Table Of ContentConversations With Form
A Workbook For Students Of Architecture
N. John Habraken
Andrés Mignucci
Jonathan Teicher
London and New York
First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 N. John Habraken, Andrés Mignucci and Jonathan Teicher
The right of N. John Habraken, Andrés Mignucci and Jonathan Teicher
to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library cover illustration credits
Across, from top to bottom:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Habraken, N. J., author. Tokyo International Forum. Tokyo (1996)
Conversations with form: a workbook for students of architecture / N. John Rafael Viñoly, Architect. Photo Courtesy Rafael Viñoly
Habraken, Andrés Mignucci and Jonathan Teicher. Architects, © Koji Horiuchi
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index. Yoshijima House sake brewery. Hida Takayama,
1. Architectural design—Problems, exercises, etc. 2. Architecture— Japan (1908)
Composition, proportion, etc. I. Mignucci Giannoni, Andrés, author. II. Teicher, Nishida Isaburo, master carpenter / builder.
Jonathan, author. III. Title. Copyrighted photo by Timothy M. Ciccone, courtesy of
NA2750.H23 2014 the photographer
720.76--dc23
2014006789 Kanchanjunga Apartments. Mumbai (1983)
Charles Correa, Architect. Copyrighted photo courtesy
ISBN: 978-0-415-70251-5 (hbk) of the architect
ISBN: 978-0-415-70252-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77412-1 (ebk) Erechtheion. Athens (bc 406)
Often attributed to Mnesicles. Copyrighted photo by
Publisher’s Note N. John Habraken
This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by
the authors Casares, Spain
Copyrighted photo by Maurice K. Smith from the
All images © the authors unless otherwise stated Intrinsic Attributes of Built Form Assemblage special
Designed and typeset by Alexander Tochilovsky library collection of MIT Dome digitized content,
Typeset in Akzidenz-Grotesk courtesy of the photographer
Table of Contents
V Introducing Design Play
VII Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Design Plays
43 1. Zones of Transition
71 2. Articulating Exterior Building Form
93 3. Designing in Longitudinal Section
117 4. Designing in Cross-Section
141 5. Visualization and Resilience
153 6. Working with a Primary Architectural System
197 7. Combining Systems and Controlling Complexity
219 Afterword
239 Additional Reading
243 Index
III
Habraken, Mignucci & Teicher have produced a book that is fundamental for students –
and perhaps, even more so, for practising architects. It outlines a series of exercises
(or design plays) that will increase your observational as well as your design skills.
Each play is lucidly presented, together with cogent examples. Given the state of our
profession today, that’s just what the doctor ordered.
— Charles Correa, Architect, planner and educator. RIBA Royal Gold Medalist, UIA
Gold Medalist and recipient of Japan’s Praemium Imperiale
Habraken, Mignucci and Teicher improve the “reset effect” of modern thought and
technology in architecture and urban design by enhancing the ability to learn by
observing the history and legacy of cities. Both theoretical and pedagogical, the book
is an indispensable tool to project humanized contemporary architecture in the built
environment. In architectural sustainability, the main quality is the possibility of change.
— Josep Maria Montaner, Architect and Professor of Theory of Architecture,
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona, Universidad Politécnica de
Cataluña (ETSAB-UPC)
Conversations With Form leads students of architecture to discover that design
apprenticeship − learning-by-doing − can ultimately be non-academic, original and
stimulating. The same holds true for professors of architecture who read it − and for
architects, engineers, officers and citizens whose daily practice involves transforming
the built environment. Conversations With Form helps us to understand how growth
and change have shaped and conferred texture to the built environment in the past …
and to what extent a built environment that is capable of successfully accommodating
growth and change can be envisaged and planned, freeing itself from current
functional, abstract, standardized, repetitive and interchangeable codes. A truly useful
and beautiful book, it also confirms that design is a good way to decode and interpret
the processes that have moulded historic cities and their contemporary expansion.
— Franco Mancuso, Architect, Faculty of Architecture, Università IUAV di Venezia, Italy
IV
Introducing Design Play
The underlying story behind this book begins in the 1980s, when John Habraken
unveiled a radically structured lecture class at MIT called Thematic Design. Although it
wasn’t a studio, the assignments − which he called design plays − consisted entirely of
hands-on design sketches. No one knew quite what to make of it.
As advanced students, we had already put in endless studio hours. Many of us had
worked as designers, some on important projects by renowned architects. A few of us
of were already licensed and more than a few had taught design.
We had been through our share of formal presentations and had the design process
down: It started with the program (building brief), site, problem statement and require-
ments. With luck, it ended with exquisite polished graphics that exuded bold creative
invention, elegance, style … and perhaps the thrill of the unexpected. Virtuoso perfor-
mance additionally included craft, attention to detail and a certain amount of selling the
jury on the presentation. Bonus points were awarded for overlaying the accompanying
narrative with touches of wit and carefully inserted references to abstract theory.
Then came Thematic Design. Our first assignment was literally to transform a hole in
a wall (see Play 1). That was it: No accompanying program, site or detailed theoretical
problem statement around which to craft a design. Certainly there was no building.
And for good measure, there would be sketches in lieu of finished drawings and no
presentation. It was like leaping into a sort of exquisitely slow design free fall.
Louis Kahn had famously opened a graduate studio at Penn by uttering the words
“Design a room” and walking out. Habraken, however, was not using the simple assign-
ment as a springboard for discussing abstract theory: He had cracked open the door-
way that eventually led to reflective performance, to slowing down and thinking deeply
about each step in making form hands-on and to understanding everyday environment
and how buildings had been designed for millennia prior to the 20th century. He under-
stood that we could only contribute to the health and self-sustaining character of built
environment if we changed our way of working.
V
But that emerged later. In the beginning, Habraken zeroed in on small seemingly insig-
nificant design moves. He read them with genuine fascination and discussed them as
if they were every bit as important as the final design: They were, of course.
Like would-be Olympic skiers consigned to the beginners’ slope or aspiring musicians
retreating to basic scales and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, we began at square one,
breaking down design into small steps and practicing fundamental form making. The
idea was to work with form hands-on, to observe and explore the possibilities that
it presented throughout step-by-step sequences of formal transformation. Working
through each deceptively simple sketch assignment took far more time than anyone
cared to admit. At the end of each play, final sketches on stapled sheets of 8½ ×11
(A4) paper were unceremoniously plopped onto the teacher’s desk.
That time investment led us to think and talk in a new and very different, immedi-
ate and hands-on way about making architecture. We learned to pay attention to the
everyday built environment that surrounded us and to observe, document and attempt
to master the tricks of the trade it embodied. We learned about historical and vernacu-
lar urban fabrics and building types, their complex ordering principles and organic
patterns, their self-sustaining capacity for continuous growth and change. We learned
how form in healthy built environment evolves as the coordinated product of count-
less hands operating on distinct levels through time. Through the mutually reinforcing
teachings of John Habraken and others, we began to see design as intervention within
the broader context of much larger-scale and longer-term built fields. The character,
intrinsic ordering principles and recurring patterns of those living fields were visible at
every scale in a dance of theme and variation.
A great deal of what we learned would not become clear for some time: Thematic design
and design plays had systematically provided solid grounding in design methods and a
substantive common language for discussing them. As a result, we had gone from using
persuasion to sell our designs to discussing design operationally and hands-on − in the
way a surgeon might describe a medical intervention or an expert tennis player might
describe a match to their respective peers. Design plays helped us to develop the base-
line skills and understanding necessary to create vital architecture in a world where no
one ever actually designs alone: the world architects actually inhabit.
Seven extended design plays and complementary observational sketches form the core
of this book. They descend directly from the first early introductory plays − enriched by
the ways in which design plays have been taught and performed in studios, classes and
workshops by Habraken’s students − and their own students − throughout the world.
− AM and JT
VI
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our collaborators and readers for sharing their invaluable
insight, support and friendship: Jia Beisi, Thomas Chastain, Renée Chow, Alexander
Cuesta, John R. Dale, Christina Gryboyianni, Belén Hermida, R. Thomas Hille, Stephen
Kendall, Kazunobu Minami, Josep María Montaner, Snehanshu Mukherjee, Zaida
Muxi, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, Henry Plummer and Barry Zevin.
In addition, the following teachers, photographers, writers and architects, firms and
families generously contributed to the rich set of references, precedents and examples
that illustrate this book: Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus, Alberto Campo Baeza,
Stefan Behnisch, Frank Bijdendijk, Norman Carver, Ana and José Coderch, Charles
Correa, Bernard Deffet, Rose Engel, Herman Hertzberger, Leon Krier, Raymond Lee,
Chan-Li Lin, Wolfgang M. A. Moroder, Heinz Müller, Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von
Ellrichshausen, Norma Price, Stéphane Samuel Rubin, Judith Sheine, Maurice Smith,
Rafael Viñoly, Craig Whitaker and Enric Xercavins.
A number of diverse institutions supported this project in various ways, notably including:
MIT, the University of Puerto Rico and the Imre Halasz Trust.
We would particularly like to thank our editor Fran Ford at Routledge for believing in
and championing this project from the beginning and Emma Gadsden for patiently
and firmly guiding its every step into production. Book and cover designer Alexander
Tochilovsky has earned our boundless gratitude and admiration.
We thank our families for their tireless patience and support.
Above all, we thank our students, for guiding us and allowing us to play along throughout
all these years.
To all – dank u wel, gracias, thank you!
NJH • AM • JT
VII
0.1 Row houses along a canal, Amsterdam
Copyrighted photo by Andrés Mignucci
Introduction
Opening Scenario
Consider this hypothetical scenario:
A pioneering program to demolish and replace of a number of individual row houses
along Amsterdam’s canals has been approved by a coalition of stakeholders. Key
stipulations include:
• Each new building will be designed by a different architect.
• It will be designed to anticipate, accommodate, adjust, adapt and evolve in response
to continuous and accelerating change in urban patterns, demographics, tenants,
uses, technologies and lifestyles.
• Each selected architect will design forward without nostalgia, with unapologetically
contemporary sensibilities and sustainability.
• Individually and as a group, the designs must nonetheless fit in with the historic neigh-
borhood and structures. Co-existing is not sufficient: Their intervention must build
upon and bolster rather than diminish local environmental coherence and patterns.
Based on the statement of qualifications, portfolio of realized projects and client
recommendations you submitted in Phase I of the competition, you have advanced to
the Redevelopment Authority’s shortlist. Now come the deciding Phase II interviews.
The stakes are high: The Authority hopes that your project will serve as a basis for
developing general rules, processes, procedures and guidelines for architects work-
ing on other sites throughout the historic urban core. The interview will focus on your
underlying approach and methods for architectural intervention rather than presenting
the fine points of form and image in your proposed diagrammatic design.
What specific background tools, skills and body of knowledge will you need to success-
fully undertake such a project?
What successful precedents will you build upon?
What approach and methods will guide and structure your design intervention?
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