The Architect at Work

The Architect is not just involved in the design of a building. He is involved much deeper and that's why we need to see in detail what he does, to consider the ways he exercises his various abilities, concentrate skills that distinct an architect from other kinds of designers and planners like decision-maker, concern about structures, servicing and environmental control, exercise skills of locational analysis, making judgement over matters of cost and even of interior design. These skills make it possible architect's capacity for visualizing or generating the 3D forms of building and space.
For generating 3D form architects generally have used 4 distinct ways: pragmatic, iconic, analogic and canonic in chronological order of application.
-Pragmatic Design-was the earliest way of generating architectural forms. You make trial and error until the perfect form, the design is produced in the best way. Some examples are : snow house or Igloo, the mammoth hunter, Indian tepees etc. In this design, we have climate modification as offered by wild nature so that certain human activities could be carried out in comfort.
-Iconic Design-Once the climate is controlled and the resources available for its control are matched and have a sufficient justification for the repetition of a house form once it has been proved to work. There are other pressures which lead to conservatism. House form and pattern of life become adjusted to each other. Some tribes describe the fabled origin of building form. People developed their building forms to a fixed mental image that was called iconic design( an artifact, object kind of resemblance)
-Analogic Design-(Generation of the new forms) This method of generating new forms seem fundamental to the human mind. The use of new forms aroused by analogical, processes is firstly seen in the funerary complex designed for King Djoser. Analogic design with or without the use of design analogs is still the most potent source of ideas in architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright has described examples in connexion with his work: waterlilies or mushrooms as analogies of structural units of the Johnson Wax company.
-Canonic Design-This is where were developed pattern in order and regularity(grid) that allows the architect to design a proportional way. This design is considered as the most intellectual design.
Broadbent continues with Le Corbusier that he also makes iconic use of feature from earlier designs and so on with Mies van der Rohe. The founding fathers of modern architecture combined the 4 types of design approaches whenever they needed to generate 3D form