About concept in architecture

First of all, let me emphasize that the meaning of concept is by no means a recent product; it has existed, in one form or another, throughout the history of architecture (including ancient architecture), under various ^names1. In both academic and professional circles, architects have always reflected on a central, defining, generative idea for a project, an approach that would provide a solid foundation on which to shape their creation and facilitate its subsequent presentation. Even early architecture, with its strict symbols and canons, later contained in complex styles, included starting ideas and overall visions, particularly in the case of buildings with authoritative or religious representations.

I open the ^dictionary2: concept is considered "an abstract idea, a general notion; in philosophy, a concept is an idea or mental picture of a group or class of objects formed by combining their aspects" (from Latin, 1550: "conceptum"= something brought on/in the world). So far, nothing special (or useful in architecture).

Unlike other meanings (mostly borrowed from other fields, such as philosophy, linguistics, etc.⁾³, in architecture I use the notion of 'concept' as a catalyst that unleashes creativity, that triggers often unwitting connections between different elements, or that offers the possibility of understanding an aspect in a particular way, becoming a possible starting point for a project. In architecture, the concept can be anything, it can be an idea, a notion, an image, a word/phrase, etc. It is very important to identify the defining features of that element and then apply them in the design process; most often an abstracted graphical representation of the concept is used, trying to subtract only its essential features and not most of its features, which would lead to a mimetic copy, which is obviously something to avoid. The successful use of a concept thus depends on the architect's ability to extract these salient features and transpose them as creatively as possible into the design.

In my view, it is not necessary for the conceptual element to be readable in the final design, although this is often the case; this is not the goal. The most important aspect of the concept is the triggering of the creative process, thus substantiating the project itself, and the transfer from concept to project can be as discreet as possible. A lot of people consider the concept as a stage in itself, generically called the "concept phase"; although the expression has entered the current vocabulary, I think it still needs more attention. In architecture I make a distinction between the concept and the schematic design phase (or preliminary design); the concept is a catalyst, a starting point, which facilitates the course of a project and which can be more or less found in the schematic design, but the concept always precedes the preliminary design, and is indeed refined along the way. Personally, I think it is incorrect to call the preliminary design a "concept", when in fact it is only an answer, a solution, a possible variant following the testing of the concept within the site and the design theme. And this is part of real architectural research. A design with a branched form is not a "concept"; the concept, in fact, is probably a leaf (on the site?), or a certain type of grid, or the cracks in the terrain on the site and so on (if that was the starting point), which, after analysis, led to a certain planimetric or volumetric resolution.

Read the full text in issue 6 / 2014 of Arhitectura Magazine

NOTES:

1 The current form of the notion of concept in architecture was theorized much later, however, most recently in books such as "Move" - 3 volumes (Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos/ UN Studio), "Content" (Rem Koolhaas), "Rethinking Architecture" (Neil Leach) or even "Natural History" (Herzog & de Meuron).

2 In Oxford English Reference, p. 298.

3 Like the meaning of Kant's pure (or "a priori") concepts or Plato's universal concepts. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes the categories as pure concepts, understood as properties, qualities or characteristics attributed to all objects. Starting from the list initially drawn up by Aristotle (and later criticized by Kant), such attributes are substance, quality, quantity, time, place, etc., ten categories in all.