AMIR TEYOURI, MArch

The Formal Operation of Architecture: The Question of Abstraction



Forms in architecture are the result of an evolutionary process with underlying abstract constituent parts, a process generated and mediated by human cognition. If architecture is taken to be the art of creating inhabitable forms, the inquiry is mainly concerned with how architecture gives form to an intended expression or meaning and what theoretical framework can explain this formal operation. It is argued that the comprehensibility of the intended expression is dependent upon the logical correlation between the objective perceptual aspects of the formal operation with abstract ideas which are derived from the externalities of architecture. The nature of this logical correlation is predicated on abstraction.





It is not about using perspective as a mere representational tool, a picturesque fetishization, but rather as an exploratory tool which disturbs the process with its measured uncertainty.



The project of the thesis, or more accurately its process, intends to put up a resistance against the traditional integrated method, to refute the idea that the boundary of an architectural expression is the same as the boundary of a building. Instead, the intention is to shift the emphasis on to the scenographic fragments, fragments that are semantically motivated. It is essentially allowing the surface structure of what is seen, (or what is hoped to be perceived) to enter the formal process much earlier than the traditional framework. It is not about using perspective as a mere representational tool, a picturesque fetishization, but rather as an exploratory tool which disturbs the process with its measured uncertainty.


Toronto Metropolitan Department of  Architectural Science Toronto, CA.