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METHODOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF DELIGHTGeoffrey BroadbentHead of School of ArchitecturePortsmouth PolytechnicKing Henry 1 StreetPortsmouth POI DYAbstract

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This paper discusses the f l ight from rat ional i ty , the social and pol i t ica l reasonswhich prompted some of the more notable exponents of design method to withdraw fromthe f ield . I t then discusses the characteris t ics which a l l buildings wil l have interms of the Hil l i e r , Musgrove, O'Sullivan four function model , suggesting thateven where user-part icipat ion extends to eliminating the special is t designer al together , the creative mechanisms by which 3-dimensional form is generated wil l remainwhat they have been throughout history: pragmatic, iconic, analogic, canonic. Theseprovide a basis for analysing the procedures adopted by a highly creative group ofbuilding designers: the Taller de Arquitectura of Barcelona, whose working methodsenable many people, including non-architects, to part ic ipate in the design process.IntroductionAsked some time ago to write a s ta te of the art piece on design methods for Perspecta 15, I was tempted to reply: There is nothing to say; design method is dead .(1) I t certain ly seemed so a t the time, especial ly as some of i t s major exponentshad withdrawn from the f ield , s tat ing fai r ly potent reasons for doing so.These were rooted in that dr if t from rat ional i ty which seems to have permeatedWestern cul tural l i f e in the l as t f ive years or so. With the vogue for part icipat ion the bel ief that any attempt by the expert the ar t i s t designer to fois this views on the long-suffering public should be strenuously res is ted , and the meansby which he does i t suppressed. Design methods, in th is view, formed part of thatfoisting mechanism.The Nature of BuildingsBut whoever actual ly does the design, however democratic the procedures by which adesign is achieved, the finished building actual ly wil l display certain characteri s t ics which were outlined by Hil l i e r , Musgrove and O'Sullivan a t EDRA 3. (2) Thesemay be summarised as follows:-Any building whether we l ike i t or not, and whether the designer(s) intend(s) i t toor not, wil l : -1. Enclose spaces for certain human purposes. The actual division of spaces mayfac i l i ta te or inhibit specif ic human ac t iv i t ies , i t may also provide securi ty.2. Modify the external climate thus providing conditions in which human beings may

be more or less comfortable. in visual, thermal and actual terms.3. Act as a system of signs or symbols into which people may read meanings4. Modify the values of the materials from which i t is bui l t , the land on which i tstands and possibly of the adjacent propert ies.

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At one level, these are mere truisms, yet they do provide a useful check l i s t againstwhich the designers ' ordering of pr io r i t i es can be assessed, thus forming a basis forthe cri t ic ism of buildings in design and of completed buildings.And even i f th is four-function model l ike most so-called theories of architecture,is merely a polemic, i t describes very effect ively , the characteris t ics which some ofus think archi tecture ought to have.Modes of DesigningI t may be, however, that the nearest we shall ever get to a theory of archi tecturewil l be a theory of design-behaviour which predicts with probabi l i t ies the waysin which architects , or anyone else who t r ies to generate 3-dimensional bui l t formwill act whilst they are actually t rying to design. Certain mechanisms to havebeen used, in th is context, by designers throughout history; stallting long before therewere any professional architects . I have described these elsewhere(3)(4) (5) and canonly summarise them here:Pragmatic design in which materials are used, by t r ia l -and-error unt i l a formemerges which seems to serve the designers ' purpose. Most forms of building seemto have s tarted in this JaY. Mongait (6) i l lus t ra tes an early example; a mammothhunter 's tent excavated a t Pushkari near Novgorod-Seversk made from the availablebuilding materials: some rather spindly t rees , some small stones and af ter that thebones, tusks and skins of the mammoths; a l l that was l e f t af te r the meat had beeneaten. The s i te as excavated, suggested that the mammoth hunters had bui l t threeinterlocking tepee-l ike frames from the available timbers and perhaps from the mammothtusks. They had then la id mammoth skins over th is framework, weighting down the edgeswith stones and the bones. So the most improbable of materials were used to form avery effect ive shel ter; the available resources were allowed to determine the form.We s t i l l tend to use th is mode of designing whenever we have to use new materials, asin the case, say, of plast ic air houses and suspension structures. I t is only veryrecently, af te r two decades of pragmatic design, that theoret ical bases for the designof such structures are beginning to emerge.Iconic design in which the members of a part icular culture share a fixed mentalimage of what the design should be l ike . Often encouraged in primitive u l t u ~ e sby legend, t radit ion, work-songs which describe the design process (7) by the mutualadaption which has taken place between ways of l i f e and building form as with theEskimo's igloo and by the conventions of craftsmanship which take a long time tolearn but, once learned, are diff icul t to abandon. We s t i l l set up icons such asBunshaft 's Lever House in New York (1952) which became the fixed mental image for ageneration of archi tects and cl ients as to what office buildings should be l ike.User-part icipation is perhaps the most potent mechanism of al l for the repet i t ion ofdesign icons.Analogical design the drawing of analogies usually visual into the solution ofone's design problems. This seems to have s tarted with Imhotep (c.2,800 Be) indesigning the Step Pyramid complex a t Sakkara; given the problem of building, for thef i r s t time, in large blocks of stone, he drew visual analogies with existing bricktomb-forms, timber-framed and reed-mat houses, for the overall building forms, withlotus buds or flowers and snakes heads for the decoration, and so on. Analogy s t i l lseems to be the mechanism of creative archit ecture, as with Wright 's use of waterl i ly forms in the Johnson Wax factory office (1936), his own hands a t prayer in the

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316 ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN RESEARCH VOL. 2Madison, Wisconsin Chapel (1950) not to mention Le Corbusier 's crab-shell roof ofRonchamp. These are direct analogies (8). Much 20th century archi tecture has drawnon painting and sculpture as sources of analogies, (Constructivism, Purism, de St i j l ) ;but analogies can also be drawn with one's own body (personal analogy) and withabstract , philosophical concepts (as in the present preoccupation with indeterminacy).Analogical design requires the use of some medium such as a drawing, for t ranslat ingthe original into i t s new form. The f i r s t Egyptian design drawings date from the sameperiod as Imhotep's pyramid complex and the drawing i t se l f begins to suggest possibi l i t i e s to the designer. e sets up grids and/or axes to make sure that his drawingwill f i t on to the available surface; these suggest regular i t ies - symmetries andrhythms - which had not appeared previously in archi tecture. Any design analogue -a drawing, model, or even a computer program, will take over from the designers andinf luence the way they design.Canonic design - the grids and axes of these early design drawings took on a l i f e ofthei r own; i t became clear that the second-rate ar t i s t s could emulate the work of amaster by abstracting from i t the underlying systems of proportion. Once th is viewhad been formed - that ar t and design could be underpinned by abstract proportionalsystems - i t received a massive boost from the Greek geometers (Pythagoras) andClassical philosophers (Plato, etc.) who believed that the universe i t se l f was constructed of cubes, tetrahedra, icosahedra and dodecahedra and that these in turn weremade up of t r iangles . The Platonic t r iangles underlay medieval Gothic design (9) .Whilst much 20th century design has been based on similar precepts; i t is the basisof al l modular systems, dimensional co-ordination, prefabricated systems buildingand so on. New mathematical techniques and computer aids are l ikely to boost evenfurther this in tereet in the abstract Geometry of Environment (see book of that t i t l e00 \ApplicationsI have shown elsewhere (11) that these four modes of designing; pragmatic, iconic,ana logic and canonic, seem to underl ie a l l the ways in which archi tectural form hasbeen, or can be generated. These may be used singly or in combination and, takingAlexander's point that the most convincing demonstration of a design methodology isi t s actual practice, I should l ike to demonstrate how - without being a t al l familiarwith the terms, a highly imaginative form of building designers - the Taller deArquitectura of Barcelona - have actual ly developed a methodology which combines them(12).Only one of the Taller is fully qualified, with a Spanish Licence to practice. Theothers include poets, writers , musicians, a sociologist , an economist and so on.They seek to avoid the bleak s ter i l i ty of most current mass housing and th is hasinvolved them in a continuing reassessment, a t many levels, of what i t means to l ivein ci t ies, what i t is that makes them at t ract ive, how housing can be planned in sucha way that at any moment people can choose between privacy and part icipat ion in thecommunity. All th is has been building up to the massive project for a Ciudad en e lEspacio for Madrid, a project which has yet to be real ised , although in workingtowards i t , the Taller have produced some impressive enough resul ts . These includethe Barrio Gaudi, a low cost , high density neighbourhood (1965 to date) a t ~ a u d i sbirthplace, Reus, near Tarragona; Kafka's Castle an apartment hotel behind Sitges(1966); and La Manzanera, a holiday vil lage at Calpe near Benidorm (1965 to date).Other projects include Le Cheval de Monaco their entry for a competition won byArchigram in 1969; La Peti te a t h e ~ r a l e for the new town of Cergy-Pontoise nearParis and Walden 7 for the Tal ler s own s i te in Barcelona. The l as t two are in f inalstages of planning and will be s tarted on s i te during 1973.

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318 / ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN RESEARCH VOL. 2these in various ways and eliminate those which can t be clustered; check theclusters against certain environmental parameters and eliminate those which fa i l tomeet them. Determine an overall form with reference to local conditions, usingvisual and other analogies. At La Manzanera, a pop fantasy vd.llage near Calpe,one group of housing derives by analogy from the local vernacular and another,Xanadu, from the Penon de Ifach, a Gibral tar- l ike rock standing out in the bay.La Peti te Cathedra Ie (for Cergy-Pontoise) looks exactly what the name implies - awhole suburb with shops, schools, parking and housing draped over the form of aGothic Cathedral.ConclusionsBefore the Taller demonstrated otherwise, most of us had supposed that three factorsin part icular inhibited the exercise of creat ivi ty in archi tectural design, namelycost , planning, construction or other statutory constraints and - as Alexander wouldhave i t - the exercise of systematised procedures in the management of design. Yetthe Taller use a highly developed methodology which seems to be the key to thei rsuccess in bringing non-architects into the building design process.Some of thei r procedures are mathematically-based and these lead to the generation ofsolutions in such variety that i t hardly matters when some of them have to be eliminated. That, of course, results from the checking against various constraints,structural , environmental and so on, which form an essent ial part of the Tal ler ssystematic method. The crucial point is that instead of s tar t ing with the cons_t ra ints and then complaining that .they are hamstrung, the Taller s ta r t with possibi l i t ies and then eliminate those which prove not to be possible. And f inally - butperhaps most convincing of a l l - the Tal le r s buildings are quite remarkably cheap.So, far from inhibiting creat ivi ty , thei r procedures and methods actually encouragei t . Design method therefore is far from dead. I t i s al ive, well, l iving inBarcelona and providing some of the most beaut i fu l , rabi table and economicalarchi tecture to be had anywhere.

References(1) Broadbent, G The Present S.tate of Design Method Studies in PERSPECTA 15(2) Hill ier , W R G Musgrove, J , & O'Sullivan, P. , K r i o w l e d ~ and Design inHitchell , W .J EDRA 3, tos Angeles, 1972.3) Broadbent, G. The Design Process , in Starling, J . , ur REPORTING BACK

CONFERENCE Attingham Park, 1967.