The work of Amsterdam architects Felix Claus and Kees Kaan is moving away from formulae associated with modern architecture. This paper studies their attempt to find meaning which is at once more abstract and more direct, and notes that a guiding light in their search is a fundamental concern with the physical realities and compromises of the building process.

For Hugo Häring, the role of geometry was one of the central issues in architecture. For him, geometric ordering systems were a deadening force. He rejected Le Corbusier's view that ‘geometry is the daughter of the universe’ and doubted the aesthetic efficacy of proportional systems. He believed that there was no absolute: geometry had different meanings at different times and places and was often present for purely technical reasons. This essay on proportion was written shortly after the Nazis came to power and Häring lost all his work. It was then that he turned to writing, both as a means of legitimating his Modernism as not un-German and, as in the case of this essay, of setting out his developing theories. Peter Blundell Jones' introduction gives the background to this, the first translation of this important work to be published in English.

‘The advice of the architect is very much needed in the councils which take political decisions about how to use our resources and what to build’, wrote the structural engineer, Ove Arup (1895–1988) in this 1970 paper. ‘The architect is in a way the counsel for the people…and, if he doesn't speak up, there is nobody else to put the case for humanity in an informed way.’ But Arup added that competence in building is essential. ‘Nobody will listen to your advice about how to run the state if you can't run your own business.’

‘This is an extraordinary group of buildings’, wrote Philip Johnson (then a Mies van der Rohe follower) when The Architectural Review published Alison and Peter Smithson's School at Hunstanton in September 1954. ‘… Here we have an unknown team … being allowed to win and build. Most surprising they are allowed to build not a conventional school, not even a Hertfordshire plan, but something quite the opposite of the prevailing trend … The plan is not only radical but good Mies van der Rohe, yet the architects have never seen Mies's work …’ In this paper, based upon a talk given at the Architectural Association School and on conversations with the Editor, Peter Smithson recalls the background to the project, its design and construction, his later visits to Chicago and a 1973 revisit to the building.

This paper deals with a strange and isolated series of events at New York's Museum of Modern Art between 1966 and 1977, orchestrated by the Director of the Department of Architecture, the late Arthur Drexler. The events, which consisted of a series of books, exhibitions and catalogues, were all aimed at discrediting the Museum's own International Style and replacing it with Drexler's own special brand of eclectic post-modernism.

This paper challenges the predominant reading of Dublin's architectural history whereby the eighteenth century is a golden age of rational urbanism and the nineteenth century represents a collapse into confusion and stasis. It emphasises the different ways in which the city continued to change in the nineteenth century. An examination of James Joyce's changing representation of Dublin - from the ‘scrupulous meanness’ of Dubliners to the exuberance of Ulysses - suggests how an equivalent shift in architectural strategies, from a nostalgia for the formal certainties of Georgian Dublin towards an appreciation of the heterogeneous nineteenth-century city, might produce a new kind of urbanism.

This paper suggests the removal of one of London's most conspicuous and familiar monuments, the Marble Arch, to a site in Park Square, Regent's Park, where it would serve to link the axis of Portland Place with the Broad Walk, as evidently intended by Nash. Not only is the current site of the Arch not the original one, the author argues, but its whole setting and environment have been compromised since it was moved there from the front of Buckingham Palace in 1851. Fresh research into the history of the Marble Arch is presented in the article, with particular regard to its experimental use of exposed marble in the British climate.

The planned closure of Copenhagen's commercial docks and railway yards presented the opportunity to consider not only possible uses for the vacated land but also the impact of these changes on the rest of the city. This paper is based on extracts from Urban Make, a record of a study made of this subject by a team of architects drawn from the architecture schools at Copenhagen and Århus, led by Erik Christian Sørensen. Reproduced here is an abbreviated account of the team's approach together with its proposals for three of the study areas and for reinforcing the link between the existing centre and the expanding Ørestad area across the harbour. Limitations on space preclude the inclusion of the remaining proposals and the studies made of other European cities, a series of essays on ‘The Commendable City’ and suggestions for reordering the city's streets and obtaining better value from investment in the public realm.

The gulf dividing the houses of ruling elites from those in use among the bulk of a population (here referred to as vernacular) is a phenomenon common to many cultures. It reflects the close correlation between the kind of house in which an individual lives and his social status. A grasp of the relationship, between elite and vernacular houses in societies where both exist enhances our understanding of the development of domestic architecture, and our appreciation of the wider historical significance of that development. This paper explores an aspect of the relationship between elite and vernacular houses in seventeenth-century Japan.

Schindler's Free Public Library competition project of 1920 is analysed. Archival documents are interpreted and an analytic model is constructed. Schindler's standing as a Modernist is considered and his early career is rehearsed, especially his involvement with Frank Lloyd Wright. The formal analysis focuses on the use of symmetry. An interpretation of Schindler's employment of the diagonal axis in the Library is proffered. Historical precedents for diagonal butterfly symmetry in the English free school and the Arts and Crafts movement are examined. A method of analysis using the partial ordering of subsymmetries of the square is applied to the floor plans In conclusion, the influence of the Library project on Schindler's later work is surveyed.

This paper describes the use of timber as a rainscreen cladding on David Chipperfield's River and Rowing Museum at Henley. The extensive use of green oak in this way is the key to a precise and beautifully crafted building and was the result of collaboration between the architects and the Timber Research and Development Association. This use of timber represents a major shift in the work of David Chipperfield from concrete toward a wider palette of materials. Henley is also an important example of a recent trend in the development of timber as an external cladding material. Timber cladding as a rainscreen will be discussed in the context of the Henley project in terms of its performance factors and the design and construction process, and analysed with a view to drawing some conclusions for its future use.

This paper sets Alberti's rules of architectural proportioning in the context of Renaissance mathematical practice. While Alberti makes didactic use of the well developed theories of harmony from music, it is shown that his architectural usage is not analogous to musical systema, even though the arithmetical foundations are shared. The common base for fifteenth-century musical theory and Alberti's architectural recommendations is Pythagorean arithmetic, derived largely from Nicomachus. Alberti also develops a geometrical approach involving magnitudes derived from the cube. Neither the diagonal of a face, nor the diameter of the sphere which circumscribes the cube are commensurable with its side. Alberti makes use of rational estimates for the square roots of two and three, and these ratios are evident in his work. Some examples are indicated for the purpose of linking theory to practice, but it is not the intention of this paper to analyse specific buildings in depth. The purpose of the paper is to suggest a potent theoretical frame within which future empirical investigations might flourish.

This paper explores thermal comfort, following recent renewed interest in thermal comfort standards. It also reports on findings from the Thermal Comfort Task in the EU funded PASCOOL project which had an overall objective of promoting passive cooling and avoiding air conditioning. Finally, some tentative conclusions are developed together with their implications for architectural design.

The Museum of Natural History, London, typified the state of environmental service design in large public buildings when construction started in 1873, as described in an earlier paper in arq, vol. 2. Its exemplary systems included both ventilation with heating and the architect's use of towers, especially the novel multi-sleeved versions which he described as ‘thermosyphonic’, as ventilation exhausts. This paper describes how, both in critical design decisions during construction and in physical adjustments made after its occupation in 1881, the Museum reveals both contemporary practices and the professional skills of its architect and engineer.

Regardless of theoretical approach, architectural ideas are ultimately embodied in materials. While contemporary buildings are often brimming with architectural theories, they frequently flounder at the attempt to translate these ideas into materials. The uncertainty of this contemporary architectural climate is powerfully mirrored in the artistic language of mannerism. Rejecting the tenets of the Renaissance, and inspired by new discoveries, the italian architect of the late sixteenth century sought to reformulate architectural language. Founded on an increasingly encyclopaedic knowledge of the antique world, this language was to represent a new understanding of nature and involved an exploration of natural materials in a way unimaginable in the early Renaissance. This paper describes the garden of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, a masterpiece from this period where materials themselves resonated with significance. Based on the author's iconographic interpretation of the garden, it draws on original eyewitness descriptions of the effects of water, light and sounds.

This paper is an account of a study of existing arcade environments in London and Cardiff. Seasonal surveys were undertaken in order to understand both the arcades' thermal performance and their contribution to the environmental diversity of the city. Arcades, which are genuine bioclimatic buildings and urban spaces, appear to generate progressive environmental transients that draw on the ability of users to adapt and thus improve their comfort. The surveys were conducted using a portable sensor array. The results are analysed in terms of environmental transients and seasonal performance.

This paper is a practical pocket philosophy of building construction. It sets out a way of thinking about building construction in terms of principles, rules and compensation, and illustrates their application with a range of examples. Its basis lies in reflections on the way things work and the way they fail, and a search for a simple pattern in this. Its aim is to set out a system which by virtue of its simplicity will serve as a guide both to those designing and to those interpreting buildings. The ideas it contains were first set out by Lyall Addleson and the author in Performance of Materials in Buildings (Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford, 1991). The focus of these ideas is those parts of a building which act as containers, separators, and modifiers of environments or, in other words, the construction of the building envelope.

This paper describes current research activities oriented towards the development of an innovative methodology for survey and documentation activities in buildings that owing to their general characteristics challenge the use of traditional survey and documentation methodologies. In particular, the specific project of the survey and documentation of the Abbey of Valmagne in southern France is presented as an example of the use of telematics for conducting geographically distributed activities within a methodology specially designed for projects in which the location and complexity of historical structures poses a dramatic challenge. The paper ends by addressing a number of conclusions that can be applied to a general framework and their relation with future research and development work in this field.

The idea of spanning a space with beams, none of which is long enough to reach clear across, is one which has long held a fascination for designers. Described by Villard de Honnecourt and by Serlio, variations on this form have appeared both in drawings and in actual use. This paper describes examples of both and considers the structural behaviour of this kind of arrangement.