Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory

by Jonathan A. Hale

This book is an essential text for students of architecture and related disciplines, satisfying the demand for an accessible introduction to the major theoretical debates in contemporary architecture.

Written in a lucid and user-friendly style, the book also acts as a guide and companion volume to the many primary theoretical texts recently made available in reprinted collections. Whilst architectural monographs, collections of building precedents and polemical manifestos are growing more and more numerous, Building Ideas is the first book to provide an introduction to such a broad range of issues in architectural theory.

This text therefore serves to fill a widening gap between the everyday practice of architecture and the often bewildering field of academic theoretical debate. Beginning with a general introduction to the field of architectural theory, covering the interface between philosophy and technology in the production and interpretation of buildings, the book presents the major theoretical positions in contemporary architecture through a series of thematically structured chapters. Each chapter deals with a specific approach to the theory and criticism of architecture by presenting a series of related buildings as illustrations of a key theoretical position, as well as setting this position in a cultural and historical context.

Under the five broad headings of 'Architecture as Engineering - The Technological Revolution', 'Architecture as Art - Aesthetics in Philosophy', 'The Return of the Body - Phenomenology in Architecture', 'Systems of Communication - Structuralism and Semiotics' and 'Politics and Architecture - The Marxist Tradition', the book presents a wide but critical survey of the central questions in the current theoretical debate. Providing the theoretical tools necessary for an understanding of the history of philosophies and technologies in architecture, this book is essential reading for undergraduate architectural theory courses as well as a first point of reference for anyone wishing to understand the complex connections between architecture and related fields of cultural enquiry.

Genres: Architecture

252 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

Prof Jonathan Hale is an architect, and Professor of Architectural Theory in the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Nottingham, UK.

He is Head of the Architecture, Culture and Tectonics research group (ACT) and Convenor for Architectural Humanities II, and Design, Culture & Context modules.

Research interests include: architectural theory and criticism; phenomenology and the philosophy of technology; the relationship between architecture and the body; museums and architectural exhibitions.

He has published books, chapters, refereed articles and conference papers in these areas and has obtained grants from the EPSRC, the Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, and the Arts Council. He is founder and current steering group member of the international subject network: Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA); a member of the interdisciplinary Science, Technology and Culture research group, hosted by the Dept of French, and a Management Board member for the University's Research Priority Area in Creative and Cultural Industries.

Personal website/blog: bodyoftheory

Personal page on Academia.edu

Reviews

[nil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the first part. Although provides many important historical context is laid out in a hard to understand messy way, failing to tie the content together and provide a reliable opinion or conclusion.

[Dmytro Izotov]

Reading now,
Provides an intersting historical review of major ideas in the development of industrial age thinking

[Eleanor Gardiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great as a textbook for our philosophy module. At times the language is hard to keep up with but the content is very interesting. Only properly academic book I've ever enjoyed reading.

[Majd Momani · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of papers and projects edited three women – the first two of them are Architectural critics and the third is a political critic but all of them are concerned in woman issues and feminism - work on the relationship among gender, woman, and architecture.
"What is outside is not simply the Other" a quote by JUDITH BUTLER was used in the beginning of the introduction followed by an explanation to reduce the negative first impression of the title of the book due to the bad reputation of "feminism" which is often misunderstood and linked with bad interpretations like "man-haters".
They also discussed the widely disdaining of "woman architect" as many women searching for approbation in this field disassociate themselves from talk of gender issues to avoid being understood as feminist.
when trying to trace the structure of this book, the introduction includes: "What does this work look like? by what methods is it induced? with what languages is it studied? these questions are best left unsettled", perhaps the wide field of the study dissolves answering these questions, but it might be useful for the editors to review some of the earlier works in this field to try to establish a possible solid way of thinking.
the interdisciplinary related issues of the book articles includes theory, contemporary art, literature, practical projects and even mythology which open various areas of inquiry. all the articles taken together represent a new wave of feminist debate in architecture, one that looks at architecture as a productive of gender identity, and other that analyzes built environments to interpret how they implicit exclusions on gender.
some of the articles are individually interesting, personally I appreciate "Grete Lihotzky and the Frankfurt Kitchen" for Susan R. Henderson which shows how new designs for kitchens in Germany modeled housewives as factory workers whose only hope for escaping hard work, depending on the scientific management of household tasks. This article include the role of women in architectural practice and the ways architecture has served to contain women and provided more progressive designs to support different women's lives.
Edith Wharton, The Decoration of Houses, and Gender in Turn-of the Century-America" as described by Vanessa Chase, discussed how a space like Edith Wharton's home "the Mount" made some changes to the traditional gendering of many of its rooms to allow for expanded female power.
"Everyday and "Other" Spaces" for MARY McLEOD is a study on social and political limitations of contemporary architecture which proposes to apply "everyday life" concept in architecture as a solution for these limitations.
"The bodily is feminist" is a claim by DEBORAH FAUSCH in her article "The Knowledge of the Body and the Presence of History" which within she considered phenomenology architecture as "feminist", but I don’t agree with this claim. I think this is just adhering feminist on something that I may not interpret as feminist.
the potential of this publication to try to change the practice of architecture and the way of inhabiting built spaces. Each of these articles provide a fairly useful and questioning introduction to the reader. Taken together make a starting point which will need more detailed studies of architecture and feminism.

[Tom M (London) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The British scholar Jonathan Hale, whose punctilious scholarship shows the influence of a rigorous American tradition, starts his book by tracking the development through Western thought from Leonardo da Vinci to Copernicus, Bacon, Descartes and Archigram, of the idea that the universe is a machine, cities are machines, buildings are machines, we are machines. British architects remain blinkered by this view; they see everything as technology. Hale suggests - correctly, I think - that their need for a single reliable idea of the world is part of a British philosophical isolation that may be a consequence of Victorian utilitarianism: a techno-fetish that leads to the twisted belief that architecture is the same thing as engineering.

Identifying this British techno-idiocy as the starting point for his critique, Hale’s argument widens into a masterly discourse that is cosmopolitan in its sweep and lucid in its interpretations. He identifies architecture’s authentic focus in the philosophical science of aesthetics and relocates architecture among the arts, addressing problems of beauty, meaning, language, and representation. Looking at the work of many designers - Wright, Venturi, Soleri, Frei Otto, Libeskind, Christopher Alexander - he develops the proposition that architecture should be understood not as technology but as a form of communication.

In Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, the architect can (though her/his work) acquiescently help to consolidate the "structures of deception" or, alternatively, may notice that the very act of designing is a liberating experience. Thinking about this discovery - that by simply designing/creating something that wasn't there before, one is exercising freedom - Hale mentions Michel Foucault, who analysed how the powerful keep this process under control (in the case of architecture, by way of many planning and regulatory constraints that are imposed by politicians). On the same theme, the Italian critic Manfredo Tafuri contended that artists may aim at revolution, but will inevitably be assimilated to become collaborators. Tafuri’s contention is deeply troubling, especially if we consider that when an architect "collaborates" (think of Louis Kahn) the opposite may be true: that a meaningful architecture can make institutions visible, accessible, and communicative.

Hale’s interesting selection of photographs makes the telling point that from Jorn Utzon to Renzo Piano, from Hans Scharoun to Zaha Hadid, architecture has been in retreat from the earliest revolutionary positions of modernism.

With these argumentations Hale transports the reader into a rich area of critical thought about what architecture is, what it’s for, what it means, and how its meanings are communicated and received. He examines how the figure of the architect in society has evolved, looking into Marx and Gramsci. He says that after Heidegger, Saussure, and Derrida, we can think of architecture semiotically: as a "text" of "signs" that have meanings. But can we consciously design in that way, intentionally trying to communicate a particular message? The Po-Mo "architecture of signs" of Robert Venturi or Robert A. M. Stern has shown how problematic that question is. Discussing architecture as signs also makes it impossible for us to get to grips with a rather large and important matter: the city. Cities are not discussed by Hale; a grave omission. Another book, perhaps?

Nevertheless, by offering a framework for discussing architecture that is not techno-obsessed, Hale's fresh and provocative (re)presentation of architecture’s ideological and philosophical background will be welcomed by students as a general reader. Dangerous stuff to be putting into young minds, and the sooner the better.

[عبدُالعزيز · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jonathan writes in a very plain yet deep manner that illustrates the pivotal point of concepts and ideas.
So even if you have nothing to do with architecture, I would recommend this book as an introduction to some of the most prominent ideas of the 20th century in philosophy and literature.