The Architectural Project: 6 (Studies in Architecture and Culture) - Tapa dura

The Architectural Project considers the practice of architectural design as it has developed during the last two centuries. In this challenging interpretation of design education and its effect on design process and products, Argentinean scholar Alfonso Corona-Martonez emphasizes the distinction between an architectural project, created in the architect's mind and materialized as a set of drawings on paper, and the realized three-dimensional building. Corona-Martonez demonstrates how representation plays a substantial role in determining both the notion and the character of architecture, and he traces this relationship from the Renaissance into the Modern era, giving detailed considerations of Functionalism and Typology. His argument clarifies the continuity in the practice of design method through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a continuity that has been obscured by the emphasis on changing goals instead of design procedures. Architectural schooling, he suggests, has had a decisive role in the transmission of these practices. He concludes that the methods formalized in Beaux Arts teaching are not only still with us but are in good part responsible for the stylistic instability that haunts Modern architecture. The Architectural Project presents subtle considerations that must be mastered if an architect is to properly use typology, the means of representation, and the elements of composition in architecture. Students, teachers, and practitioners alike will benefit from the author's insights.

ALFONSO CORONA-MARTINEZ teaches architectural design and theory at Belgrano University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The original Spanish-language edition of this study was first published in Argentina in 1990; this translation provides a completely revised version of the text.