Andrzej Piotrowski

Julia W. Robinson

In the vast literature on architectural theory and practice, the ways in which architectural knowledge is actually taught, debated, and understood are too often ignored. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. The issues considered range from the form and content of architectural education to the architect's social and environmental obligations and the emergence of a new generation of architects. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination, and reception of architectural knowledge. Contributors: Sherry Ahrentzen, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Stanford Anderson, MIT; Carol Burns, Harvard U; Russell Ellis, UC Berkeley; Thomas Fisher, U of Minnesota; Linda Groat, U of Michigan; Kay Bea Jones, Ohio State U; David Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; A. G. Krishna Menon, TVB School of Habitat Studies, India; Garth Rockcastle, U of Minnesota; Michael Stanton, American U, Beirut; Sharon E. Sutton, U of Washington; David J. T. Vanderburgh, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; and Donald Watson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The Discipline of Architecture

The traditional dichotomy between institutional and domestic space does not adequately explain design in the 21st century, nor does it relate to the layperson's conception of a continuum between institution and home. By comparing various institutional and home environments, this book identifies the attitudes and behaviors associated with diverse housing settings and the design elements that generate and express them. While the cultural analysis of design is generally based on subjective interpretation, this book goes beyond this, employing additional quantitative measures to provide a more definitive analysis. On the basis of methods such as semantic differential evaluation of images, inventories, and space syntax diagrams, Julia Williams Robinson develops a territorial gradient delineating seven domains from intimate to public-urban based on numbers of users and spatial dimensions. On the basis of this, the text identifies different kinds of domesticity and institutionality. Such distinctions raise important questions about how design can empower residents, and how the designer can become a positive force, constructing and influencing cultural messages using the medium of architecture. Institution and Home: Architecture as a Cultural Medium offers a timely response to the debate on the effects of cultural change and consumer power in the built environment of the 21st century. It provides a wealth of information on housing that will interest both designers and theorists, students of contemporary urban culture as well as urban planners and architects.

Julia W. Robinson

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