This study examines the impact of the technological, social, and cultural transformations brought about by the Industrial Revolution in early 20th-century Europe on the understanding of art and design. The aim of the research is to evaluate the Art Nouveau movement, which emerged as a reaction against the monotony caused by mass production, within the context of architecture, interior design, and furniture design. A historical and descriptive method was employed, analyzing the interactions between the socio-cultural structure of the period, artistic movements, and modes of production. The findings indicate that Art Nouveau developed differently across various regions of Europe, shaped by local cultural dynamics, and that it dissolved the boundaries between art and craft through the use of organic forms inspired by nature. Furthermore, the study examines the iconic furniture pieces created by prominent artists of the period, included in the Art Nouveau furniture collection at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The analysis reveals that furniture during this era was regarded not only as a functional object but also as a medium of aesthetic and artistic expression. In conclusion, Art Nouveau is identified as a pivotal movement that laid the foundations for modern design thinking.
Determining the ecological character of abandoned traditional houses is crucial for the preservation of rural cultural heritage, the support of local socio-economic development, and the strengthening of community awareness. Although rural settlements in Türkiye have been widely studied, previous research has largely focused on inhabited or protected villages, leaving abandoned settlements in the Lakes Region under-examined. This study addresses this gap through a comprehensive analysis of the architectural and ecological characteristics of abandoned traditional houses in Hisarardı Village (Yalvaç, Isparta). The village was selected due to the integrity of its unprotected building stock and its representativeness of regional vernacular architecture. Field surveys revealed the predominant use of adobe, stone, and timber, with thick earthen walls and stone foundations contributing to passive thermal comfort and environmental sustainability. The findings highlight the ecological logic embedded in traditional construction and provide a valuable reference for conservation and future research.
This study investigates the role of Midjourney intelligent drawing software in architectural design education, particularly its impact on design efficiency and creativity among sophomore architecture students. While Midjourney serves as a powerful tool for rapid visual concept generation, it does not replace traditional design skills but complements them by enhancing the visualization process. The study also identifies some key limitations of Midjourney, especially in areas of functionality and sustainable design, which require students to integrate additional tools for a more comprehensive design approach. The recommendation to expand the use of intelligent drawing technologies like Midjourney in future research is supported by the observed improvements in student performance, including enhanced creative expression and efficiency in design processes. These conclusions are based on qualitative data derived from student feedback, as well as quantitative measurements of their design outcomes before and after using the software. Furthermore, it highlights the need to broaden the scope of studies to include a wider variety of educational contexts and source materials to improve understanding of the software’s potential in design education.
There are rules that provide shared information with the aim of guiding the behaviour of individuals or the community regarding spaces, processes and products. Therefore, the goal is to start a normalisation and standardisation procedure, which allows to solve a specific problem. With regard to the culture and practice of accessibility of spaces and environments, the reference legislation (Law 13/89, Presidential Decree 24 July 1996, n. 503, ISO 21541:2021, Ministerial Decree 236/89, UNI 17210:2021) is not only rather obsolete, but also excludes a large part of potential users. This paper aims to open a debate on the current operational tools in order to evaluate and design an inclusive context, proposing a new, more performing and universal one. The culture of accessibility is not only the scrupulous and scientific observance of the rules. It also means combining both quantitative and qualitative needs; therefore, providing environmental well-being. Thanks to the critical description of reference or experimental evaluation or design tools (HCD participatory methodologies for the definition of needs analyses, Quality Function Deployment for the tracking of technical specifications, ICF with a focus on UNI activities, laws, decrees and regulations to observe the Rule), this paper describes some projects that attempted to go beyond the rule, providing an inclusive context and space to meet people’s actual needs. Therefore, putting some operational tools into functional synergy (Rules, Inclusive Methodologies, ICF, QFD) to define a new multi-criteria tool can be an excellent starting point to develop, for each specific environmental context, a list of expectations that are important for planning and evaluation.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
The paper focuses on unfinished public constructions that represent an anomaly and an urgency with environmental, economic and even social consequences. The prerequisite of the research is the possibility that unfinished buildings can be considered opportunities to start new building processes consistently with the renewed needs of the contemporary situation, and not as a shared set of disvalues. The use of a specific methodological framework and programmatic strategies can direct the interventions, evaluating the suggested potential performance, and trigger virtuous and accessible cycles of signification and actualisation. The paper derives from a doctoral research and has been developed within the activities of the cross-border cooperation project CUBÂTI.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
El presente artículo de investigación busca rastrear qué pistas sobre cómo habitar la ciudad podemos encontrar en las representaciones creadas desde y sobre el Mercado Norte, y con este fin, se parte de un trabajo final de grado y algunas conclusiones posteriores sobre las diversas experiencias concentradas en un punto histórico de la ciudad de Córdoba: el Mercado Norte.
Este Mercado fue inaugurado en un contexto de grandes transformaciones en las urbes latinoamericanas, a principios del siglo XX, bajo la gran ola del progreso. En la actualidad, el Mercado constituye un punto de referencia en la trama de la ciudad, es el centro de una de las “Grandes Manzanas”, y es un espacio que concentra diversas actividades comerciales, sociales y culturales. Proponemos pensar este espacio hoy para comprender algunas dinámicas de las experiencias allí dadas, como también reflexionar sobre qué nociones e ideas impulsan las transformaciones urbanas y de la experiencia sobre este espacio, sin perder de vista - o quizás tomando como punto de comparación - aquellas nociones y consensos que en nombre del progreso impulsaron su creación. Para ello, desde una perspectiva materialista y crítica se analizarán noticias publicadas sobre este espacio, y se trabajará sobre un registro fotográfico para intentar encontrar las nociones de “revalorización” que motivan e impulsan estas transformaciones.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
This study combined computer-aided design with compass approaches, employing quasi-experimental design pre-test, post-test, and a non-equivalent control group, to improve the cognitive performance of architectural drawing students. The study addressed three objectives and investigated three null hypotheses. Thestudy's target audience was 125 senior secondary year two architectural drawing students. The experimental group received ten weeks of training using the marker board compass approach, while the control group received ten weeks of instruction using computer-aided design. Data was collected using the Architectural Drawing Achievement Test, which has a reliability rate of 0.86 using Kuder-Richardson 21. Three experts validated the test's face and content. The results revealed that the experimental group's students performed more effectively at architectural drawing than those in the control group. The cognitive achievement of students is significantly influenced by gender, favouring males. Additionally, in the area of architectural drawing, high-achievers students outperformed lowachievers students by barely. Based on these results, it was suggested that senior secondary schools in Nigeria teach architectural drawing using a combination of computer-aided design and the compass method.
In the planning system, conservation plans are produced without establishing a relationship with the upper scale plans, for this reason, their position and place in the planning hierarchy become questioned. In the study; this inquiry is realized by the case of Kayseri-Germir. In the context of case, the relation of the conservation plan in the planning hierarchy is evaluated. Research questions of study are; is the hierarchy of plans could be implemented as defined by the legislation; what is the position of conservation plans in the planning hierarchy? The result presented on the basis of case study area is that the Germir Conservation Implementation Plan is made without setting necessary relationship with the upper scale plans other than those protection-related strategies declared by the regional plan and at the same time, urban conservation area was considered independently and in its autonomy where its compatibility with the environment was ignored.
The Church of San Pellegrino in the historic centre of Lucca takes its name from its location on Via San Pellegrino, now called Via Galli Tassi: the northernmost route to the city of Lucca on Via Francigena. The only historical sources found are the pastoral visits found at the Diocesan Historical Archive. Expanded in the middle of the seventeenth century with the great vaulted hall, it became a pilgrimage and prayer centre for wealthy local families. In 1808, the Church of San Pellegrino was closed for worship. In the twentieth century, it was the site of an organ workshop and more recently it became a warehouse. The Church was in an advanced state of neglect, the objective set by the commission was to restore the exterior, the roofs and interiors with the intent of transferring the plaster cast collections from the Polo Museale Toscano. The collection consists of 231 pieces dated from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. When we visited the Church for the first time, we were struck by the extraordinary natural light that filtered through the windows and highlighted the great interior space. The project was set at maximum cost-effectiveness and respect for the historical building, the space has been restored to its former glory and both natural and artificial light is the material that defines the space.
Architectural drawing and design, Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying
In 1556, a house in Bologna, in via Centotrecento, was bought by the members of the Illyrian-Hungarian College to serve as permanent seat of the institution founded in 1553. After a series of lesser interventions, this building was considerably enlarged and thoroughly remodelled from 1690 to 1701. The author of this project was Bolognese architect Giovanni Battista Torri, who based the design on the model of the famous Collegio di Spagna, built in the same university town more than three centuries earlier (1365-1367). This article is the first to investigate the architectural history of the Illyrian-Hungarian College by drawing on a large body of archival documents.
This paper retraces the explorations engaged in by the Minim friar Jean-François Niceron (1613-1646). His treatise, La Perspective curieuse, recounts his search for anamorphic images and suggests the pursuit of ‘delight in seeing the possibilities beyond the expected’ that these images offer. Anamorphic representations are deformed images, whereby the point of view is displaced in space. As a result, the resolution of the image is only possible through the adjustment of the body, the re-positioning of the body near that unique secondary vantage point. Based on the capacity of anamorphic representations to disclose a space for wonder manifested only in the physical encounter with the image, the following text presents a workshop undertaken with PhD students where we re-enacted Niceron’s drawing instructions to explore the significance of ‘reaching toward a meaning not yet known’ that he envisioned.
Through the workshop, the act of delineating a surface became a way to occupy and inhabit the space. The text is presented in the format of a script to allow readers to follow the events that happened during the workshop, but also to encourage rehearsal and to invite the event to be played again. The script, as well as Niceron’s drawing instructions, are meant to be read, played and repeated, in the same way the movement by a body is a prerequisite for uncovering the meaning of the anamorphic image. These re-enactments do not only possess the potential to bring the past into the present, but they also—by the act of imagining a past-in- the-present—project our understanding of history into possible futures.
Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-02-07-Delineating-Surfaces
Architectural drawing and design, Drawing. Design. Illustration
The development of technological research can be studied on the publications of the SAIE (in particular in the publications known as “Cuore Mostra”) and on the network of connections generated by these books. These sources constitute a tool for building the social capital that we identify with the Architectural Technology. A selection of text citations is inevitable: this means betraying the breadth and the overall sense of SAIE publications. On the other hand, each reading, re-reading and translation enriches the texts of meanings and creates connections that can share (with the originals) aspirations, language and discipline of the work, which are based on the intent to cross the border between the technical and theoretical aspects of the research work and the design.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
Given that the polder boezem* system, and in particular its network structure, is crucial to the spatial identity of the Dutch cultural landscape, a thorough cultural- historical understanding of that system is a precondition for the effective implementation of necessary future changes to the system. The boezem system in the western part of the Netherlands evolved over a period of more than five hundred years and exhibits considerable local differences in structure and form. It developed in response to a combination of a falling ground level and a rising sea level, which meant that excess water could no longer be drained without additional measures. Existing streams, watercourses and canals were accordingly diked in, modified and connected to one another to store water from the neighbouring polders or discharge it into the water outside the dikes. Within this system, a water level was established somewhere between the water levels inside and outside the dikes. To bridge the difference, sluices and pumping stations were built at discharge points. In order to fully understand the boezem system in the Randstad** study area, several different landscape layers were investigated. To determine the landscapearchitectural character, drawings were made based on historical maps and reconstructions, such as paleogeographic maps. The drawings were made using the overlay technique, which entails the superimposition of information from different historical sources. Each final drawing represents a reduction of information about the topic under consideration. This approach revealed three distinct landscape layers: the natural, the cultural-technical and the urban. The natural landscape layer is a reflection of geological formation: the landscape as shaped by the forces of nature. The cultural-technical landscape layer arose out of the confrontation between the natural landscape and the land reclamation grid. The urban landscape layer represents a further modification and transformation of the two previous layers. In the Randstad study area, boezems were created in a variety of landscape types: the coastal zone, the river landscape, the fenland areas and the marine clay landscape with polders. Each type of landscape has its own peculiarities, differences and similarities when it comes to the form of the storage basin (boezem). This shows that the boezem is not just an important link in the water management system; it is also an important spatial carrier of the various landscapes. Once identified and defined, those qualities can play a role in the preservation of the identity of the ever-changing landscape. The research method outlined in this article can be applied to a variety of water systems and can be of use in a revaluation of culturally and historically significant water systems worldwide.
Translator’s note:
* a boezem is a dike-enclosed storage basin created to manage excess water in the water network
** the Randstad is a conurbation in the west of the Netherlands, flanked by the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht
This article documents a discussion held in April 2015 on the occasion of Alexander Brodsky’s visit to the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture as George Simpson Visiting Professor. It is presented here as a prelude to Issue 02 of Drawing On, exploring the related themes of Surface & Installation.
Brodsky, who has been described as Russia’s greatest living architect, is renowned for his remarkable drawings, installations and architectural projects. Mark Dorrian holds the Forbes Chair in Architecture and Richard Anderson is Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh.
Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-02-PL-Space-Drawing
Architectural drawing and design, Drawing. Design. Illustration
Never as within the complex of Sassi (Matera, South of Italy), the parties have a volumetric material identity and a special construction condition for which, first of all, you need to know the whole to which they give life, and then the individual components and their connections.
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In the course of time, in the Lucan city, there were stable and favorable conditions that allowed the development of an architectural language, of juxtaposition of the materials, interpenetration of space and conformation of the volumes, which generated an exceptional urban phenomenon. The distribution of these building artifacts in symbiotic connection with the connective calcareous texture that hosts them , resulted in a spontaneously harmonious figurative balance that characterizes the constructive expedients employed and the distributive and morphological solutions. This is the reason why the Sassi, and the overlooking Park of Rupestrian Churches of Matera Murgia, have been entered in 1993 in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
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The complexity of a built space, such as this one, determines the need for a non-traditional approach, so you have to combine last generation tools and canonical ones for survey, drawing and representation, within a dialectic between memory and design, tradition and innovation. For this reason, an appropriate cognitive apparatus has been set up for the entire technical process, making use of different non-destructive and non-contact techniques: digital photogrammetry, total station, laser scanner and thermography, in order to obtain a three-dimensional computer model, useful for the diagnosis and the preservation of the integrity of cultural heritage.
Seductive, famous and published to the point of saturation, the 8 House in Copenhagen, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and completed in 2010, is a paradigmatic example of an architecture that is oriented towards the reproduction of its own image and thus of its own “project.” From the initial marketing video and press photography to amateur post-occupancy photographs shared online, we trace the ways in which a seemingly simple project (“happiness”) begins to sprawl, positioning its users as fans, and thus as co-producers of a pre-determined narrative. Temporarily inhabiting the positions of visitor and critic, we explore the risks and potentials of giving oneself up to an architectural project, mining that experience in order to arrive at a proposal for the development of a “projective critique.” Ultimately, we conclude, an architecture that requires unconditional surrender (however pleasurable) is incompatible with positive societal transformation. In place of happiness, we therefore suggest the development of an architectural project of hope. Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-01-09-Yes-Boss