Christopher Alexander famously maintained that traditional architecture is inherently more ‘whole’ – and consequently more beautiful and alive – than modern architecture because the former is the product of organic processes, while the latter is the product of mechanistic processes. The central concept in Alexander’s theory – that architecture can be more or less whole – has only rarely been quantitatively examined. Furthermore, his claims about the superior wholeness of organic architecture have similarly remained untested. In response, this paper critically re-examines Alexander’s definition of wholeness in the context of A Pattern Language, along with previous attempts to quantify its properties. From this basis, the paper proposes a new pattern-based quantitative method for examining and measuring wholeness. This method is then tested through the analysis of seven ‘organic’ houses by Frank Lloyd Wright and seven ‘mechanistic’ villas by Le Corbusier. Through this process, the paper demonstrates a method for measuring wholeness, and quantitatively tests Alexander’s assertion that organic environments are more whole than mechanistic ones.

Historically, there are two main methods for applying evolutionary processes to architectural design in terms of utilised computation procedures. The first approach uses digital computation to represent computational models of evolutionary processes from micro to macro scales for form-finding experiments. The second approach proposes to go beyond the simulation of evolutionary processes by integrating physical evolutionary processes directly into architectural design. The novelty is in embedding physical evolution processes into architectural design through physical computation, which takes place through a direct interaction of living organisms or materials with their environment. One of the organisms that has started to be observed and utilised in architectural design processes is Physarum polycephalum, a single-celled and multi-headed slime mould.

Although many design theories and models have been proposed for using Physarum polycephalum in architectural design, more research is still needed to evaluate the role and critical limits of digital and physical computation as a bridge between evolutionary processes and architectural design. Bio-digital design arguments have been barely challenged by focusing on the capacities and limitations of the organism’s physical computation and its simulation through digital computation. This article foregrounds and evaluates various bio-digital design theories by focusing on the limits, potentials, and differences between physical and digital computation to critically review the relationship between evolution, computation, and the built environment.

The idea of introducing the cognitive capacity of Physarum polycephalum into architectural design is challenged by referring to the characteristics of both digital and physical computation procedures. Moreover, the challenges arising from scale and context differences between Physarum polycephalum and design project sites are discussed. The original contribution is the first comparative review of Physarum polycephalum’s applications in architectural design processes through a critical methodology founded upon the theory of digital and physical computation.

In this article, I consider the planning, construction, and operation of Donaldson’s Hospital, an early purpose-built residential school for deaf (and hearing) children in Edinburgh. I propose that, from the initial concerted efforts to provide formal deaf education, space was at the centre of debates about what it meant to be a child who does not hear. I show that the architecture of deaf teaching was fiercely contested by educators, legislators, government organisations, financial donors - in other words by those who had the power to organise bodies in space. In doing so, I highlight the shifting cultural understandings of deafness in the second half of the nineteenth century and trace how these became spatial determinants of building designs and architectural discourse. As such, I argue that architecture was not merely a reactionary receptor of ideological currents but that individual buildings actively produced, expressed, and opposed cultural understandings of deafness at the time.

This paper explores the role of parallax in architecture and the so-called ‘parallax gap’ proposed by philosopher Slavoj Žižek in 2009. For Žižek the parallax gap is grounded in psychoanalytic short circuits, prompting a hypothesis about postmodern conflicts within architecture. While the concept of parallax has appeared within architecture at various points historically, Žižek’s parallax gap affords a possibility for the redirection of the viewer’s gaze away from the architectural object to the spaces inflected by, and between, neighbouring urban fabric. Reflecting on the potentialities of interrogating architecture and urban space psychoanalytically, I argue for an expansion of parallax focused on understanding spatial dislocations and disorientations. The result retraces parallax in urban space research, catering for a fertile investigation at the intersection of architecture, culture, politics, and psychoanalysis.

In the last century, concrete has become the preferred construction material with which to densify cities by height. Yet, concrete - the most highly produced and consumed building material in human history - is a leading player in climate change and a candidate for marking the stratigraphic onset of the Anthropocene: the term proposed for a new geological epoch in which humans have become the leading geological force capable of altering irreversibly the course of Earth history. In recent years, wood has emerged as a renewable alternative to densify cities by altitude owing to its potential to generate a carbon-neutral cycle. This article reflects on the properties of these building materials in the context of the Anthropocene to argue for the need to shift from an emphasis on the life expectancy of buildings to what we term the vital cycle of the built environment, where architectural design is metabolically responsive to the deep geological history of building materials, on which the continuity of human life depends.

In the early twentieth century Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) contracted polio, which left him paralysed from the waist down. In search of a ‘cure’ he found the mineralised waters of Warm Springs in Georgia, US. In due course, in collaboration with his physiotherapist Helena Mahoney and his architect Henry J. Toombs, FDR founded a polio rehabilitation clinic that established a holistic definition of rehabilitation. In this article, I discuss the role played by Warm Springs in defining rehabilitation that involved physiotherapy and play, towards reconstituting a sense of self for a person with disabilities at a time when disability was less understood and accepted. I argue for the role that architecture played in treatment plans. The article derives from archive research and biographical research to layer the public and private intentions of FDR, describing an alternative reading of the project within FDR’s presidential timeline. I focus primarily on Warm Springs and its design at the time when FDR was directly involved in the project. However I also question the consequences of his celebrity on both knowledge of, and the legacy of, the project.

Anne Tyng’s pioneering work in morphology is a stark counterpoint to the dominant paradigms of architectural design during the twentieth century. She saw in academic research a primary driver of advanced design practice and education, becoming one of the earliest interdisciplinary educators to rigorously bring a research-based ethos into the discipline. She produced knowledge not merely to indulge her personal curiosity or as fodder for peer consumption, but also as pedagogical fuel. Though there has recently been increasing interest in this mathematician-architect’s thought and work, little has been said about her oeuvre’s relationship to her pedagogy. Deploying a recondite intellectual interest as an epistemology undergirding both design and scholarship, Tyng conceptualised and taught architecture as a process of induction that takes up the natural world as its field of investigation. Pedagogy was her means of effecting a disciplinary turn to architecture as a process of Truth seeking. Her academic activity sustained her intellectual infidelity to the prevailing ethos. Such principled perfidy, however, has not been a guarantee of widespread recognition.

This article recommends Foucault’s archaeological method as a means to challenge the dominant narrative of the British postwar social housing estate’s inevitable failure. Through this process, it is proposed that common historical and present-day rationalisations for the demolition of such places can be valuably problematised. An explanation of how archaeology can be applied to the postwar estate is provided, with a document pertaining to James Stirling’s Southgate estate analysed as an example. Conceived as an intrinsic part of Arthur Ling’s masterplan for Runcorn New Town and completed in 1978, Southgate was demolished just over a decade later in 1989. This happened despite an absence of structural faults and many residents expressing a preference to stay in their homes. As such, Southgate’s trajectory represents an extreme example of the legitimising effects that stem from the discourse of the failed postwar estate. Such framing continues to underpin arguments for the demolition of postwar social housing stock today. In this context, archaeology offers an opportunity to bypass the epistemological trap of speculating over causes of failure, instead illustrating the contingent nature of the rules that led to the postwar estate’s negative social construction.

Design research in architecture has evolved significantly in the last three decades. This article traces a historical lineage of architectural design research in order to speculate on its contemporary trajectories. This article investigates two interrelated threads. The first provides an overview of significant moments in the history of architectural design research in the academic field in the UK and Western Europe, drawing from relevant literature. The second focuses on the 1995 book S,M,L,XL by OMA, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau, which coincided with the emergence of architectural design research discourse in academia. We demonstrate how the medium of this book contributed to a reorganisation of architectural design knowledge. Our article concludes by speculating on a similar paradigmatic turning point for design research that we are facing today. With the emergence of AI image generators and their expanding impact on architectural design, such as Midjourney and DALL-E, the field is confronted with a new horizon. If the birth of architectural design research was ushered in by a hypermediated format whose multiple narratives were co-constructed by the reader/viewer, then new media such as AI technologies signal a phase of post-mediation that challenges the authorship of the architect. The article ends by speculating on the role of architectural design research at a time when the very agency of the architect is challenged by such outside forces.

This article analyses the life and career of Olof Hanson (1862-1933), the earliest known deaf architect to practice in the United States. Drawing on Hanson’s unpublished papers in Gallaudet University Archives, the article provides the first comprehensive account of his innovative architectural design for deaf people and communities, intended to optimise manual communication, such as American Sign Language (ASL), in residences, schools, dormitories, and community buildings. These innovations included maximising natural light, designing electric light systems to highlight the hands and faces of speakers, and optimising sight lines to optimise manual communication. Hanson explicitly used this approach in his designs, notably for Kendall Hall at Gallaudet University, which used beveled windowsills in the basement, and at Charles Thompson Memorial Hall in Saint Paul, MN, which included numerous full to over-sized windows from the basement to the top floor. The hall also included a widened staircase and entryway designs that emphasised an open view between floor levels, allowing unimpeded manual communication as deaf people moved between floors and rooms. Hanson provided previews of space using interior glass partitions in community buildings and spindlework in residences. Three decades of architectural practice in Minnesota, Washington State, and elsewhere, along with a lifetime of personal experience, offered Hanson numerous opportunities to centre deaf people in his architectural designs. His design innovations were built upon and advanced by other deaf and hard-of-hearing architects who modified standard building plans to meet the needs of deaf clients. In turn, Hanson’s designs foreshadowed the late twentieth-century concept of DeafSpace. This article is accompanied by ‘Olof Hanson’s Architectural Legacy’, ArcGIS StoryMap that traces Hanson’s life and career.

In 2007, the Royal British Institute of Architects (RIBA) commissioned Jeremy Till’s now seminal essay, ‘Architectural Research: Three Myths and One Model’. Till’s essay called out ‘unnecessary antipathy’ between practitioners and academics, arguing for enhanced collaboration to enable a more ‘dynamic system’ of research. This paper presents a pilot study of five large architectural practices engaged in research that seeks to understand what is driving greater research engagement within contemporary architectural practice, what knowledge is being created for what purpose, and the relationship of practice-generated research to that produced within academia. Five semi-structured interviews and three written questionnaires were elicited from practices, each of whom have dedicated research staff or a demonstrated track record of research engagement and/or utilisation. Ultimately, it is suggested, a more honest discussion of the relational dynamics of collaborations between practice and academia is needed. Such discussion requires researchers from both to embrace ethnographic approaches, reporting not just the outcomes of their work together but also revealing the ‘mess’ involved in generating those outcomes.

Othering marks perceived differences so as to establish a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’, which is materialised in and by built space. Our study expands prevailing understandings of this materialisation by highlighting how architectural design can counter othering.

To this end, we introduce Danielle Koplitz, an American young woman who was born deaf and, at the time of the study, was studying architecture. The design approach of an architecture student who is deaf represents a unique combination of (deaf) experiences and (architectural) knowledge. Based on interviews with Danielle and design documents, we analyse how and what she designed during her architecture studies.

Our analysis highlights how Danielle seeks to design-out othering while designing in difference without negative connotation. We show how personal experiences with othering motivate her to design spaces that avoid environmental barriers and convey positive messages to make people thrive and accept their identity. It is in this way that she believes architectural design can promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. Moreover, on top of designing out othering, she designs in others, by involving different people’s input as a resource in her designs.

Danielle’s approach and designs are inspiring in several ways: from their spatial qualities to her capacity to build on and go beyond DeafSpace in architectural terms, already from her twenties. As such, her lived experiences and the way she captures and expresses her own connection with her sociospatial context are profoundly significant in pedagogical terms. At the same time, her trajectory, like that of other architects with disability experience, points to another process of othering: the cycle that architectural education fosters towards able-bodied and privileged mindsets. It is high time that educators not only teach students about the importance of designing in others, but also start learning from their students how to do so.