The intelligence of the diagram

摘要

The potentials of architectural diagrams have been addressed before in arq, notably in issue 16.1 (2012). The 'Leader' to that issue recalled traditions of the diagram in architectural culture. Diagramming was famously employed as an analytical tool by J. N. L. Durand in the nineteenth century and by the likes of Colin Rowe in the twentieth. Early modernists understood diagrams as a way to move discussions of architecture into the realm of formal organisation away from the decoration of surfaces. A later generation associated diagrams with objectivity in the 1950s and 1960s, with the refinement of building types as archetypes. More recently, firms like SANAA, MVRDV, and Herzog & deMeuron have stressed the importance of diagrams in their design processes, understanding a clear diagram for a project as a tool for clarifying an architectural idea and for sticking to it through the demanding processes of procurement and construction. Papers in this arq return to the theme of the diagram.