In an earlier piece (Pitt, 2006b) I contrasted criteria for successful design in architecture with that in engineering. I argued there, among other things, that with the advent of “postmodern historicism” in architecture, beginning in the 1970s with the work of Venturi, there ceased to be operative criteria to evaluate architectural design and I made a first step towards outlining what such criteria might look like in the current age. I suggested that:
– Variation is important, but not variation that negates everything else. The Pompidou Center in Paris is an example of this.– Harmony is important, but not harmony to the point of boredom. An example of a harmonious but boring architectural creation is the Levittown type suburban housing development in the United States.
In this chapter I elaborate those ideas, contrasting them with traditional canonical criteria, and offer some additional criteria in an effort to capture this fundamental idea: that architectural design must strive to make architectural projects work in context, given their functions. In short, I will develop a design objective called “Common Sense Design”, based in part on some of the suggestions William James makes in his 1907 Lectures on Pragmatism. In part this involves developing the idea that certain designs have managed to survive relative to the domain in which they were developed and that we should learn from them. This is an argument against universalist principles of design, focusing on not just the locality of the site, but, rather, on the insights we can glean from the indigenous culture. As an example I will end by considering the Michael Graves complex in The Hague, which, from a distance, is a success, but, in context and in impact, appears, on one interpretation, to be a failure. Seen in another light, Graves’ complex can be favorably compared to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum.
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References
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Pitt, J.C. (2008). Design Criteria in Architecture. In: Philosophy and Design. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6591-0_24
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