The relationship between interpretation and elaboration of architectural form: investigating the mutations of architecture’s scope
Abstract
The PhD dissertation is structured in four parts that correspond to four generations of architects, highlighting the conceptual tools and the epistemological concerns at the centre of the architectural discourse and the design strategies at each historical moment. It investigates the transformation of the epistemological object of architecture through the analysis of the mutations of the modes of representation that are at the centre of interest in each generation being considered and their addressee. In the first part of the dissertation, it is demonstrated that what was at the centre of interest was the individual and the bourgeois character of the addressee of architecture, and architecture symbolizes the value of its property by the addressee. Ms. Charitonidou examines the reasons for which the architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier paid particular attention to the use of perspective representation. In the second part of the dissertation, which is focused on the work ...
The PhD dissertation is structured in four parts that correspond to four generations of architects, highlighting the conceptual tools and the epistemological concerns at the centre of the architectural discourse and the design strategies at each historical moment. It investigates the transformation of the epistemological object of architecture through the analysis of the mutations of the modes of representation that are at the centre of interest in each generation being considered and their addressee. In the first part of the dissertation, it is demonstrated that what was at the centre of interest was the individual and the bourgeois character of the addressee of architecture, and architecture symbolizes the value of its property by the addressee. Ms. Charitonidou examines the reasons for which the architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier paid particular attention to the use of perspective representation. In the second part of the dissertation, which is focused on the work of Ludovico Quaroni, Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Team 10, two issues that are examined are the intensification of the interest in the concept of user and the impact of standardization of architecture on the concept of mass-production. In the third part of the dissertation, which is focused on the work of Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Aldo Rossi and Oswald Mathias Ungers, it is examined the shift from an understanding of architecture’s addressee as user towards an understanding of architecture’s addressee as subject. In parallel, it is presented how an understanding of architecture’s addressee as subject instead of its understanding as user implies that the meaning or signification of architecture cannot but be co-constructed by the architect and the addressee. In the fourth part, the dissertation examines the processes through which both Koolhaas and Tschumi transform the concept of program in architecture into a design strategy, taking as a starting point of the design process the dynamic nature of urban conditions. It turns out that the approaches of the above architects and the importance they attach to the kinaesthetic experience of architecture is based on the assumption that within the same subject there are opposing tendencies and forces. presents the main points of the transformation of the epistemological object of architecture in relation the transformation of the addressee of architecture at each historical time and the mutation of the identity of the citizen from generation to generation. The choice to use a means very specific to architecture, such as its modes of representation, in order to diagnose the mutations of the way architecture incorporates or responds to situations that belong to different spheres, such as the social and political domains, reveals the articulations between architecture’s specificity and its social and institutional context. It also demonstrates that these connections between architecture’s means and the larger sphere can only be captured if our analysis takes as starting point the examination of what is at stake in specific architectural projects. The dissertation establishes a methodological tool for understanding the mutations of the epistemological object of architecture through the real and fictional transformation of the status of the addressee of architecture. | The access to full text is restricted by the author
(Release date: 5/2026)
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