The Alphabets of architecture

TAD (www.teamtad.com) started as a way of putting together a design using a simple set of "alphabets" -- why so? some may wonder. Some architects may even ask: "But if we talk about architecture using alphabets, wont it become boring? wont the creativity be all gone?"

Firstly, no poet worth his/her salt will claim he/she was not able to write poetry because the alphabets of the language restricted him/her!

Secondly, I am talking NOT of alphabets of the human language kind, but core symbolic ingredients that are gathered together to represent architecture -- whatever that comes out of TAD does finally become regular drawings and 3D models; so don't worry about TAD being very esoteric. It is actually quite simple -- in fact so simple that it can even generate a face-slap epiphany!

Read further if your keen to know why alphabets are important.... Those of you who are not architects may find all this a bit esoteric, but actually there is no rocket science here; and anyone can really understand all this.

This post is modified from a post I wrote at a technical forum of architects who are developing software.

If you see the history of technical drawings, one major event happened during the Renaissance -- when Brunelleschi solved the problem of the half-finished cathedral dome at Florence. In doing so, he ended up showcasing the importance of drawings. I believe that and later on other similar use of drawings (such as the assembly instructions of canons in France) all led to the belief that technical drawings are the means to express architecture.

What many (not all) forgot is that Brunelleschi was talking about construction and not really about the design process.

Architects have to deal with both built as well the un-built in a hopelessly intertwined "figure ground" illusion. We have spaces because the walls around them create them; but then the walls are created because spaces are separated from each other. Kind of a barber-paradox.

If I hazard an analogy: this is something what musicians also deal with: They too have a figure-ground between the sound that emerges at an instance (the note) punctuating the backdrop of silence. The silence between notes is needed to highlight the note but by highlighting the note, we notice the silence!

The musicians solved their figure-ground confusion by inventing the musical notation, where one sees abstract "alphabets" both for the notes as well as for the silences. They know that if they have to make sense of their music, they would need to represent BOTH and retain the representation right across.

But we architects largely lose our representation of spaces over the design process. By the time the design is finalized; what is left behind is pithily represented by the French term: poché -- it stands for the marks we leave behind to represent whatever is built. What is not built, well; good earnest people thought that they no longer need representation because we build only the built-matter; so why should we talk about spaces anymore.

My strong contention is that we cannot afford to stop representing spaces. They are always needed in the representation. We need the spaces to be represented and _remain_ represented right across; because in future someone poring over the TAD model would know what were the built matter, and what were the parts of the space -- and when the architects and other collaborators kept embellishing them, future users (which could be an AI program) can easily know what happened as the design emerged -- and it is not just the geometry

(BTW, there is only one universal space, though we use the term "spaces" to usually indicate parts of that one space. We architects simply either promote opportunities or demote opportunities on whatever that happens in those parts of the space)

Therefore, the workflow in TAD actually _inverts_ the conventional drafting process (and that is why it is sometimes hard to get accepted or understood)

Instead of expressing the edges of built matter, TAD expresses the edges of spaces. (It can express built-matter like regular 3D too but you will know how it does that in a moment) So here is an example; the entire silhouette of a building would be the alphabet called "envelope" inside that envelope, are a set of "atoms" -- which are spatial volumes whose characteristic is that it is not further sub-divided.

Then there are "connectors" which are spatial volumes that connects two or more of its faces with other spatial volumes, so that now you can actually form the "graph tree" of the spatial organization. The built matter now becomes the boolean subtraction i.e. Built matter = envelopes - (atoms+ connectors) ... but then you may decide to put in regular built-matter too; such as columns, beams, etc -- the volumes of those actually do NOT get subtracted as such (the philosophy being that a column came into say the corner of a room to support the wall due to some strength of material issue, and not really because of the demand of the space itself -- such pure solids can always go away)

These fully solid material are called "artefacts" but then when you later examine an artefact deeper, you find that itself could be actually a collection of Atoms, Envelopes and connectors but now at a different scale of examination. For example; initially you placed the column as one solid mass; but on closer examination that column was actually a doubly-laced steel column; and hence could be broken down into atoms, envelopes, connectors.

In short; any built environment, can be expressed as a collection of atoms, envelopes and connectors at various different scales of examination. (Hence I use the term "fractal" ... maybe some may say that a better term is "iterative" data structure)

I think there are couple of ongoing design software that others are pursuing that do recognize the need for spaces. But I think TAD does it quite differently. One crucial difference is that TAD _retains_ the classifications right across with no attempt to really do the actual boolean-ing inside TAD itself...

There are many other differences and many reasons too but let me not make this even longer than what it already is

Recently I came across the Sumerian method of expressing architecture -- which is actually remarkably similar to the TAD method -- I could easily identify on their 5000 year old clay tablets the three kinds of spaces: Envelopes, atoms and connectors.

Actually it is not just me who have noticed these 3 types of spatial volumes. The well known architect; Rob Krier, also spoke of those in a book... but he did not call the 3 types by my terminologies; and I read that book long after I had published my thesis with the JIIA -- the Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects in 1991

TAD has now fleshed out these alphabets and have stood the test of time for so many years; having put these forwards not just in front of architects but also those architects who are also into computing.

One fascinating aspect of any language is that over time, the "alphabets" or the core symbolic units starts getting stripped out of real world visual analogs. That is why modern writing really has no visual connection with natural forms of the world whereas ancient proto-writing (cave wall paintings) were full of analogs of bulls heads, jumping stick men and so on ...

It is only when we move representations to an abstract layer that our mind becomes free to discuss the topic at hand instead of getting distracted whether that "bird" symbol on a cave wall where it was used as an alphabet -- "hmmm, does it mean the bird itself or the act of flying? or fleeing? or does it mean soaring towards the heaven? and so on"

Along similar lines, if only architects would strip out natural analogies out from the represenation can the evolving design truly be discussed without emotional/cultural/temporal biases

Core abstract alphabets have absolutely no meaning associated with them. As they say: the buck stops there. It is after the alphabets (words, sentences) that difference of opinions come ... That is what is seen in the evolution of the letter "A" if you see its evolution, earlier that letter started off quite a lot like a regular bull's head. Now practically nobody gets distracted because the letter has got highly stylized and the bulls horns are now pointed below.

If humanity had retained the bulls-head as the alphabet, then we would have got even more BS than what we now get :-)