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11/3/15, 7:09 PMUnified Architectural Theory: Chapter 9B | ArchDaily

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Unified Architectural Theory: Chapter 9B

We will be publishing Nikos Salingaros book, Unified Architectural Theory, in a series of

installments, making it digitally, freely available for students and architects around the world.

In the following chapter, Salingaros continues his discussion of Christopher Alexander's

Mirror of the Self test introduced in Chapter 9A, and revealing how it can be used to

provide all-important feedback to enable evidence-based design. If you missed them, make

sure to read the previous installments here.

Evidence-based design is now fast becoming a standard tool used in school design. (See

Peter C. Lippman: Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2010).

And yet its current application, while laudable, is missing the other key components

necessary for adaptive design: Biophilia, Intelligence in the environment (two topics

discussed in this book), and Pattern Language. All of these have to work together to give

optimal design results.

Evidence-based design permits an architect to evaluate a design, and variations of that

design, to see if they contribute to human wellbeing. This makes possible informed choices

that push and guide a design towards a more adaptive final form. We know the result is

going to be more adaptive since we check each intermediate stage of an evolving design.

The second aspect of evidence-based design is the use of feedback. In practical terms,

adaptive design proceeds by iterations, where each step is checked against the evidence of

increasing or decreasing wellbeing. The process does not use a formula, nor does it

conform to any abstract rules or images. A design adapts through recursions, with

physiological indicators checking every step in the process.

Clearly, this method works best when we make the design process an evolutionary one,

with many adjustable steps. It doesnt work at all in cases where the architect or designer

reaches a solution in one step. Where is the adaptation there? There is none.

Neither can evidence-based design work in an architectural practice where designs conform

to untested prototypes. Why are some, now standard, building typologies copied over and

over, but are never tested for evidence of their adaptation? It doesnt occur to those

architects to undertake medical response experiments just to make sure that what they are

doing is not making people ill. Those untested environments may in fact be stressful or

otherwise harmful to their users. The problem is that architects are not at present trained to

he Pruitt-Igoe Development in St. Louis. "Had people consistently applied the mirror of the

elf test, we would probably have avoided some of the inhuman environments built over the

past several decades. One such typology is the extremely long apartment block, which

houses thousands of people in a box of about eight stories". Image US Geological Survey

via Flickr CC User Michael Allen

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04 APR2015by Nikos Salingaros

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measure physiological indicators.

Unhealthy designs have something in common: they conform to some a priori image or

abstract conception of what a building ought to look like. Someone provided the image

initially, and everyone else happily copies that image without reflective thought. This visual

iconic model is so authoritative as to be placed above the need for evidence. Indeed, if the

evidence comes in negative, the original model is supported with religious zeal, while the

evidence itself is dismissed. Architects cannot accept failures, being too proud to admit they

made a mistake.

The mirror of the self test can help reverse this unfortunate practice. Any person can be

trained to use it. There is thus no need to be wired up to physiological indicators that would

measure body stress levels. Those detect a failed design unambiguously. Anybody can use

the test to distinguish between two environments, one of which is more or less healing.

Had people consistently applied the mirror of the self test, we would probably have

avoided some of the inhuman environments built over the past several decades. One such

typology is the extremely long apartment block, which houses thousands of people in a box

of about eight stories. From the prototype built by the Nazis on the island of Rgen,

Germany, to the Pruitt-Igoehousing complex in St. Louis, to the Corviale complex in Rome,

all have been failures.

Such examples of typologies based on low design complexity cannot adapt to human use

and sensibilities. Their architects forgot about people, or were well-meaning but didnt know

what they were doing. Design became an intellectual exercise in pure form - unfortunately,

builders adopted this typology because it is cheap to build. The typology becomes money-

driven.

Simplistic forms may ignore peoples humanity, yet are loved by todays architects who

value them on aesthetic grounds. But formal purity and simplicity have no meaning for the

users. Ordinary people are not caught up in architects intellectual games. By contrast, we

see an incredible degree of organized complexity when people build for themselves, as in

Informal housing in Bogot, Colombia. "Ordinary people are not caught up in architects

intellectual games. By contrast, we see an incredible degree of organized complexity when

people build for themselves, as in informal settlements". Image Laura Amaya

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Cite:

Nikos Salingaros. "Unified Architectural Theory: Chapter 9B" 04 Apr 2015. ArchDaily. Accessed 3 Nov 2015.

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informal settlements, which are perhaps less than optimally organized. Those represent the

opposite of formal design.

The problem boils down to critics judging buildings from their image, and not from direct

personal experience. Critics on the whole dont care if things work, or if they really fit. Critics

also depend upon famous architects, and on the major engineering firms those architects

work with, and thus never dare to criticize their work. Architects designing strictly for the

admiration of other architects, and critics being dishonest in their duty results in a profession

that is unlikely to break out of a vicious circle of irresponsible self-validation.

So far during the 20th and now the 21st centuries, the seductive power of iconic images has

overridden all other considerations. Rigid geometrical typologies are applied unthinkingly.

Even worse, bad typologies are used as the basis for architectural innovation, but the new

shapes unfortunately carry over all the worst characteristics of the parent. Evidence-based

design and the mirror of the self test can help us to get free from this unproductive

practice.

Order the International edition of Unified Architectural Theory here, and the US

edition here.
https://store.collectivecopies.com/store/show/ofc1http://www.vajrabookshop.com/more_info.php?category_cd=39&product_cd=1730&MODE=CART

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