CHAPTER 3 TOPICS • Modes of Integration: Physical, Visual, and Performance • Building Systems: Envelope, Structural, Mechanical, Interior, and Site • Integration Potentials T his chapter proposes a framework for the integra­tion of building systems by identifying different modes of integration and delineating a classifica­tion of major building systems. These taxonomies are supplemented in Chapter […]

The current market of preconfigured and standardized building components implies that manufacturers’ catalog information is an important basis of product selection and specification. For work to proceed expediently, design choices must fit what is readily available from suppliers. The year 2000 on-line compilation of Sweet’s Catalog, for example, claims 59,600 products from 10,200 manufac­turers. These […]

The building is served and manifestly seen to be served. The act of the servicing is seen to be within the architect’s control, even if the details of the servicing are not completely of his design. Peter Reyner Banham, describing Marco Zanusi’s 1959-1964 Olivetti factory in Argentina, in The Architecture of the Well – Tempered […]

CHAPTER 2 TOPICS • Systems Thinking • Architectural Systems • Levels of System Organization in Architecture: Hardware, Prototype, Grammar, and Species • Developments in Systems Architecture: Precepts and Trends Systems Thinking The significance of seeking a scientific basis for design does not lie in the likelihood of reducing design to one or another of the […]

The everyday experience of buildings is fragmented into glimpses. Customers seldom see the bank vault, the retail office area, or the restaurant kitchen. Even in the buildings where people live and work, they may never think of mechanical rooms, interstitial levels, or basement founda­tions. The general population experiences buildings in piecemeal encounters, not as integrated […]