Abstract:

An architectural language is a set of vocabulary items and rules of composition which regulate the production of forms (Mitchell, 1990; Moussavi, 2009).
The idea architects should use a particular language in all their design projects is very common in architectural schools. But why students shouldn’t learn to work with multiple languages instead?
Some famous architects used different languages even for the same function. A good example are the pavilions designed by Le Corbusier for Phillips and for Heidi Weber. The functions were the same, but the languages were different!
We describe here an experience, in a first-year design studio teaching, to answer the following questions: how can we help students understand there is more than one language suitable for designing a building? How can we encourage students to design with a variety of languages? How can digital design help them?
We answered these questions by assigning the students the task of designing three different buildings: an office, a restaurant, and an exhibition pavilion.
Different architectural language requirements were presented for each of these design briefs. Students were introduced to precedents complying with the language requirements of each building. They were required to research additional precedents using certain key phrases.
The language vocabulary and rules for each project were: 1. Office: rectangular planes that must be predominantly parallel or perpendicular to each other; 2. Restaurant: irregular polygon planes that must be predominantly nonparallel or non-perpendicular to each other; 3. Pavilion: double curvature surfaces that must rest on the ground or in other double curvature.
Students were taught parametric modeling (Woodburry, 2010) and BIM (Sacks et al, 2018), digital fabrication (Kolarevic, 2003; Iwamoto, 2009) and mass customization (Kolarevic & Duarte, 2018), besides traditional methods and tools, so that solutions would be innovative and constructable.
This article describes and analyzes the results of twelve years of using this approach to architectural design studio teaching. The results are promising, indicating a growing degree of new knowledge and innovation.

References:
[1] Iwamoto, L. (2009) Digital Fabrications – Architectural and Material Techniques. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
[2] Kolarevic, B. (2003) Architecture in the Digital Age – Design and Manufacturing. Taylor and Francis, New York and London.
[3] Kolarevic, B., Duarte, J. P. (2018) Mass Customization and Design Democratization, Routledge, London.
[4] Mitchell, W. J. (1990) The logic of architecture: Design, computation, and cognition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
[5] Moussavi, Farshid (2009) The function of form. Actar and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
[6] Sacks, R., Eastman, C., Lee, G., Teicholz, P. (2018) BIM Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Woodburry, R. (2010) Elements of Parametric Design. Routledge, London.

Keywords:

Architectural languages, design requirements, design brief, teaching, digital design, innovation.