This essay begins with a reflection on what has been taught in architectural design since the turn of the twentieth century. I shall trace back to the two disciplinary foundations of the French école des Beaux-Arts – parti and poché – in the education of an architect in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I shall then attempt to superimpose parti and poché on a modern disciplinary framework, say that of mathematics, which leads to musings on a series of architectural problems that include pattern versus type, stability versus mobility, orthogonal versus oblique, confinement versus transparency, and aging versus metallic sheen. These paradoxes, I suggest, demand the education of an architect to address both the instrumental pattern of a building configuration and the ambient felt qualities of a room, rather than vision alone.
. What can be taught in architectural design? — parti, poché, and felt qualities[J]. Frontiers of Architecture and Civil Engineering in China, 2010, 4(4): 450-455.
Xing RUAN. What can be taught in architectural design? — parti, poché, and felt qualities. Front Arch Civil Eng Chin, 2010, 4(4): 450-455.
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