Programming the Architectural Design ThesisTerminal Project

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Programming theArchitectural DesignThesis/Termin
al Project

• ARCH 5395 Research Schematics

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Programming

• Is the culmination of the problem seeking phase
  of design
• Defines the scope of the project
• Why? To give the work bounds, without which your
  task is unending
• (so you dont lose your shirt, vacation, profit,
  etc)

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Caudill Rowlett and Scott (CRS)

• Willie Pena, CRS programming principal, defined
  programming as problem seeking
• CRS the most distinguished firm in the history
  of practice in Texas (based on awards)
• CRS made their distinguishing mark in
  architecture through their advances in
  programming, establishing them as the experts in
  the field of school design during their time and
  at a time when fundamental changes were occurring
  in the nature of K-12 education (explorations of
  the open classroom)

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ProgrammingReference Donna Duerk text

• Existing State
• facts
• issues
• values
• Future State
• mission
• goals
• performance requirements, and
• concept diagrams

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Existing State

• 1. What is known about the design research
  topic?
• For example, the tenets of
• Critical regionalism (Frampton),
• Hanover Principles (McDonough),
• Ahwanee Principles
• (Congress of New Urbanism),
• Metaphor of architecture as clothing
• (Gottfried Semper),
• Resolving spatial conflicts in adaptive use

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Existing State

• 2. What is known about the facility type to be
  investigated?
• Beyond what is known, what is the state of the
  art of the facility?
• What are the architectural horizons for the
  facility type as experts in the field understand
  them?

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Existing State

• 3. What is known about its numerous contexts?
• Example (sustainability theses)
• What do we now know about the nature of the
  environment?
• What current technologies impact?
• How do current political understandings affect
  what is built (Industrial versus 3rd world
  perspectives)

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Future State what is desired

• What qualities of excellence do you aspire to?
• The state of the art of the facility?
• The horizons for the facility type, as experts in
  the field understand them?
• Doing a competent job in the schematic design

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The Anatomy of the Existing State

• Facts
• something that actually exists or has occurred
• organize similar subject ones as bundles
• Issues
• bundles of similar facts
• Values
• interpretations, opinions, related to good and
  bad, right and wrong, etc

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The Anatomy of the Future State

• Mission
• the distillation of all the goals
• Goals
• the qualities of excellence to which the project
  aspires
• Performance requirements
• the tests to which the goals will be put to
  validate the goal
• Concept diagrams
• graphic representations of the performance
  requirements

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How and Why Links

• The performance requirements describe how the
  goal is to be achieved.
• The goal should clearly demonstrate why the
  performance requirements exist.

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Measures of Success

• 1. Is the program comprehensive?
• How broad and inclusive are the considerations
  taken into account by the design programmer?

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Measures of Success

• 2. Is the program innovative?
• Are the topic, facility and its context
  imaginatively considered in the programming work?

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Measures of Success

• 3. Is the program transferable? (to others to
  execute the design)
• How effective is the communication made in the
  program, evidenced by others understanding it
  clearly?