Architectural firm | EPFL Graph Search

In the United States, an architectural firm or architecture firm is a business that employs one or more licensed architects and practices the profession of architecture; while in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark and other countries, an architectural firm is a company that offers architectural services. History Architects (or master builders) have existed since early in recorded history. The earliest recorded architects include Imhotep (c. 2600 BCE) and Senemut (c. 1470 BCE). No writings exist to describe how these architects performed their work. However, as nobles it is reasonable to assume they had staffs of assistants and retainers to help refine and implement their work. The oldest surviving book on architecture, De architectura by the Roman architect Vitruvius describes the design and construction of towns, buildings, clocks, and machines, but provides no information about the organisation of the architect's assistants. It is generally accepted that

Case Design - A School in the Making

Cyril Veillon

Settled into the valley slope above the small village of Lavale, Avasara Academy is a residential school for young women in western India and is still a work in process. With thoughtful attention to both physical and social environments, the school is evolving through a design-build process focused on inclusion and engagement. A diverse group of builders, designers, farmers, artists, craftsmen and engineers has been involved in making the school, showing the potential and possibilities of an architectural practice based on collaboration and empathy. A project by Case Design, Mumbai

Editions Archizoom2018

Contaminazioni linguistiche

Paola Tosolini

In contemporary debates about sustainable development, vernacular architecture plays an important role. Presenting itself as a dictionary of man’s constructive logic, it declares with no uncertainty its own usefulness, its connection to the soil, to the climate, the economy and technology. The capacity to incorporate change, to absorb the passing of time without losing the architectonical idea on which it lies, has made its forms intelligible and its language comprehensible to everybody. These qualities, together with the wide variety of forms that are found available within it, make vernacular architecture a reserve from which one can draw in order to stimulate creative thought upon a project. Despite vernacular architecture having been partially revalued, the role that it has played in the debate around ‘modernity’ and its contribution to the birth and development of modern architecture have been scarcely analysed and very much undervalued by both critics and historians. This thesis demonstrates the importance of the contribution made by vernacular architecture, investigating the architectural practice of some of the most renowned protagonists of architecture in the 20th century, among whom Mackintosh, Hoffmann, Loos, Le Corbusier, Sert, Aalto, Figini, Ponti, Rudofsky, Stirling, Abraham, the Smithsons, Venturi and Scott Brown. Furthermore, this thesis shows how some linguistic contaminations have been produced in the work of architects through their encounter with vernacular architecture during travels in native lands and abroad, and through the resulting theoretical reflections which have been documented in a large quantity of written material. For linguistic contamination I mean the analogous action undertaken by an element over another, on a morphological or semantic level. These actions are the result of a process that starts with the act of seeing, of observing and which matures in the thought put down on paper. For this reason I have decided to structure my thesis around the activities peculiar to architectural practice – seeing, thinking, projecting – to which the three sections of this thesis – travels, writings, projects – refer to. The first part demonstrates the importance of travel as a means to discover and gain direct knowledge of vernacular architecture and its legacy. For legacy I mean that baggage of impressions, sketches and photographs used by architects for reference in their future intellectual work. The second part highlights the existence of a large quantity of written material (articles, essays, books, conference papers) that witnesses the real and steady interest of modern ‘orthodox’ architects towards vernacular architecture. This section also considers the way in which some theoretical parameters of ‘modernity’ have been defined according to the observations contained in the written material. Finally, the third part shows the presence, in modern projects and works, of elements, structures, materials, and spatial and morphological devises that can be traced back to vernacular architecture, and that allow me to support the hypothesis of contaminations of vernacular architectural language on modern architectural language.

EPFL2009

Linguistic contamination: an epistemological tool for interrogating vernacular tradition and contemporary architecture

Paola Tosolini

In 1919 in an essay entitled Tradition and the Individual Talent T. S. Eliot stated that a poet “is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living”. The paper will investigate the idea of tradition intended as 'matière vivante', as an operative tool used in architectural practice. A tradition, whose epistemology can be achieved through the analysis of what I call linguistic contamination. It is through this analogous action, made by one element over another on a morphological or semantic level, that tradition "moves" regenerating its forms and meanings. This approach allow to liberate the classical concept of tradition from its historical, time-bounded limits and to consider it in a new dynamic way. Tradition can be recognised in the survival of "architectural constants" ferried from the past to the present, sometimes remodelled and sometimes deformed under the flux of progress and change. The epistemic exercise will focus on the identification of the different kinds of contaminations which have occurred between vernacular architecture and modern architecture. The way in which a lexicon of the past has been used in a language whose syntax is yet new, will be investigated through some case studies from modern and contemporary times.

IASTE Center for Environmental Design Research2008

Contaminazioni linguistiche

Paola Tosolini

EPFL2009