SYMBOLIC APPROACHES TO THE

BUILT ENVIRONMENT
architecture provides much more than shelter—it is symbolic of our
cultural, political, and philosophical existence as well
SYMBOLIC APPROACHES TO THE BUILT
ENVIRONMENT

• Social Symbolic Accounts

• Structuralism
• Metaphorical Approaches
• Theories of Ritual
• Phenomenological perspectives
 symbol
A symbol is an object that represents, stands
for, or suggests an idea, belief, action, or
material entity.
 Symbol in Architecture
something that has cultural significance and
the capacity to inspire and substantiate a
collective response
When do buildings become symbols

When people of different generations

attribute a system of meanings and memories
onto them.
 Symbolic buildings
• Egyptian Pyramids are the symbol of the power
of kings and pharaohs of ancient Egypt. They
represent the descending rays of the sun.
• The Parthenon is the symbol of ancient Greece
and democracy
• The Taj Mahal became the symbol of beauty and
enduring love
• The Empire State building is the symbol of New
York and of achievement, strength and efficiency
• Sydney Opera House is the symbol of modern
Australia and late modern architecture.
 Symbolism of architectural forms

• The dome symbolizes the vault of heaven, the

cosmos, or the sky
• The square represents the pure, rational, no
preferred direction, stability
• The triangle symbolizes the fire, and the
communication between earth (the material)
and heaven (the spiritual).
 Modern symbolism
• Skyscrapers represent financial success and
leadership.
• Domes in public buildings represent power.
• Irregular forms represent dynamism, motion,
informality.
• Glass walls represent modernism,
transparency.
 Evolution of Architecture
Prehistoric
Ancient Egypt Classical Early Christian
Times
3,050 BC to 900 850 BC to 476 and Medieval
Before recorded
BC AD 373 to 500 AD.
history

Baroque Renaissance Gothic

Romanesque
Architecture Architecture Architecture
500 to 1200 AD
1600 to 1830 AD 1400 to 1600 AD 1100 to 1450 AD

Rococo American Neoclassical /

Georgian
Architecture Colonial Federalist /
Architecture
1650 to 1790 Architecture Idealist
1720 to 1800 AD
AD. 1600 to 1780 AD 1730 to 1925 AD
INDUSTRIAL
Arts and Crafts
REVOLUTION
Art Nouveau Victorian Greek Revival
Movement in
Architecture Architecture Architecture
Architecture
1890 to 1914 AD 1840 to 1900 AD 1790 to 1850 AD
1860 to 1900 AD

20th Century
Beaux Arts Neo-Gothic Art Deco
Trends in
Architecture Architecture Architecture
Architecture
1895 to 1925 AD 1905 to 1930 AD 1925 to 1937 AD
1900 to Present.

• in the late 1700s,
manufacturing was often done
in people’s homes, using hand
tools or basic machines.
• over 80% people lived in rural
areas.
Pre-Industrial
Revolution
Industrial
revolution
• The Industrial Revolution,
which took place from the 18th
to 19th centuries, was a period
during which predominantly
agrarian, rural societies in
Europe and America became
industrial and urban.
• the rise of cities.
• By 1850, more people in
Britain—lived in cities than in
rural areas.
• By 1920, a majority of
Americans lived in cities.
• The city of London grew from a
population of two million in
1840 to five million forty years
later.
Post-Industrial
Revolution
The Crystal Palace created to enclose the Great Exhibition of
1851 in England,
was a glass and iron showpiece.
Eiffel tower
Designer: Joseph Paxton
Engineer:gustave Eiffel.
duration: six months,
Architect:stephen sauvestre.
Year of construction:1887
Completed:18 months
Construction
18,000 pieces ,five meters each used to construct.
Tower were specifically designed and calculated, traced
out to an accuracy of a tenth of a millimeter
 Early Modern architecture
• Started around year 1900

• Early Modern architecture began with a number

of building styles with similar characteristics

• the simplification of form

• elimination of ornament

• By the 1940s these styles had largely

consolidated and been identified as the

International Style.
 functionalism
In the early years of the 20th century,
Chicago architect Louis Sullivan
popularized the phrase 'form follows
function' to capture his belief that a
building's size, massing, spatial
grammar and other characteristics Louis Sullivan
should be driven solely by the function Father of Modern
of the building. Architecture

STOCK EXCHANGE – The implication is that if the

LOUIS SULLIVAN – functional aspects are satisfied,
BUILT 1893 – c1930 architectural beauty would naturally
and necessarily follow.

Sullivan's protégé Frank

Lloyd Wright is also cited as
an exemplar of functional
design.
Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright
Country House (1939)

Guggenheim Museum (1945)

Functionalism
/ Rationalism

a lifeless expression of
architecture and urban planning
that ignored the identity of the
inhabitants and urban forms.
 Structuralism

• movement in architecture and urban planning

• evolved around the middle of the 20th century.

"Structuralism is a theoretical paradigm

emphasizing that elements of culture must
be understood in terms of their
relationship to a larger, overarching
system or structure."
 Origins
CIAM
Congrès International
d'Architecture Moderne
Team 10
Between 1928 and 1959 CIAM was an
laid the foundations for Structuralism
important platform for the discussion of
active from 1953 to 1981
architecture and urbanism
Herman Hertzberger
Aldo van Eyck
after World War II Structuralism in architecture
Jacob Bakema
and urban planning originated

Outside Team 10
Louis Kahn in the United States
Kenzo Tange in Japan
John Habraken in the Netherlands
Also Le Corbusier
 Manifesto
(policy, aim, programme)

THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF

ARCHITECTS- OTTERLO (1959)
The central aspect of this issue of
the programme for the Congress was the most
Forum was a frontal attack on the
influential manifestos for the Structuralist
Dutch representatives of CIAM-
movement
Rationalism who were responsible
for the reconstruction work after
compiled by Aldo van Eyck in the architectural
World War II.
magazine Forum 7/1959.

The magazine contains many examples of and

statements in favour of a more human form of
urban planning.

This congress in 1959 marks the Only since 1969 has the
official start of Structuralism, term "Structuralism" been
although earlier projects and used in publications in
buildings did exist. relation to architecture.
 "Nobel Prize of Architecture".
American European e.g. of winners the
Pritzker Prize RIBA Gold Medal structuralists Aldo van
(Started in 1979) (Started in 1848) Eyck and Herman
Hertzberger

e.g. Of winners
postmodernist
architects Robert
Venturi, Aldo
Rossi and Philip
Johnson
postmodern architecture is more esteemed in
the US than in Europe, whereas structuralism
has received more recognition,
acknowledgment and appreciation in Europe
 Aldo van Eyck
(1918 -1999)
• architect from the Netherlands

• He was one of the most

influential protagonists of the
architectural movement
Structuralism.
 Aldo van Eyck
• Graduated in 1942, after which he remained in Switzerland
until the end of World War II

• He taught at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture from

1954 to 1959 and he was a professor at the Delft University
of Technology from 1966 to 1984.

• He also was editor of the architecture magazine Forum from

1959 to 1963 and in 1967.

• A member of CIAM and then in 1954 a co-founder of "Team

10", Van Eyck lectured throughout Europe and northern
America propounding the need to reject Functionalism and
attacking the lack of originality in most post-war
Modernism.

• Van Eyck received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1990.

 Aldo van Eyck
• Design for village of Nagele,
Noordoostpolder, 1948–1954
• Housing for the Elderly, Slotermeer,
Amsterdam, 1951–1952
• Amsterdam Orphanage, Amsterdam, 1955–
1960
• Primary Schools, Nagele, Noordoostpolder,
1954-1956
• Hubertus House, Amsterdam, 1973–1978
• ESA-ESTEC restaurant and conference
centre, Noordwijk, 1984–1990
 Herman Hertzberger
• Herman Hertzberger is a Dutch architect and
emeritus professor
• Herman Hertzberger was born on 6 July 1932
in Amsterdam, Netherlands
• He completed his studies at the Delft
University of Technology in 1958, where he was
a professor from 1970 to 1999
• He believed that the architect's role was not to
provide a complete solution, but to provide a
spatial framework to be eventually filled in by
the users.
Herman Hertzberger
Books
• Lessons for Students in Architecture published in 1991
(ISBN 978-9064504648),
• Space and the Architect: Lessons in Architecture 2,
1999 (ISBN 978-9064503801)
• Space and Learning in 2008 (ISBN 978-9064506444)

Awards
Neutra Medal, California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona
RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2012
 Development of structuralism
• In contrast to the postmodern movement,
structuralism has developed more slowly, less
noticeably during several different periods in
the last decades.
• The most important theoretical contributions
of structuralism were developed in Europe
and Japan.
 structuralist form
• in which the users and the form react to, and play on each other

• it is this capacity to absorb, carry and convey significance that

defines what form can bring about in the users - and conversely -
what the users can bring about in the form.

• Aim of Structurist Form: to form the material in such a way that -

as well as answering to the function in the narrower sense - it will
be suitable for more purposes. And thus, it will be able to play as
many roles as possible in the service of the various, individual users,
- so that everyone will then be able to react to it for himself,
interpreting it in his own way, annexing it to his familiar
environment, to which it will then make a contribution.
St. Mary’s Cathedral

Kenzo Tange (1963)

 KENZO TANGE: YOYOGI NATIONAL GYMNASIUM, TOKYO

built for the Olympics in 1964

catapulted him to international fame and to

the Pritzker Prize
Office building Central Beheer in
Apeldoorn, 1972
(Herman Hertzberger)
Office building Central Beheer in Apeldoorn,
1972
(Herman Hertzberger)
Salk Institute in La Jolla California,
1965 (Louis Kahn)
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad
1962 (Louis Kahn)
European Space Centre ESTEC in 1989
(Aldo van Eyck and Hannie van Eyck)
 Urban structuring
The art of town planning

relation between historic and contemporary architecture and

planning
 Jaipur by Sawai Jai Singh 1727

Jaipur was built by Sawai Jai

Singh, a Rajput Maharaja, in
1727, and is described as a
fusion a eastern and western
planning

based on the vaastu shaastra, a traditional

Indian philosophy of space making
 Manhattan
Gridiron
Plan
Barcelona, Spain
Gridiron Plan
 Chandigarh
by Le Corbusier, 1951-1964
 The downfall of Structuralism

• The built examples were perceived as inhumane, as they

often failed in terms of practical use.

• Involved complexities on account of many factors of

importance.

• Structuralist architecture was more difficult to design.

• In the late 1970s it lost its appeal as a leading ideology in

architecture.
 A revival of Structuralism

• Since the early 1990s we have been witnessing a

revival of structuralist tendencies in architecture.
• In a parallel development, interest in the utopian
aspects of the structuralist currents of the 1960s has
also increased.
• Whereas the Structuralism of the 1970s encountered
limits in complexity that were insurmountable at the
time, today there is much to suggest that the return to
this apparently unfinished project is causally connected
to information technology, which has opened up new
possibilities for dealing with complexity. There is talk of
Neo-Structuralism with a digital imprint
 Neo-Structuralism
• Neo-Structuralism with a digital imprint is the label that
now covers a large number of different approaches to
design in architecture and urban planning, from the use of
parametric data models to the implementation of genetic
algorithms to evolutionary design strategies.

• They all have in common a rule-based design process

translated into mathematical algorithms and resolved.

• The structuralist approach can only be sustainable if it uses

evolutionary design strategies – the type used in most neo-
structuralist digital design approaches.
 Structuralism Reloaded
• In 2011, the first comprehensive compilation
of structuralist activity appeared in a
publication called, "Structuralism Reloaded".
• In this extensive book, articles by 47
international authors were published about
philosophical, historical, artistic and other
relevant aspects.
• All these different views gives a definitive
overall picture of structuralism.
 10th September 2013

Presentation 1: Aldo van Eyck

Presentation 2: Herman Hertzberger