"A THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE"
an online book by Nikos A. Salingaros.
This book combines some ideas I have explored in trying to discover the basis for architectural design. The search has led me into science and mathematics, and has proved remarkably fruitful in establishing new results. Most architects know of the historical connection between ancient mathematics such as the Golden Section and their discipline; yet it is not this type of mathematics that actually governs architectural form. Rather, it is the more recently developed mathematics of fractals, information, and complexity. I have presented these results in the most simplified manner possible, so as to be useful to practicing architects, as well as to students with a very modest mathematical background. It now appears inevitable, however, that if architecture is to incorporate my findings, then students should be trained in a minimum mathematical background that prepares them to understand these papers.
Each book chapter consists of one of my papers in Architecture and Complexity, every one a publication in its own right. This on-line printable collection of research articles is organized into an overall whole. It can be used as a textbook for architectural design, or as supplementary material, by an instructor who is sympathetic to the theory. I am aware that it is incomplete, and I am working on new chapters. The main message is that architecture should be based on principles that stand scientific scrutiny and experimental test. There are many new results, so no similar treatment of the principles underlying architectural design exists at the present time. That situation will be helped with the publication of Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order. I wish also to draw attention to my articles on urbanism, organized in a similar way into an online book entitled Principles of Urban Structure; this contains material that is directly relevant to architecture.
A THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
© 2001, 2002 Nikos A. Salingaros.Contents and Introduction -- not yet written
Chapter 1. The Laws of Architecture from a Physicist's Perspective
Chapter 2. A Scientific Basis for Creating Architectural Forms
Chapter 3. Hierarchical Cooperation in Architecture, and the Mathematical Necessity for Ornament
Chapter 4. Architecture, Patterns, and Mathematics
Chapter 5. Life and Complexity in Architecture From a Thermodynamic Analogy
Chapter 6. A Pattern Measure (co-authored with Allen Klinger)
Chapter 7. The Sensory Necessity for Ornament -- still being revised.
Chapter 8. Modularity and the Number of Design Choices (co-authored with Débora M. Tejada)
Chapter 9. Two Languages for Architecture
Chapter 10. Darwinian Processes and Memes in Architecture: A Memetic Theory of Modernism (co-authored with Terry M. Mikiten)
Chapter 11. Design Methods, Emergence, and Collective Intelligence -- still being revised.
Chapter 12. Geometrical Fundamentalism (co-authored with Michael W. Mehaffy)
Chapter 13. 20C Architecture as a Cult -- still being revised.
Other material now being prepared will be added to the book in the near future. For those who wish to print it out, each article is approximately 7 to 12 pages long, giving a rough estimate for the whole book at about 120 pages, depending on the font size.
E-mail: salingar@sphere.math.utsa.edu
Publications in Architecture, Complexity, and Urbanism