Concept

Carolin Stapenhorst
CONCEPT:
A Dialogic Instrument in
Architectural Design

CONTENTs
Introduction
0. A Notional Outline:
From Aesthetic Norms to Conceptual Strategies
9
11
PART 1
Interdisciplinarity in Architecture
24
1.1 the Need for a Transversal Language
1.2 Objectification through Collaboration
1.3 Adaptable Knowledge through Lifelong Learning
1.4 the Potential of Hospitality
1.5 communicative Interfaces within an
Interdisciplinary Field
1.6 Interdisciplinarity in Design Education
25
31
37
45
55
59
PART 2
An Instrumental Definition of
the Concept
68
2.1 decision-Making in Design Processes
2.2 concept as Repository of Rules, Strategies,
and Criteria
2.3 concept as Generator and Communicator
2.4 concept as Explorer of Non-architectural
knowledge
69
81
87
95

PART 3
Generators and Depictions
of Concept
100
3.0 concept as Result of and Guideline for an
Ideational Process
3.1 diagrams for the Organization of Information
and the Transmission of Ideas
3.2 textual Generators and Communicators of
design Strategies
3.3 cartography as Ground Analyzer and
Rule Giver
3.4 A Conceptual Use of Architectural References
101
107
147
167
189
Apparatus
Selection of Interdisciplinarily
conceptualized Designs
LIST OF FIGURES
John Pawson: Monastery Novy Dvur, Dobrá Voda
Herzog & de Meuron: Studio Rémy Zaugg,
mulhouse
Étienne-Louis Boullée: Opéra au Carrousel, Paris
steven Holl: Addition to the Cranbrook Institute
of Science, Bloomfield Hills, MI, and Whitney
waterworks Park, Hamden, CT
Alvar Aalto: Paimio Sanatorium,
Patient Bedroom, Paimio
gino Valle: Storage & Showroom Geatti, Udine
Jürg Conzett: Traversina Bridge II, Graubünden
Pier Luigi Nervi: Wool Factory Gatti, Rome
Bernard Tschumi: Parc de la Villette, Paris
o.M. Ungers: Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar
and Marine Research, Bremerhaven
22
28
52
66
78
98
104
144
186
200
203

“Finally, the most shameful moment came
when computer science, marketing, design and
advertising, all the disciplines of communication,
seized hold of the word concept itself and
said: ‘This is our concern, we are the creative
ones, we are the ideas men! We are the friends
of the concept, we put in our computers.” 1
- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
“In arts, and particularly in architecture, imprecise
definitions have caused many errors;
they have generated prejudices and nurtured
wrong notions. You give a word and instantly
everybody is interpreting it with a different
meaning.” 2
- Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

INTRODUCTION
The quotes by Deleuze-Guattari and Violett-le-Duc delineate
two key points for both the motivation and the objective of this
text. Diverse disciplines, in particular those around the “ideas
men,” appropriated the term “concept,” and quite often the
meaning of this appropriation was vague or, still worse, banalizing.
Therefore, the principal aim of this text is to give one possible
definition of the term “concept,” and because it is thought
to be useful for the ideas men in general and the architects in
particular, this definition is an instrumental, operative, and productive
one. The concept in architecture is investigated for its
strategic potential in decision-making processes and it is illustrated
as a dialogic interface between the different professional
competences participating in architectural design.
This publication outlines the theoretical shifts in design history
that induced the appearance of the term “concept” in common
architectural discourse. It illustrates the designing architect’s
changing professional field as increasingly characterized
by the necessity of multidisciplinary collaboration—which is a
challenge—but a field that nevertheless contains the potential
for productive knowledge transfer leading to explorative and
inventive design principles. This publication approaches the instrumental
definition of the concept as a common repository of
directions and rules for the design process, as a processor of
heterogeneous requirements, and thus as a structuring element
of teamwork. It illustrates a selection of possible manifestations
of the concept, which function as efficient representations of
selected information that enables a shared understanding and
thus augments the quality of decision-making in architectural
design.
The text is accompanied by an apparatus of design examples
that differ widely in their architectural expression, but have in
common being conceived via the strategic use of non-architectural
knowledge—they are Interdisciplinarily Conceptualized
Designs.
1 Gille Deleuze and
Félix Guattari, What is
philosophy? (London:
Verso Press, 1994), 10;
original edition: Qu’estce
que la philosophie?
(Paris: Les éditions de
Minuit, 1991).
2 Eugène Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc:
Dictionnaire raisonné de
l’architecture française
du XI e au XVI e siècle.
Style, 1856, (Paris: Morel
editor, 1868); translation
Carolin Stapenhorst
(CS) from the German
edition: M. Düttmann
(ed.), Definitionen. Sieben
Stichworte aus dem
Dictionnaire raisonné
de l’architecture (Basel:
Birkhäuser, 1993), 17.
9

0
A Notional Outline:
From Aesthetic Norms to Conceptual Strategies
“If, however, the physical reality is understood and
conceptualized as an analogy to our imagination
of that reality, then we pursue a morphological
design concept, turning it into real phenomena,
which like all real concepts, can be expanded or
condensed.” 1
- Oswald Mathias Ungers
In order to trace the first declared necessity of strategic
non-standardized approaches within the design process and
the occurrence of the term “concept” in architectural discourse,
the following briefly and selectively outlines a series of theoretical
shifts in Western design theory. It is not the aim of this notional
introduction to investigate the origin of the concept within architectural
design history, because such an investigation would
inevitably be fragmentary and, more importantly, not useful for
the instrumentally oriented objectives of this publication. Thus,
it will illustrate the appearance of the term “concept”, intended
as an instrument of design, and describe its specific characteristics
as it emerges from the theory construction in architecture.
De Re Aedificatoria: A Process- and
Problem-oriented Treatise of Design Theory
One would expect to find the departure from the exclusive orientation
towards aesthetic, historically approved norms applied
to architectural design decisions within the scientification and
Fig 01 O.M. Ungers‘
compilation of images
for the exhibition “MAN
transFORMS”
1 O.M. Ungers,
“Designing and thinking
with images, metaphors
and analogies,” in
MAN transFORMS. An
International Exhibition
on Aspects of Design,
ed. H. Hollein (New York:
Cooper-Hewitt Museum,
1976), reprint in archplus:
Lernen von O.M. Ungers
no. 181/182 (December
2006): 170.
11

thus develop their common projects within a dialogic situation.
Therefore, even if the formation of these types of unstable associations
arises from a difficult occupational situation, their flexibility,
which is somehow unintentional, their highly developed
communication skills, and their lack of commissions produce
innovative approaches to work. They are open to external specialists
and accumulate knowledge in permanently changing
constellations. 31
31 A description of
these loose collaborative
networks that
proliferated, particularly in
the two-thousands, can
be found in N. Kuhnert
and Schindler, eds., “Off-
Architektur,” archplus
(October 2003): 14ff.
36

1.3
Adaptable Knowledge through
Lifelong Learning
“100 years ago you had to have a Baumeister if
you wanted to build a house. Nowadays, you need
a geodesist for the site measuring, an engineer
for the structure, and a building physicist (for the
details)…. You need a building economist …, a
marketing expert, a project manager, a quantity
surveyor…. You need, of course, a developer. You
do not need an architect.” 32
- Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani
The Perpetual Problem of Legitimization
Architectural theorist Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani’s provocation
about architects’ professional marginalization, caused
by the weight of the technical and economical competences
involved in the project development, introduces an essay that
goes on to ask:
What should architects be capable
of doing? Once, the answer was
designing, planning, and attending
to the construction site. However,
nowadays the construction site …
is exclusively attended to by experts,
the planning is transferred to the
specialized engineers … and the design
… certainly cannot be called a
growth market. 33
32 Vittorio Magnago
Lampugnani cited in G.
de Bruyn, H. Mauler,
and S. Trüby, “Vers une
Architektengeneration.
Zur Entwurfslehre am
Institut Grundlagen
Moderner Architektur,”
archplus: “Architekten,
ihr Anfänger!”
Pop, Ökonomie,
Aufmerksamkeit no.
171 (June 2004): 20.
Translation CS.
33 Ibid., 21. Translation
CS.
37

Étienne-Louis Boullée:
Opéra au Carrousel, Paris (France), 1781
1 E.L. Boullée,
Architettura. Saggio
sull’arte, ed. A. Ferlenga,
(Turin, Einaudi, 2005), 29.
Translation CS.
2 Ibid., 57.
Étienne-Louis Boullée dedicates a great deal of consideration to
the origins of architecture. One term that he introduces in this context
is the “character,” which he explains as follows: “Let us look
to an object! The first sensation we feel is obviously caused by
the way the object impresses us. I call the effect produced by the
object and that causes any kind of impression in us ‘character.’” 1
The design application of the conceptual instrument of the “character”
illustrates the modernity of Boullée’s way of thinking. He
describes his project for an opera theater as such: “I have aimed
to represent in depth the aspect of seduction that vaudeville has.
Therefore, I surrounded my theater hall with a portico construction,
which forms a kind of carousel.” 2
When Boullée does this design, the architectural conventions in
France are exclusively oriented to classical architecture. The reference
to an object belonging to the sphere of popular entertainment—such
as a carousel or an amusement park—is quite
provocative, if not scandalous. Indeed, there is something revolutionary
in Boullée’s idea: he uses a kind of freedom allowing him to
search his very own working rules and principles—beyond those

already accepted and adopted. The equestrian statues, which
decorate the four pedestals outside the Opéra au Carrousel,
strengthen the correspondence between conceptual reference
and architectural design.

process. They immediately relate everything they see to their
design work.” 89
The mechanisms that characterize this kind of attitude are generated
through the application of instruments that were mentioned
before, as those that permit communication between the
parties involved in the design process. The same instruments
that build up the communicative interface between the disciplines
transfer the specialist knowledge from non-architectural
fields into generative principles that can induce architectural
forms.
89 K. Dorst,
Understanding Design:
175 Reflections on Being
a Designer (Amsterdam:
BIS Publisher, 2003),
101.
58

1.6
Interdisciplinarity in
Design Education
“The architect after modernism is now readying
him- or herself via research to clarify the architect’s
role in the production process of the individual
object and of urban spaces, and thus to regain
control of the lost center. Design research informs
him or her about strategically indispensable
alliances and tactical options.” 90
-Angelus Eisinger
The Interdisciplinary Method of Lapa
The strategic and methodical use of non-architectural contents
in design can be taught. The Laboratoire de la production
d’architecture (Lapa), 91 established in 2005 by architect and
teacher Harry Gugger at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
in Lausanne, is a significant example of the development
of interdisciplinary working models in architectural education.
Lapa’s didactical approach is explorative, as the students are
strongly invited to apply scientific, research-like methods to address
and enrich their design processes. This is motivated by
the tailspin of the architect’s role, the need to “regain control of
the lost center,” just like historian Angelus Eisinger explains in
his essay for the Explorations catalogue for the Swiss Pavilion’s
exhibition at the Venice Biennale d’Architettura in 2008, which
included Lapa’s work as one of four examples of Swiss design
didactics. Lapa’s methodology booklet states, “It is the primary
goal of Lapa to ensure the architect’s continued role in the
planning and building process and to reinforce the architect’s
position as a central, integrating and coordinating force.” 92 This
90 A. Eisinger, Stop
making sense, 21.
91 Since 2011,
Laboratory Basel (Laba).
92 H. Gugger, ed., Lapa
Methodology Booklet
(Lausanne: EPFL/ENAC/
LAPA, 2007), 3.
59

design:
Eckhart Reissinger
Weekly Exercise no. 3
24. - 30 06.1964
Thematic binding
Given:
1 Program of a residential unit
entrance, wardrobe + WC,
access to the cellar
living room
study
dining room
kitchen
storage room
bedroom
bedroom
bedroom
shower
bathroom
guest room
8-10 sqm
30 sqm
15 sqm
16 sqm
10 sqm
2 sqm
20 sqm
12 sqm
12 sqm
3 sqm
8 sqm
12 sqm
2. The external walls should not have any openings.
Sought-after:
The design of a residential unit. The layout of the
walls is allowed to have any form, but the walls must
be continous, without any interruption apart from the
entrance.
Required:
The entrance should be 4.75 meters above the ground.

2.2
Concept as Repository of
Rules, Strategies, and Criteria
Fig 03 Wochenaufgabe
by O. M. Ungers;
summer term 1964 at
TU Berlin
“If the artist wishes to explore his idea thoroughly,
then arbitrary or chance decisions would be
kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and other
whimsies would be eliminated … If the artist carries
through his idea and makes it into visible form,
then all the steps in the process are of importance.
The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much
a work of art as any finished product.” 32
- Sol LeWitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art
Judgment Criteria
The description of the act of designing as a sequence of ongoing
decisions that is far from linear due to the complexity of
tasks and the necessity of integrative procedures, leads to the
question of how this process can be structured, how its decisions
can be evaluated and legitimated, how Kwinter’s “efficacity”
may be obtained. With regard to this, the conceptual
artist Sol LeWitt individuates a guiding idea as the element that
can confer significance to every step of a creative procedure
and thus value to the process as a whole. He further underlines
the generative and regulative function of guiding idea when he
states that “no matter what form it may finally have it must begin
with an idea.” 33
Christian Norberg-Schulz indicates the capacity for judgment
as the basis for every kind of decision we may make and therefore
fundamental to design activity. 34 This means that every design
process needs a set of criteria that defines its very specific
parameters of wrong and right, which help to make the decisions
leading to a design solution. From the mid-nineteenth
32 S. LeWitt,
“Paragraphs on
Conceptual Art,”
Artforum International
Magazine (New York:
1967). Quoted in C.
Harrison and P. Wood
(eds.), Art in Theory.
1900–1990 (Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell, 1992),
835.
33 LeWitt’s conviction
is connected to
another one, which he
expresses in “Sentences
on Conceptual Art” a
year later: “It is difficult
to bungle a good
idea” – “Sentences on
Conceptual Art,” 0–9
Magazine (New York,
1969). Quoted in Ibid.,
839.
34 C. Norberg-Schulz,
Intentions in Architecture,
27.
81

Generators and Depictions of
Concept
PART 3

3.0
Concept as Result of and Guideline for an
Ideational Process
“For me there is quality if your concept is able to
assemble a whole lot of different requirements… .
The more lines you can draw, the better the
concept is. Of course, these lines are not of equal
thickness. You have to decide sometimes, when
they are contradictory, what is more and what
is less important. For me it is a good method to
think: ‘let’s take this influence for a while as the
most important. What could be the result? Afterwards,
let’s take another influence to be the most
important one.’ And sometimes, finally, the contradictions
disappear.” 1
Visualize to Communicate
- Jürg Conzett
Part 2 outlined those definitions relevant to the concept intended
as effective instruments to structure the design process—
such as its accompanying role within the decisional sequence
of the design process, its function as generator and communicator
of a set of regulative strategies, and its correlation with
the contents from the external fields of knowledge. It gave a
theoretical configuration, which Part 3 specifies via a selection
of the concept’s manifestations that underline its instrumental
potential.
The introductory quote by structural engineer Jürg Conzett refers
to a diagram describing a general consideration he is making
about designing—it explains his personal notion of concept
(figure 01). Conzett describes the concept as an instrument
capable of “assembling the requirements,” and he represents
these requirements on the left. Still more interesting about his
diagram is something that he does not mention. The concept,
placed in the center of the diagram depicting the design process,
is informed by a series of requirements (site, function, con-
1 J. Conzett, “Looking
at my desk,” The
Harvard GSD Lectures.
Engineering Design
series, transcription from
the video registration of
the lecture on October
25, 2011.
101

Fig 13 (left page)
Alexander’s diagrams
for the Notes: each
of them is the
diagrammatical
solution to a group of
requirements
Fig 14 Detail of the
Smithsons’s Urban-
Re-Identification Grid
of mathematics are abstract, of course, and the shapes of architecture
concrete and human. But that difference is inessential”
57 —turns out to be erroneous. The diagram as an instrument
of design thinking structures problems and generates strategies
for their solution, and not for the physical expression—that is,
the architectural form—of the solution. Still, Alexander’s identification
of the diagram’s essential importance as an instrument of
environmental planning and as medium through which scientific
contents can be introduced into the design process is extraordinarily
relevant for theories about rational designing.
In order to substantiate their contextual planning approach,
the Team 10 group introduces a number of representation
modalities that differ from the conventional set of architectural
drawings—for example, photographs, collages, and diagrams.
In addition to conventional drawings, the Smithsons’
“Urban-Re-Identification Grid” (figure 14) contains a compilation
of photos of playing children, parts of collages, and a
series of diagrams referring to the Smithsons’ “Golden Lane”
design. Eventually, the whole grid becomes a kind of collage,
which strikingly typifies an associative, absorbing, open design
attitude. Furthermore, some of Team 10’s most characteristic,
original ideas are presented via diagrams—such as the “scales
of human association” (figure 15) created for the CIAM X at Dubrovnik
and intended to replace the four functions of the Athens
57 C. Alexander, Notes
on the Synthesis of Form,
134.
123

for the self-confrontation Ulrich Beck requests. In this respect,
the communicative power of the diagrams for the Villa KBWW
design at Utrecht (figure 33), which are used in a long process
of negotiating between the involved parties, and in particular
between the two families who would become the inhabitants of
the semidetached house, is evident.
During the same period, MVRDV claims to use a multitude of
statistical data to be able to manage the architectural field’s apparently
chaotic working conditions. They aim to base their designs
on research-like investigations, in order to legitimize their
self-conception as generalists and to succeed “in preserving a
certain measure of control over the project, not in a visionary or
authoritarian manner, but as a manager who keeps the process
on the track.” 88 The diagrammatical visualization of the processed
information points towards the so-called datascapes,
which MVRDV explains as follows: “Under maximized circumstances,
every demand, rule or logic is manifested in pure
and unexpected forms that can go beyond artistic intuition or
known geometry and replace it with ‘research.’” 89 Thus, as one
of many “datascape” examples, they combine the Dutch regulations
regarding light exposure with sun diagrams to calculate
light cones, thereby generating the figure of the “Meteorite,” a
virtual building volume containing “light” and “dark” programs
(figure 34). In a certain sense, the firm chooses the building
legislation apparatus as one of its favorite creative catalysts.
Referring to the Dutch legislation on light exposure, MVRDV
outline the relations between light levels, building density and
functional programs: “If we want to reach more competitive
densities and maintain the byelaws, we will have to mix housing
with other programs … The almost historical plea for ‘mixed
use’ has been translated into an obligation!” 90 Based on the
given restrictions, they explore diverse “light formulas” (figure
35) and design a series of densification scenarios. The information
contained in the textual legislation documents is transferred
into diagrammatical representation, because the medium of the
diagram is necessary to make the textual contents operative as
a potential design strategy.
In summary, the common architectural discourse of the nineteen-nineties
identifies the diagram as a prolific instrument to
Fig 35 MVRDV’s
exploration of light
formulas
88 B. Lootsma,
Superdutch, 24.
89 W. Maas, J. van Rijs
with R. Koek, farmax
(Rotterdam: nai010,
1999), 99.
90 Ibid., 195.
141

Maps-of-Rules: A Case Study
The different representations, the infinity of layers into which the
map can be broken down, recognize a figurative multiplicity of
the object, thereby arriving at its explosion in a plurality of meanings
and shapes. Furthermore, thanks to its particular spatiality,
its layered nature, its capacity to weave together figures and
backgrounds, the coexistence of differently scaled shapes—the
diagrammatical nature of its figures—the map has the potential
to represent a scientific basis for architectural design, capable
of guiding its decisions. A map, as historian Axel John Wieder
points out, “helps to define our position and to recognize what
is happening and thus actually to decide what to do.” 165 He
specifies that cartography, a non-architectural discipline, can
essentially be understood as an architectural proceeding intending
to describe spatiality in a “sharpened way.” 166
The operations of analysis, synthesis, and design rarely overlap
so strongly as in the elaboration of cartographic maps in the
field of architecture, and it is often difficult to determine which
maps are analytical and preparative, and which are already precise
indications for the planning. Giancarlo Motta explains this
close-knit relationship between map and architectural project
as follows: “A map … is not an object but … an entity of devices
structured each by its own logic. As in the architectural
project, a map is always an answer to a multitude of problems
which find their equation within a single representation.” 167 In
the end, the decisive difference between map and project is
the diagrammatical nature of the first, which does not indicate
computed forms, but rules and guidelines for their definition. It
is due to this fact that cartographic elaborations can be defined
as a conceptual instrument.
Since the late nineteen-nineties, a research group directed
by Giancarlo Motta has carried out extensive work on the
“cartographic machine.” 168 Within this work, three types of
maps were defined: the basic map, the thematic map, and
the “map-of-rules” (carta delle regole). The basic map is still
focused on “pure” analysis and constitutes the most neutral
representation of specific cartographic facts (figure 54), while
the thematic map is already characterized by a high degree of
intentional subjectivity, which is still dedicated to the existing
Fig 54 Basic Map on
the savannah of Bogotá
highlighting its lagoonlike
conformation,
Politecnico di Torino,
DAD
165 A.J. Wieder,
“Methode Kartographie,”
in archplus: “Architekten,
ihr Anfänger!”
Pop, Ökonomie,
Aufmerksamkeit no. 171
(2004): 9. Translation CS.
166 Ibid. Translation CS.
167 G. Motta, “La
cartografia come ‘forma
simbolica,’” in Cartografia
e Progetto (Bergamo:
Tecnograph, 2003), 16.
Translation CS.
168 The cartographic
research was directed by
Giancarlo Motta at the
Polytechnic School of
Turin, 1999–2014.
181

Fig 61 (left page)
Unger’s Baukasten,
closed
Fig 62 Baukasten and
developmental
trajectories of roomgenerating
structures
nisms of productive abstraction and his personal definition of
“type,” which he illustrates in the chapter “What Abstraction Is”:
“A container concept is the set of attributes by which a kind
of entity can be identified. A type is the structural essence of
such a kind of entity. The abstraction characteristic of productive
thinking are rather types than containers.” 185 Donald Schön
defines “types” similarly and adds more detail to their generative
function:
Types should be seen as particulars
that function in a general way, or
as general categories that have the
“fullness” of particulars … Because
of their “fullness”—the richness of
imagery, ideas, and commonplaces
associated with them—types such
as these can generate sequences of
moves and guide designs. 186
This specific conception of “type” recalls the didactical device
of the Baukasten that Oswald Mathias Ungers employs in his
first series of lectures in Berlin. Ungers defines diverse categories
of buildings—for example, the “directionless one-roombuilding”—which
are compared using morphological sequences
in order to distill the compositional rules of each of them
and ultimately convert them into a structured developmental
trajectory. 187 Each developmental trajectory of this encyclopedic
process is introduced by the constructive manipulation of
185 R. Arnheim, Visual
Thinking, 174.
186 D. Schön,
“Designing. Rules, Types
and Worlds,” 144.
187 E. Mühltaler, ed.,
archplus: Lernen von
O.M. Ungers, 20ff.
197