The brilliant book Writing Analytically (David Rossenwasser and Jill Stephen), addressed at students of writing course, starts with the chapter : Analysis – What it is and What it does. The book defines writing as “recording our thoughts in search of understanding” and “More than just a set of skills, analysis is a frame of mind, an attitude toward experience. It is a form of detective work that typically pursues something puzzling, something you are seeking to understand rather than something you are already sure you have the answers to”. These are the five moves formulated in the first chapter. Below is a very short extract of the same:

Move 1: Suspend Judgment
Suspending judgment is a necessary precursor to thinking analytically because our tendency to judge everything shuts down our ability to see and to think.

Move 2: Define Significant Parts and How They’re Related
Whether you are analyzing an awkward social situation, an economic problem, a painting, a substance in a chemistry lab, or your chances of succeeding in a job interview, the process of analysis is the same : 
Divide the subject into its defining parts, its main elements or ingredients.
Consider how these parts are related, both to each other and to the subject as a whole.

Move 3: Make the Implicit Explicit
One definition of what analytical writing does is that it makes explicit (overtly stated) what is implicit (suggested but not overtly stated), converting suggestions into direct statements.

Move 4: Look for Patterns 
We have been defining analysis as the understanding of parts in relation to each other and to a whole, as well as the understanding of the whole in terms of the relationships among its parts. But how do you know which parts to attend to? What makes some details in the material you are studying more worthy of your attention than others?
Look for a pattern of repetition or resemblance.
Look for binary oppositions
Look for anomalies—things that seem unusual, seem not to fit.

Move 5: Keep Reformulating Questions and Explanations
Analysis, like all forms of writing, requires a lot of experimenting. Because the purpose of analytical writing is to figure something out, you shouldn’t expect to know at the start of your writing process exactly where you are going, how all of your subject’s parts fit together, and to what end. The key is to be patient and to know that there are procedures—in this case, questions—you can rely on to take you from uncertainty to understanding.

I thought applying this in studying architectural precedents in the form of diagramming/analysis for the House at Pego designed by Alvaro Siza. I was familiar this plan for a long time, and kept going back many times. May be it was the accretive nature  that made me incline towards this composition. Then one day i though of just tracing it. It revealed new meanings, which was not visible to me until i attempted  drawing over it.

All the overlays analytical drawings are drawn by the author.

1. Ideas are like virus. To quote Henry Cobb from Inception “An Idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagoius. And even the smallest seed of idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you”
2. Know the intent of the designer/program.- It’s only till late in my childhood I realized that there is ‘director’ behind filmmaking who must be both good at craft and thinking. Similarly buildings are also products of a ‘mind/s’ behind it. It is as much a intellectual process, as much it is a craft.
3. How others have dealt with the same problem. A sort of reverse engineering the process of design to see and identify the variables which went in space making. These  variables can become new framework and reveal connections which one might have missed.
4. Don’t see only through eyes, but also the mind.
5. Flash of Lightning – There is this brilliant Charles Correa quote (A Place in the Shade, 240)  “A 20th century composer – I think Hindemith – was once asked the mind-boggling question: How do you compose your music? To which he gave an astonishingly evocative yet precise answer: It is looking out a window into the black night of a thunderstorm. One cannot see anything, Suddenly there is a flash of lighting, illuminating the entire landscape. In that one spilt second, one has seen everything – and nothing. What we call composition is the patient recreation of that landscape, stone by stone, tree by tree”. Theory just recognises that there is state like this, and one has to be ready.
6. Only aesthetics ideas are not important. Architecture is synthesis of multiple layers – social, cultural and political. Aesthetics is one among them.
7. Ideas are like ladders – Steven Holl quotes Wittgenstein in an interview (Architectural Review March 2013) “that ideas are like ladders: they get us to a platform and when we arrive there, we can kick the ladder away” So the ideas which goes in making of the building need not necessarily be part in the experience of the building. Ideas’ responsibility is only to direct design, not necessarily become the object itself. May be only art has that luxury.
8. Interpretation is key. History is interpretation. E H Carr lucidly states in his seminal text Whats is history?  “The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind offish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation”
9. Theory is a ‘tool’ – Yes, as plainly as it sounds. It is a tool or a catalyst. Aligning to catalyst in its pure scientific terms – that a chemical which does not alter the composition of the reactions, but only alter rate of chemical reaction.
10. Recognition of an idea. Most of the times we have lot of ideas, but it will help us recognize the most appropriate ideas for a specific situation.
11. Every idea has potential. There is no discrimination between ideas. The only question is of appropriation and depth of enquiry.
12. Adopt/adapt an idea from precedents.
13. Comparative knowledge/analysis ( but with understanding the domain)
14. Originality – is it limiting or impending? I align to “Imitation is not the erosion of originality; it is the condition of originality” (A.O.Scott in the book Beyond Criticism)
15. Nothing comes out of Nothing. (can’t remember the source here)
16. The relationship between theory and practice is not casual (Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory). Just because one has good ideas, one cannot become good at practice.
17. Thinking about thinking. Meta.
18. Dwell between subjective and objective: Point of View to Filed of view.
19. Built and Unbuit Projects – Theory is democratic is approach to whether a project is built or not. What matters only is the idea behind it. This position of thinking opens so many possibilities. It provides more space and time to ideas mature.
20. Theory allows one to suspend judgment : Most fundamental and most profound to even accept that every object of enquiry has a potential, without trapping these notions in the binaries of like/dislike.

The description of this art work is described as follows in the MOMA website :

“In One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth represents one chair three ways: as a manufactured chair, as a photograph, and as a copy of a dictionary entry for the word “chair.” The installation is thus composed of an object, an image, and words. Kosuth didn’t make the chair, take the photograph, or write the definition; he selected and assembled them together. But is this art? And which representation of the chair is most “accurate”? These open-ended questions are exactly what Kosuth wanted us to think about when he said that “art is making meaning.” By assembling these three alternative representations, Kosuth turns a simple wooden chair into an object of debate and even consternation, a platform for exploring new meanings”

I thought of extending this notion into architecture. As an architect, i could be naive in misreading an ‘object’ from an other field thus adding a new perspective to it. And that is why the title ‘misreading’.

What is that ‘chairness’ which is formed even before it is manifested in these three forms? And what is contaminated in this process of manifestation, in which ‘chairness’ is trying to become an ‘object’, an ‘image’ and ‘words’. Lets see if we can put it an order of dilution : word-image-object, where ‘word’ being closer to ‘chairness’ because it is still in a form of thought. This dilution is what we have been struggling in the architectural design process. Kahn elegantly puts this concern in his essay ‘Form and Design’ that “the first line on paper is already a measure of what cannot be expressed fully.The first line of paper is less”. It is this dilution i am talking about.

How to make the first line less less? Is it possible by grazing more in the meadows of ‘what an object wants to be’ (borrowing from Kahn again) rather than actual design. I think this delay could help. Any delay,which is rigorous, in this age of information is helpful. But what are the questions one is asking in this delayed time. I think the important question would be the need of architecture itself. It is this intellectual discomfort with one’s own medium itself, has created some of the best art like Marcel Duchamp using a mass-produced urinal as a piece of art or Kosuth using three representations of the meaning of the chair as a platform to debate and explore new meanings. There is a lightness in the execution of this art by just assembling pre-existing things, but asking a very deep question of what is art.

Amit Chaudhri, the writer, puts it nicely saying that he chooses the medium of expression latter only to the incubation of the idea. The idea for him could take any shape – a novel, a novella, fiction, non-fiction or even a song (as he is a musician too). He weighs the ideas against the medium, before indulging into one. Again delaying the first line. In the process of choosing the medium, the idea is already becoming better.

And how does one exercise an idea, in a field, which deals already with space as the medium or one should say commodity. What does this limitation of space as medium bring to us? Or to turn the question around what only can space  add to a manifestation of an idea. Wouldn’t be nice to ask this question at the beginning of every project or at any beginning. What if this question delays the first line? And the first line in turn delays the making of space, which is in any way circumstantial.

So to conclude and to suspend a little more on this naivety , if you are the ‘chairness’, what would you want to be – an image, an object or words.

By Guest Writer – Madhuri Rao,

Madhuri teaches at RVCE, Bangaluru.

As a culture in general and being academicians in particular we often pine for students/everyone to read and explore the written word for it has empowered us and many of our likes. We encounter many excuses and mostly credible ones to this resistance. Often it is a lack of time or procrastination, which is chronic – partly in our case as well. At the same time, difficulty in understanding and jargon can also be a buzzkill.

Reading in general and reading the thought/s behind the making of architecture/design/art is integral to our thinking, and has decisively sensitized our responses and lent perspective to our thoughts. This post is a step in that direction, to guide and read in a way to interpret better.

During the course of our post graduate program we were fortunate to have had Prof. Sebastiano Brandolini visit and interact with us over the course of a week for an elective. The premise was to discuss prevalent, valid and contesting ideas with respect to seminal texts that represent them (see poster). However, for us the biggest take away from this interaction was Prof. Brandolini’s methodical understanding on how to read theory books – a framework of 19 questions to understand a book better.

Questions generated by a theory book

1. Why does a theorist make a book rather than something else?
2. What was publishes just before or just after or during? What was the cultural milieu?
3. Which travels were made for the book?
4. Is it primarily illustrated by photos, drawings, sketches, projects or what else?
5. Who is the book intended for?
6. Is it a book to read, look, or leaf through?
7. What is the relationship between words and images?
8. Does the book contain a polemic?
9. What importance does the graphic design have in conveying its meaning?
10. How would you describe its logic?
11. Can one identify 5 fundamental clue-words?
12. What does the cover actually say? How do the different editions vary?
13. Does the theory also presuppose a design method?
14. Is it possible to spell the differences between: a theory book, a history book, a monograph, a handbook, a catalogue, an illustrated book, an interactive book?
15. What does a theory need to convey its message and make itself evident?
16. Can a theory book be without illustrations?  Can it be a narrative?
17. Might one suggest good synonyms to the word “theory”?
18. Would it be possible to transfer a theory into a conceptual diagram?
19. Does such a thing exist, as an anti-theory book?

We have since applied this method and appropriated it to gain structure, perspective and deconstruct books, movies, art, architecture and similar modes of expression. While doing so it shed light on many aspects that remain hidden in the framework unless applied to some set of ideas/ processes or modes of expression. The questions inadvertently form a framework to understand the expression, that is  true to its maker’s intention. It serves as a domain or a specific lens within which the expressed is to be understood in its original context.

The nature of the questions are probing and help create a hypothetical web of influences that the maker was subject to – acquaintances, biases, tradecraft, audience, research, intentions, propaganda, underlying logic and everything that went into setting the stage for creation/expression.

However, this analytical checklist does not limit other forms of interpretation which may not have dwelled in its original premise. In fact, in the process of delving into the questions, it opens up many subordinate issues/matters/ themes for further understanding of the overall subject or to diversify into new territories.

Alternately this model has helped in the conception, development and manifestation of a single idea by the principle of reverse engineering. Working through each of the questions, layers the idea with more value till it in-turn becomes a construct of considerable depth. Also, maybe not in the same order as the framework, these underlying ideas have the ability to give structure to the construct – from part to whole.

Theory is not prescriptive and evidently, this framework is not a foolproof method. It is rather a guide to understand a theoretical stand – implemented by translation of an idea, through different media and its manifestation as a logical conclusion to the process.

Today, we find ourselves on a sticky wicket and the emergence of social media feeds the system. Like/dislike/follow/share, ratings, instant responses, rule the roost and make or break careers/spirit/passions/goodwill. We believe that an idea cannot be validated nor can a value judgment be passed, without having understood it in the domain it is exercised in and with the internal logic that it operates – whether it is a book, movie, art or a nascent idea.

Notes

Image Credit : Baudrillard’s shelves by Olivier Roller