect. The request of the design method is no longer oriented towards the definition of the ideal design process but, on the contrary, emphasis is placed on the ways that the architect will be able to generate better ideas.
According to this approach, we must begin by analyzing the functions, in order to decompose the design subject and to define the main issues of the design theme, as in the previous model, but for the synthesis we have to stay intuitive, subjective and even irrational. By using creative ideas we can arrive at metaphors and analogies, which will lead us to the re-composition of the formal aspects of the functions and to the creation of innovative and original forms. Creativity and originality are the two fundamental values of this paradigm.
In the domain of education this paradigm proposes a shift from the system theory and positive sciences to psychology and the behavioral sciences. The studio remains a scientific laboratory but this time it demands an inspiring teacher and not a rational guide. The student is not educated as a problem solver but as a creative personality. The main pedagogical objective is to teach methods increasing the creativity.
The political paradigmThe third paradigm is the political one, which is different again. It conceives the humans not as biological, or psychological, but as social and political beings. Architecture is considered to be an ingredient of society. For this paradigm creating and transforming existing spaces means transforming society. Any intervention on the existing public space constitutes an act with a strong political dimension since it is always articulated with power structures and financial implications. Architecture must express society. The architect is no longer considered as the specialist who can create forms using his specific knowledge. Knowledge is not enough to let him know the real socially and culturally defined needs of the client-citizen. In order to start the design process one has to understand the needs of the client-citizen. Only this person knows what he wants. Between the architect and the client-citizen there exists a ‘symmetry of ignorance’(10) and for this reason the complementarity of their different knowledge is necessary in order to have the design process developed. This process is not conceived as linear, as it was the case in the rational paradigm, not egocentrically spiral, as was the case for the creative paradigm but as an argumentative one where all parties involved in a participatory action must express their will and their argument to support it.
In the participatory paradigm the participation of the users defines the functional and formal constraints for the architect to be taken into account during the design process(11) . The political paradigm considers this form of design process as an expression of democracy based upon the value of respecting the different and the particular. This way it criticized the conception of democracy introduced by the Modern Movement and hosted by the rational paradigm, which was based upon the focus of the common and the universal characteristics of the human being as a biological being. Architects must think politically and must be democratic. Since design is a political action, as a political activity it must focus on the user. In this approach the main research is developed on the level of the way the users’ wishes will be recorded and monitored during the design process. The user-oriented approach is clearly distinct from the process-oriented approach of the rational paradigm and from the insight-oriented approach of the creative paradigm. Democracy, participation and organic development constitute basic values of this paradigm.
As for the education of the architect, this paradigm focuses its pedagogical objectives on the achievement of competences related to the political awareness of the students regarding the implementation of design proposals, and the participation techniques assuring a democratic value in the design activity. To support this educational objective new subject areas appear as dominant in the architectural curricula such as human sciences, political sciences, and statistics accompanied with the relevant tools like questionnaires, social research techniques, statistical data processing etc. The design studio appears to be an environment simulating social conditions in which students are invited to regulate and teachers play the role of the social actors.
The typological paradigmIn the second half of the 20th century, we can recognise the fourth paradigm as being the typological(12) one. It conceives the human being mainly as a cultural being. In its philosophical foundation culture is the main characteristic of a person’s existence, of his or her personality. The city and the building are expressive instruments of a society, and as a consequence architecture and the city must communicate the culture of society. All architects must be sensitive to the cultural aspects of architecture and to create expressive buildings and spaces. Design is not a problem-solving activity, nor a creative expression, nor a political action, but a kind of syntax, a way of speaking, of expressing ourselves through architectural form, through architectural language. Architects must focus on the cultural aspects of place. They have to start by ‘reading’ the signs of the culture in the existing city, to recognize specific formal typologies, to reveal its cultural identity, and then to structure the meaning of the design object, which will later become the guide of their design activity. This will give them the possibility to express culturally the identity of the city through architectural and urban forms.
Architecture must express the humans through the signs of their culture and to create place or rather space with meanings. The primary material on which the architects are invited to work no longer the functional units synthesized through the presence of a design method but the formal meaningful types open to multiple expressive possibilities and articulated according to the meanings they are dedicated to convey.
It is interesting to remark that placing the emphasis on the culturally depended meaning of space, this paradigm marginalized the interest to the design methods, dominating the previous paradigms. Understanding the creative act as a form of (non)linguistic expression, the typological paradigm accepted that the meaning of form, following the Saussurian linguistics, emerges from the ‘paradigmatic’ level (architectural typology) and ‘syntagmatic’ level(13) (space syntax or position of the architectural elements into space) which cannot be limited by the imperative structure of a specific design method. On the contrary, this syntactic process has to remain with no other methodological constraints beyond those related to the ‘grammar’, which will assure a recognizable, by the citizen, relation between spatial signifiers and cultural meanings.
Regarding architectural education, this paradigm introduces to architectural curricula scientific disciplines and arts which can cultivate the expressive abilities of students such as the history of architecture as source of meaningful typologies, history of art, human sciences, semiotics, cinema, gender studies etc. The shift of interest to the design method is accompanied with the implementation of the modularization system, which transforms the studio to an isolated module dedicated to the investigation and experimentation of architectural language. The main educational objective is now to teach students how to manifest cultural meanings using socially recognizable spatial codes and how to achieve the competence to read the space and to syntax meaningful spatial forms.
The individualistic paradigmThe individualistic paradigm is more recent than the previous ones, and appeared in the early eighties. It incorporates the most significant part of architectural production of the eighties and nineties(14). It is based upon a different conception of the human being according to which it is not primarily a cultural being, a social or a political one, nor a psychological or a biological one. A human being is an individual and as an individual he or she has a perception of the reality that nobody can define, prescribe or foresee. Each individual has his or her own identity formulated in time as superimposed layers of personal experiences, psychological factors, and biological particularities. In this condition it is impossible to foresee how an individual will ‘read’ the spatial text in question. For this reason the aim of architecture to become readable does not make sense. On the contrary, architecture cannot but be an individual gesture of its creator. Any spatial form designed by the architect is open to multiple readings by those who will experience or even appropriate it. Therefore, architecture must perform, or must appear as performing these individual conceptions or understandings of the architect who made this creative gesture.
In the context of this paradigm, an architect must behave as an individual, must create his or her own expressive code, and must be different from the other architects. Design is an activity generating spatial forms on the basis of personal ideas, and for this reason the formulation of these ideas in a form of a concept, a notion or a tale appears to be of crucial importance for the design practice. The necessity to manifest personal contents affects the elevated presence of a discursive part of the design process. As the philosophical background of the project becomes increasingly personal, this discursive part is transformed into an inseparable part of the architectural creation assuring the understanding of the designed architectural object.
According to this paradigm, architectural design is no longer conceived as the syntax of meaningful formal elements as was the case in the previous paradigm. Influenced by the poststructuralist discourses contesting the inherent coherence of the meaning of a text, architects tend to see architectural design as an articulation of distinct layers representing different aspects of architectural form defined and performed following the contents of the discursive part of the design process.
In the domain of design education this paradigm promotes the development of the design identity of the student by emphasizing the ability to develop an articulated discourse on the design subject as well as on the skillful ‘translation’ of the contents of this discourse into architectural forms. In this case the design studio becomes the place where this design identity is formulated primarily by the intensive work of the student and the constructive presence of the tutor acting as a facilitator.
The digital paradigm The digital paradigm is rather a case under-construction as an extended experimentation is under development accompanied by the parallel advancement of information technology. Nevertheless, we can note that behind the different forms and discourses produced in the context of the digital experimentation a new figure of human being emerges. This time the human as alive is admired for its generation on the basis of a genetic code responsible for all his mental and formal characteristics. Human beings are made up on the basis of their DNA and it is the DNA that makes human beings different. The DNA is a kind of codified expression of something, which exists as encoded information.
As architecture and the city always mirror the image of human beings, they must also be generated after their own genetic code. This is the code that the architect has to produce. The work of the architect-designer is to produce this kind of genetic code. Architecture must no longer express the culture, the society, the political system, the individual creativity, the functions or its organic nature, but architecture must live, must stay alive, sensitive to the constantly changing parameters its generation is dependent upon. For this reason, architects must be the creators of the genetic codes of the spaces to be generated. These codes will direct the form generation, the morphogenesis, with the decisive support of technology. In order to achieve this objective, architects have to design the form-generator software or invent the algorithm, which practically corresponds to the design of the method through which the designed space will obtain its form. The emphasis is now shifted from the meaningful content of space to the creation of the genetic code of its evolution. Having the software prepared, they have to translate their individual ideas into parameters and start the design process by defining the powerful aspects that influence the space on which they have to work. This system will be open-ended and free to generate its own forms or to generate the forms that architects wish to design.
This shift of priorities and orientations, introduce new domains of knowledge to architectural education. Biology and computer scripting as well as training on specific software not related to representation increasingly appear in the basic courses of architectural curricula. The use of computers no longer as a draftsman but as a collaborator who undertakes to complete part of the design process becomes increasingly clear to students. However, it is interesting to note the resistance of the existing educational environment to incorporate the new logics and philosophical background of the digital paradigm.
Changing ArchitecturesThe overview of recent architectural paradigms discussed, shows that each one of them maintains an internal coherence between the value systems driving architectural design, the conception of architecture and the definition of architectural design. This coherence directly affects the way that architects approach the design activity, the means and the tools they employ in the design process and the nature of the argument they retrieve to legitimize their decisions. It seems that each paradigm constitutes a different world, a different environment for contemplation and action.
As mentioned in the outset, our investigation was based on the hypothesis that the conception of the human being constitutes a central element of a worldview. We focused on this investigation and more particularly on this aspect of the worldview, as behind each architectural expression there is always a human figure driving architects thoughts and actions. From the survey of the paradigms we can recognise six different conceptions of the human. The rational paradigm prioritized its biological dimension, the creative its psychological one, the political its social dependence, the typological its cultural identity, the individualistic paradigm its integrity as an individual and the digital its genetic characteristics as a live organism.
In the same way we detected entirely different conceptions about architecture and its relation to the human beings to which it is addressed. The rational paradigm expects from architecture to function like the biological needs of the user. The creative paradigm wants architecture to behave, that is, to permit all possible human (psychologically dependent) behaviors in the designed space. The political paradigm demands from architecture to manifest the social dimension of the group it is addressed to and the typological one to express through architectural forms the cultural identity and the references of the place. The individualistic paradigm requests from architecture to perform like an individual actor in the non-contextual stage of a multilingual society. Finally, the digital paradigm imagines architecture to be a living body, a hyper-body capable to be adapted and transformed according to the stimuli-constraints from its broader social and natural environment.
To function, to behave, to express, to mean, to perform, to live, are not only different values that architectural creation is expected to fulfill but mainly completely different conceptions of architecture.
This is why all of them propose different definitions of design. Design as a problem solving activity (rational paradigm) is not the same with the conception of architectural design as a creative act (creative paradigm). Design as an argumentative political action (political paradigm) is not the same with the conception of architectural design as the syntax of cultural meanings (typological paradigm). Architectural design as an individual performance of the building (and its architect) is not the same with design as a genetic mechanism imitating the alive. All these different definitions of the design activity introduce different design processes. The rational paradigm suggests starting from the rational analysis of the given constraints of the site and the brief. The creative one considers that we have to start from feeling the space to be designed. The political one demands to understand the social demands and implications of our decisions while the typological paradigm advocates starting by the attentive reading of the existing spatial texts. The individualistic paradigm, more egocentric, in order to make the performance more impressive, requests to start from a radical reconsideration or deconstruction of the established understandings of the spatial forms and meanings. Finally, the digital paradigm introduces as the beginning of the design process the programming of the generative mechanism. Analyze, feel, understand, read, deconstruct, create an algorithm are not only different verbs and descriptions of the beginning of the design process. They are rather profound values conducting different design strategies.
Differentiated design strategies deploy different design tools and means. Functional diagrams, brainstorming charts, questionnaires, typological analysis of forms, layers exposing critically hidden assumptions or contradictions, programming diagrams, scripts and algorithms compose entirely divergent environments of action supported by varying subject areas and knowledge. Systems theory, decision theory, mathematics, ergonomics stand for the legitimization background of the design activity in the rational paradigm, psychology, behaviorism and ergonomics for the creative, human and political sciences for the political, history and semiotics, gender studies for the typological one, philosophy, visual arts, cinema for the individualistic one and finally biology and computer sciences for the digital.
Concerning the focal point of the design research we can see that it is far from remaining stable. The design method was the dominant subject in the case of the rational paradigm, the brain of the architect for the creative one, the expectations of the users for the political one, the meaning of place for the typological one, the manifestation of personal meanings in the individualistic one and finally the design of the method as a parametric code of generating spatial forms for the digital paradigm.
We are experiencing a fast-changing world with an extremely rapid emergence of new ideas, new philosophical and ideological positions, new conceptions of the world but in the same time with new means and technical possibilities. One of the most significant consequences of this condition is that in our days, different value systems coexist side by side. In contemporary architectural creation as well as in the domain of architectural education we are introduced to entirely different approaches to architecture, to architectural design and to architectural education. In this multidirectional environment the debate on architecture and architectural critique often does not seem to have agreed assumptions, thus rendering the exchange confusing and the agreements limited. The approach of this extended complexity of aspects and practices about architecture through the concept of architectural paradigms gives to the researcher and the designer the possibility to have a clearer view and a better understanding. Since each paradigm corresponds to a different value system a better knowledge of the set of values of each one of them would give us the capacity to better know the motivations of the different contemporary architectural expressions.
Notes
1. Cf. Foque, R. 1982: Beyond Design Methods – Arguments for a Practical Design Theory. In Evans, B., Powell, J. Talbot, R. Changing Design. John Wiley & Sons, Chinchester.
2. We use the term paradigm according the way defined by Thomas Kuhn in Kuhn, T. 1962: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), University of Chicago Press, 1962. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications that come with it.
3. An intresting presentation of transformations of the humans’ conception cf. Benoist, J.-M. 1980: La révolution structurale, Paris Denoël/Gothier Méditations.
4. We can just refer to publications such as Jones, Ch. (Ed) 1970: Design Methods. Seeds of Human Futures, John Wiley, London or Broadbent, G and Ward, A. (Eds) 1969: Design Methods in Architecture, Lund Hamphries, London or Gregory, S. (Ed) 1966: The Design Method. Batterworths, London.
5. A typical case is the review “Design Methods and Theories”, published by the Design Method Group and the Design Research Society in USA.
6. Jean-Pierre Boutinet (1993): Psychologie des conduites du projet. Que sais-je No 2770, Paris, PUF.
7. This paradigm corresponds to the late versions of Modernism in the end of fifties and sixties
8. We could mention the source: Christopher Jones, Sydney Gregory, Bruch Archer and Christopher Alexander with his Notes on the Synthesis of Form first published in 1965.
9. This paradigm appears by the end of the sixties and it is mainly supported by architects like Geoffrey Broadbent who considered that the elimination of the subjective and intuitive parameters of architectural design promoted by the rational paradigm excluded the creativity and the originality as fundamental values of architectural creation. Cf. Broadbent, G. 1979: Design and Theory Building in Design Methods and Theories, 13 (3/4) pp: 103-107.
10. This is a term introduced by Hors Rittel, one of the pioneers of the theoretical elaborations of the design activity of this specific paradigm Rittel H. 1972: On the Planning Crisis: Systems Analysis of the First and Second Generations. Dedrifsøkonomen 8: 390-396
11. The contribution of Christopher Alexander to the formulation of this paradigm is very significant. His book on Pattern Language, (Alexander, Ch. 1977: The Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford) could be considered as the most extended theoretical and elaborated contribution on the political paradigm. The same way, John Habraken, Lucien Kroll and Yona Friedman elaborated the European version of this paradigm.
12. The most significant pioneers of this paradigm is the neo-rationalist school around Aldo Rossi and Carlo Aymonino, the post-modernists of the New Urbanism like Krier brothers, and finally the French version of this paradigm with main representatives Jean Castex and Philippe Panerrai.
13. Cf. Barthes, R. Elements de la Semiologie. Communications 4, 91-135.
14. The limited length of this text does not allow for a detailed investigation of this paradigm in a way that someone could better understand the internal tendencies and differentiation such as the deconstructive approach the minimal aproach and the architectural production of very significant architects like Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, Hertzog and De Meuron, and others. We dwell on the most general characteristics, which create a broader umbrella of ideas and directions.
