Table of Contents

What This Book is About. Seeing is Thinking, Making is Thinking. Systems and Uncertainty. How To Use This Book. Formal Concepts Alignment. Axis. Balance. Centrality. Difference. Front. Object-Ground. Objectification. Orientation. Path-Goal. Pattern. Radiosity. Repetition. Similarity. Solid-Void. Situated Notions. Containment. Dimensionality. Directionality. Hierarchy. Identity. Implied Action. Implied Motion. Implied Stability. Importance. Journey. Personification. Proximity. Relationship. Spatial Quality. Socio-Spatial Ideas. Communality. Connectedness. Convexity. Event Affinity. Exposure. Force. Interiority. Presence. Privacy. Procession. Program. Threshold. Type. Vista. Process Actions. Abstraction. Asset-Constraint. Coherence. Cohesiveness. Extrapolation. Metaphor. Pattern Mapping. Speculation.

About the Author

Philip D. Plowright is Professor of Architectural Design and Theory at Lawrence Technological University, USA. He is an academic researcher, theorist and licenced architect with degrees in studio art, architecture and cognitive linguistics. His interest focuses on developing clarity around foundational knowledge in the applied design disciplines for use in teaching and production environments. His previous book, Revealing Architectural Design (Routledge 2014), addressed the larger thinking frameworks that structure architectural design methods while his research monograph, Qualitative Embodiment in English Architectural Discourse (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha 2017), looked at latent meaning found between people and environments based on conceptual metaphors and embodied knowledge.

Reviews

"Making Architecture smartly demystifies fundamental thinking about the conceptualization and shaping of architectural form. The illuminating power of naming, cataloging, and cross-referencing 51 primal human ideas sets the stage for early design learning, clarifies a vocabulary of thought and communication, and articulates a basis for coherent design approaches. This is a welcome book and a high value development." - Leonard R. Bachman, author of Two Spheres and Constructing the Architect "Students of design will find Philip Plowright’s Making Architecture Through Being Human a most potent guide to a rich system of architectural ideas enabling them to grapple with complexity. Hyper-clear diagrams augment evocative descriptions of ideas as potentials instead of rules. Honoring shared, embodied experience as basis for architectural meaning, this elegant and what will prove timeless studio companion belongs on desks of architecture students everywhere." - Brook Muller, Dean of the College of Arts + Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of Ecology and the Architectural Imagination"Making Architecture Through Being Human is a Rosetta Stone of sorts. It explains crucial architectural ideas, concepts, and terminology in an uncomplicated and easy to understand way but this is no mere sourcebook of specifications and standards, nor is it a collection of arcane axioms claiming to convey architectural literacy. The book is the concise, illustrated explanation of terms and ideas that will serve to build a robust foundation for a lifetime of architectural discourse and practice." - John Marshall, Associate Professor and Founding Director, MDes Integrative Design, University of Michigan, USA"Philip Plowright’s Making Architecture is an excellent introduction to architectural design for students in the early years of their architectural education. The book presents and carefully explains a series of design concepts that students inevitably encounter in studio and it will be a great support in studio teaching both for students and studio tutors." - Branko Mitrovic, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, and author of Philosophy for Architects