Talk:Architecture (disambiguation)

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Contents

[edit] Architecture is broad

Some thoughts Are architects architectocentric?

Is architecture even broader in the 21st century now that it is being applied to computer hardware/software and to the process of thinking-ideas of "The Mind" and the self?

Do people who have no home and visit no man made buildings use architecture all the time?

ANOTHER EXISTING DEFINITION OF ARCHITECTURE From John Zachman>>> B-52s are architecture also...from a 20th century redefinition of architecture FROM ZIFA: zifa.com – — … ° ≈ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Name: Roderick B 01:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)Roderick B


The mission of the Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement (ZIFA) is to exercise the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture, for the purpose of advancing the conceptual and implementation understanding of Enterprise Architecture.

Assumptions

  1. Enterprise Architecture is fundamental for successful participation in the global interaction of twenty first century enterprises.
  2. Enterprise Architecture is the principle structural mechanism for:
        1. Establishing a basis for assimilating high rates of change
        2. Advancing the state-of-the-art in Enterprise design
        3. Managing the knowledge-base of the Enterprise
        4. Integrating the technology (automated and/or non-automated) into the fabric of the Enterprise
  3. Enterprise Architecture is universal - that is, every Enterprise of any substance and any expectation of longevity will have to employ architectural concepts.
  4. Enterprise Architecture is cross-disciplinary, requiring integration of diverse skills, methods, and tools, within and beyond the technology community.

Goals

  1. Establish the Zachman Framework as a universal "language" to facilitate communication, research, and implementation of Enterprise Architecture concepts.
  2. Achieve universal understanding and competence in every "community" to implement architectural concepts. These communities include the: Public Sector and Private Sector Technology Community, General Management, User Community Consumers (Enterprises) and Suppliers (Hardware/Software/Consulting Vendors) Academicians and Practitioners
  3. Maintain method and tool neutrality, focusing on integration and positioning, as opposed to competition and displacement.

__– — … ° ≈ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Name: Roderick B 01:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)Roderick B__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Architecture is very broad, for example, it could be literal,"I think the architecture presented by Frank Gehry is interesting." Or... "I belive the architecture of my soul is broken by the course of recent events." There is also the idea of infastructure. Urban design is also as open as architecture because untill recent years when we thought about urbanism we thought about a city (large amounts of people to small amount of space, and the feeling that arises from that situation. Recently with technology, people can always connect with the masses, creating a different sort of reality or urbanism. Environmental designers (ME..), study many aspects of design and architecture, and almost are the conductor (like in a musical production) of a built environment. The env. designers decide the harmony in the flow and design of the entire environment(from the furniture to the lighting to the structure to the landscape). Does that clear it up?

I'm duplicating the lists of architectural styles here - 'cultural movement' is far too vague (as are most of the entries under that heading! "golden age of theater and architecture" indeed!). Duplication is not a bad thing in Wikipedia

I want to create a page for the Statue of Liberty, and can't figure out where it belongs. (A search got me lots of unrelated pages.) There's no entry for "statue" under sculpture, and nothing for monuments as a class. I think we need a category for monuments, which would include (for example) the Statue of Liberty and the Arc de Triomphe, but I'm not sure where to put it.

so far the only entries for buildings (I'm thinking of the Parthenon) are under the style to which they apply - there might as well be a list branching off of the architecture page for "monuments" (please don't call it "famous" or "important", because all sorts of obscure but interesting things will end up there, too. --MichaelTinkler

I reorganized the front page so that it would be less cluttered. Now there are links to the pages that contain main items...such as architect, forms, etc. --Plemeljr

I removed the sentence: "It is meaningless to try to understand a work of architecture without taking in to account all three aspects." There is plenty of meaningful discussion of architecture that doesn't use Vitruvius's three concepts (not to mention precious few who ever use the nomenclature). --MichaelTinkler

I reorganized the Forms in Architecture so that it is more logical following an archetype approach. I also have a long-winded discourse that explains my motivations and some theory that is relevant to architecture. More archetypical elements need to be included, and I think there might be a better way to structure that page. It seems that there is too much on the page right now.--Plemeljr

I love it. Much improved. "Elements" started out as an archeytype list and has been mishandled a little (mainly I've been sticking in stubs for things that needed to be explained). I'll confess that as I progress into middle age I'm more and more of an Archetypicalist, in part because I've tired of the way in which most theorists manage to blather on and on about art or architecture without ever showing a picture. If we're talking about things, let's talk about things. 'Space' in most critical discourse is discourse, not spatial extension around a thinking person. Of course, here on Wikipedia we live without pictures, so 'Relative Homelessness' might work. On the other hand, 'primoridial soup' is a clever description, but a tad condescending to a highly developed theory of architecture that existed before the 20th century. It also implies a kind of 'evolutionism' in thought that I find unhelpful when dealing with anything larger than a cell. --MichaelTinkler

I feel the definition of architechure in the article is too broad.

Is it really correct to say that arcitecture includes furniture design? I realize that some architects design furniture, and many of the concepts overlap.

Many other aspects of the 'built environment' are not in the architect's domain. The design of suspension bridges and dams require skills that the typical architect does not have.

Any suggestions for a more focused definition?

[edit] No pictures

Wow, this is an amazingly written page, but... NO PICTURES!!

Don't you think we should scrounge around for some appropriate representative examples? -- Jeff

This is a perfectly written page, but it REALLY NEEDS SOME PICTURES, and a lot of them!~~macemay16~~

[edit] Nice work

Nice work, whoever wrote this page! -- LVehko

I love that an article on the history of architecture becomes a microcosm of the entire history of civilization, touching on so many important topics... but I'm biased, I'm an architecture student. I love feeling like we're the ones who have the big picture :-) -- Chris
PS - I agree, well-written article. There's always more we could add though... maybe once school's out for summer I could take a crack at it...
PPS - Whoever wrote the "definition of architecture is too broad" note up there... NO!! BAD! We are the chosen ones! We can do anything! :-D sorry... but, you know, the CEO of Nike is an architect. Some professional musicians I know too... then there's architects who are urban planners, architects who are also engineers, architectural historians, architecture critics, heck authors of all sorts, horticulturists, philosophers, politicians, etc. ... architects can be experts in just about any field they focus on. It's part of the training, we're supposed to aim for the ideal, the renaissance man. Oh, and we're modest too. Ok, I'm done.

[edit] Definition of architecture

To me, one of the benefits of Wikipedia is that it's a ready launching point for investigating just about anything. And, while an academician might argue that this article doesn't constitute a professional overview of the subject, I find it a helpful starting point for any novice wanting to learn more about civil architecture. Perhaps some of the historical points deserve more time than others, but the various contributors have at very least seeded the ground with relevant information.

To add a little constructive criticism, however, I think this piece could deliver better on one of the other Wikipedia innovations -- the "au currant" encyclopedic definition. For example, how did the word evolve from a meaning specific to individual buildings to encompass the entire built environment (which it certainly does, in common parlance) and eventually many abstract structures, such as software, information, national security, business process, et al?

I would contend that the term architecture has taken on these new contexts not because it has broadened in meaning, but because its meaning has become more refined and exclusive in reaction to mass production. One can build a structure (physical or otherwise) that is completely devoid of architecture. We might all agree that an archetypical "tudor-style tract home" does not represent good architecture. But is it bad architecture?

If it it is bad architecture, it must have attempted something at which it failed. Furthermore it must have attempted and failed at something intrinsic to the idea of architecture -- something at which "good" architecture, in all its diverse exemplars, succeeds. Clearly this is not the case. A building -- or any other product, for that matter -- can succeed brilliantly at its design objectives (maximum profit?) and yet be utterly lacking in architecture.

So what is the stuff of architecture, as distinct from building, manufacturing or even design in and of itself? I would suggest that answering that question in this article would be a very useful improvement to the text. I took a crack at meeting this objective, but had my additions repeatedly over-written by one particular zealot with way more time on his hands than I have at my disposal :-)

-Eric

I don't know whether you referring to me(I am not a zealot and I don't have time). In any case why don't you create a user ID so that your edits can be discussed? As far as I am concerned my opinion is that if you want to apply a meaning of a word retrospectively, it shouldn't go as far as confusing the original meaning or sidelining it when it still exists. The structure of the page and meaning suffer because of this. That's why I moved the original architecture(ninety five percent my contribution) to its own page as there were repeated attempts at forcing a coherence in a detailed page on the original architecture(See the practice of disambiguating pages). KRS 13:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Can product design be replaced by industrial design? they seem to be quite the same thing (with the exception of vehciles falling under industrial design as well). Unless industrial design is a sub-category of product design so that article might have to contain a list of those... --Jimius 00:08, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] too much stuff?

I thought it might help to get some headers and subheaders in to navigate around the page. I also sliced in a chunk of text from the stanford dictionary of philosophy (no copyright notices on the page but i didn't look very hard) to distinguish theory from practice.

Added quite a bit on the Romans and Greeks and tweaked the ancient architecture setup, thought it was a bit sparse on background. Will probably continue with medieval architecture, renaissance, modern and contemporary stuff...but is it too much? We should trim some of the links at the bottom, looks a bit confusing.

chwe 16.08.04

[edit] move to different category?

perhaps architecture was under technology because of all that software architecture stuff, but what does everyone thinking about moving architecture, built environment, to the culture or society page? looks like culture has all the fine arts and society the practical arts, so what do you say? societay?

Chwe 03:41, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a good idea- maybe it can move to culture?KRS 19:57, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

To user Chwe:

WRT your edits, I have removed the para for which the copyright status is not clear as you state. I have also either removed or incorporated your edits on history. This is because this page is an introduction to architecture and hence a detailed history of architecture is not needed here. In fact it is almost impossible to write a sequential history across the world. Thats why there is some unevenness- sometimes architecture has to be defined in general in terms of how it evolved universally- vernacular, rural/ urban, cities, Gods, evolution of building types,etc., and sometimes more specific- like particular histories. If we go into detailed history here it might mean negating the histories of many at the expense of some. So any reference to a particular history here is just like an exemplar for a larger context. This was my opinion while writing the page. Maybe your edits would be more valid in the Architectural history page (which is now just a list of pages) or in the detailed histories of countries. In any case, could you please proceed slowly in your edits so that everyone involved can refer back and also use the talk page for any drastic changes? KRS 19:41, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have retained the broad headings and removed the subheadings on history because there are also references to non-Western history which will not come under the linear sequence. Also, there is a continuous thread which cannot be broken- for example- the evolution of building types cannot be attributed to one particular period and so on ...KRS 19:55, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the message, I posted something on talk:architecture before i started editing but I must not have saved it. I am new to this, so I don't know how to go about it, and given the remarkably polite discussions on this page I assumed little vested interest. Sorry for messing the page up.

One of the reasons I began adding more history was to show how architecture used to be and in particular to highlight the problems of contemporary architecture, of which the building/architecture divide is one. To me, architecture is the response of society as a whole to the environment it lives in, every intervention whether *classified* as functional, aesthetic or pyschological affects the whole of concrete reality; that which is functional seeps into the pyschological and the aesthetic may be purely for function. For this reason those elements of "pure function", pylons, roads, residential housing and office blocks, are often erected without proper consideration of consequences. Until the whole of the environment is readmitted into the holistic concerns of architecture, building will signal the death of our culture's architecture rather than architecture's "superiority" over building.

I expected social justice and the public good to be examples of such "holistic concern" that the average reader would be interested in over and above the more detached renderings of architectural history such as the pairing of needs and means, which sounded more like undercover economic supply and demand than the full panoply of cultural response that "architecture" represents. This intimate link between culture and architecture doesn't seem to be represented at all in this page's history section, emphasis is given instead to the emergence of the architect and the modern movement. That the space given to the relatively obscure Design Methodology Movement equals that of all Classical architecture suggests a very radical distortion of history.

I think we share the belief that architecture is an open dialogue that continues to change, to end the page with a "conclusion" rather than "today" seems a bit premature.Chwe 23:51, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)


[edit] definition/scope and intentions/theory and practice

These are all very similar things, I added headers because I didn't want to start a discussion about the definition of architecture. But it's inevitable no? I move towards "Architecture is society's built response to its environment" because our contemporary conceptions of design as divided between art and science does not fully account for the situational nature of design that draws on implicit paradigms of ettiquette (what is appropriate) and history (what is right).

Chwe 01:16, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)


[edit] moving to different section

are we really going to move the architecture page to culture or society? since i'm liable to fumble and dump this entire page into the ether, i'd rather not do it myself. Chwe 01:45, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Minor Additions

"the Kaogongji of ancient China"

[edit] Islamic Architecture

I'm surprised to see that the word Islamic Architecture is not even mentioned. The article is obviously not balanced. Displaying a picture of the Taj Mahal doesnt address this problem either. Islamic Architecture is even rooted in Europe. (The Alhambra, Grenada, The Ottomons, etc)

Please address!--Zereshk 09:15, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more Zereshk, please take the time to help out in this regard —Christiaan 10:16, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Would love to see some Islamic Architecture, I wouldn't mind starting something up, may not have access to pictures. It will take some research. -- Hamid M

[edit] General Restructuring And Update of (disambiguation) Page

I am in process of broadening, restructuring, and generally making this page more "user friendly."

All comments are respectfully solicited! normxxx 01:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] a more general definition of Architecture

I feel that the word architecture is more broader than "buildings".

What about Software architecture, Computer architecture, Information architecture ??

e.g. for "the manipulation of space" in very first paragraphs, could the "space" be "cyberspace" ?

-- 58.136.73.145 08:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definitions

I think that the seemingly ambiguous nature of the definition of architecture could be elucidated by defining the etymology of it better. What is described is how architecture is thought of today in terms of the immediately tangible (with hand or mind). Rather, looking back to Greece and their use of edification in building can lend a more concise understanding. Arche- roughly meaning knowledge (think Jungian Archetypes) combined with Tekton- or the structure of a thing. This gives us the definition of Architecture as the structure of knowledge, or the structure of the occurance of knowing. This definition better transcends the boundary between the "real" and the metaphysical aspects of architecture. Architecture is descriptor for a state of the mind, strictly, and should not be confused with the profession of building. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.27.130.133 (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)