Architect Notebook .... CONTEXT FOR DESIGN

This is a gross over-simplification but serves to demonstrate that all architects work within an established sociopolitical framework which, to a greater or lesser extent, inevitably encourages or restricts their creative impulses, a condition which would not necessarily obtain with some other design disciplines like, for example, mechanical engineering (which, incidentally, thrived under totalitarianism).


This brings us to another well-worn stance adopted by progressive architects; that architecture (unlike mechanical engineering) responds in some measure to a prevailing cultural climate in which it is created and therefore emerges inevitably as a cultural artifact reflecting the nature of that culture.

 Certainly the development of progressive architecture during its so-called ‘heroic’ period after the First World War would seem to support this claim; architects found themselves at the heart of new artistic movements throughout Europe like, for example, Purism in Paris, De Stijl in Rotterdam, Constructivism in Moscow or the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau.

And within this complex picture loomed aburgeoning technology which further fueled the modernist’s imagination. Architects were quick to embrace techniques from other disciplines, most notably structural and mechanical engineering and applied physics to generate new building types. The development of framed and large-span structures freed architects from the constraints of traditional building techniques where limited spans and loadbearing masonry had imposed variations on an essentially cellular plan type.

In 1971 Norman Foster designed an office building for a computer manufacturer in Hamel Hemp stead whose principal requirement was for a temporary structure. Foster used a membrane held up by air pressure, a technique not normally applied to architecture, but which offered the potential for speedy dismantling and re-erection on another site.

The translucent tent provided diffused day lighting and lamp standards were designed to give support in the event of collapse. Whilst this contextual ‘snapshot’ firmly articulates an orthodox modernist position, the so-called post-modern world has offered a range of alternatives borrowed from literature and philosophy which in turn has offered architects a whole new vocabulary of form-making well removed from what many had come to regard as a doctrinaire modernist position.