As a means of reintroducing the Architects Parti, excerpts will be presented from three papers authored by leading educators and practitioners of Architecture. Click Here for the complete works.

On Parti: An Evaluation of the Failed Notion of Design Beginnings

author – Bill Willoughby

• A case remains for the continued use of parti as an essential component of design beginnings. The parti is still important; it should still serve to summarize a building’s intent. As a design beginning, the parti is an intuitive gesture that incorporates the most fundamental characteristics of a particular architecture. The parti should begin with that intentional gesture-sketch, judged by in the mind of the designer as the direction that must be taken from thereon out.

• The esquisse is the sketched manifestation of the parti, a little sketch: typically a plan and section of a building. This little drawing is a simple strategy that predicts the outcome of final building design. The design typically develops like improvisation, oscillating between the freshness of the initial drawing and the compounding circumstances of the developing design. Louis Kahn called this the difference between form and design- form is what, design is how -form is unmeasurable, derived from realizations about things transcendent. While design is measurable, leading form to a measurable, attainable result.

• Parti had three mutually related meanings. It was a summary tool for analysis, constituting the salient points of analysis; it was a means to initially visualize, in a graphic format, a synthesis of a verbal statement of intent, program requirements, and site; and initially it was a revised graphic simplification of a developed design solution.

On the Architectural Design Parti

author – Julio Bermudez, PhD

• A parti permeates every single aspect of architecture… its formal manifestation, its tectonics and details, its engagement of program and site, its experience… Despite seeming to be ‘intellectual’, the parti is far from being intellectual – the parti is the true nature of the design, its soul if you wish. It manifests its very essence and therefore cannot be just intellectual. In fact, intellectualization often obscures or confuses what is in front of you. In a way, the essence, nature, or basic condition of the architectural being cannot be ‘figured out’ but rather needs to be ‘seen’ or ‘felt’.

• The parti is the overall and comprehensive schema, idea, or concept giving order, meaning, and rationale to a building. It provides a horizontal thrust that connects program, site, experience, form, space, and tectonics together in such a way that, if very well done, it also points to a vertical dimension: philosophy and spirituality. The parti may start from a particular architectural concept interpreting a specific dimension of architecture (context, precedent, composition, materiality, program, etc.). However, in order to become a parti, it needs to become holistic and cross-dimensional, bringing all aspects of a design within its domain.

Parti: New Paint for an Old Lady

author – William Benedict

• The parti established the abstract layout of the plan as separate from the specific form of the design. It directed the layout and relative importance given to the elements in response to the functional requirements of the problem. However, the parti was not a single-minded response to function. It also addressed the artistic, emotional and experiential qualities of the building as a three-dimensional whole. The parti held within it a vision of the experience of being in and moving through the building. It was the taking of a position—the making of a choice—as to what the building should be.

• If the parti is to be the fundamental concept, it must have the capability of addressing and communicating a full range of meanings. In other words, meaning that is both rational and intuitive, mind and body, abstract and experiential.

• The expression of both thought and feeling—the rational and intuitive—in the parti is equally important. If the parti is the essential architectural concept then it should address architecture as a whole—it should communicate its rational and expressive content.

Mr. Benedict’s last point get’s to the heart of the matter; The expression of both thought and feeling are equally important in the parti. If this idea were superimposed over the modernest mantra, FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION (RATIONAL) could become FORM FOLLOWS PARTI (INTUITIVE + RATIONAL) note: comment not by author

To present the case for, as Mr. Benedict puts it, New Paint for an Old Lady, it will be useful to learn more about when the parti was born, how it fell from grace and then, how it might make a come back.

Where the Parti Originated

author – Bill Willoughby

The Beaux-Arts approach:
The term parti had its firm and familiar roots at the Ecole during the late Nineteenth Century. From the French word parti alone means: course of action, strategy, choice, decision; or as a shortened version of the phrase: prendre parti: to make up one’s mind; to take on a course of action. The parti was the strategy for arranging elements of the program in a relatively short period of time. The student was given twelve hours to complete four tasks. First, read and assess the building program; second, study alternative strategies to the program – in other words, determine the general range of the possible directions the design might take; third, select a strategy, make up ones mind; and four, draw the esquisse (The esquisse is the sketched manifestation of the parti). The Beaux-Arts approach emphasized the importance of the creative moment: that decisive moment in the isolated mind where the architectural work originates.

How the Parti was Lost
Modernism and the Replacement of Parti with Analysis:
What happened to the Beaux-Arts system during early Modernism? In general, the Bauhaus Vorkurs (a course that taught the fundamental approaches of layout and design) replaced the former method of architectural instruction. Architecture, once an affair of the elite mind coupled with graphic virtuosity, was supplanted by building as essentially a collective effort resulting from manual trades and practical value.18 The word “Architecture” was avoided, and replaced with the modern equivalent, “New Building. “ Aesthetics and ornamentation were replaced with “clear construction”: industrial methods of production, standardization, honest materials, construction, and structure. Proportion was replaced by standardization decisions of measure were now based on a scientific understanding of the body (ergonomics, kinesthetics, and anthropometrics). The studio used by an artist or designer was replaced by the workshop. Expression was replaced by function. Architectural designs no longer relied on concepts aroused in the single mind, but relied on collaboration and the technical needs of society. As stated by Hannes Meyer, “Everything in this world is a product of the formula (function times economy); all art is composition and therefore un-functional, all life is function and therefore unartistic.” Art was rationally distinguished from life. Sentimental-objects were replaced with need-based objects. The term “program,” which sounds like the order of scenes in a romantic opera was replaced with the more technical sounding word “problem,” which sounds like a laboratory or a factory. Programs of the past, like libraries, museums, opera houses, government building, academies, religious buildings, were replaced with the problems of the future: power plants, factories, mass-housing, office buildings. Architecture became a problem to be solved by overcoming constraint and the dialectical resolution of social concerns. Parti by intuition, as a form of design beginning was replaced by solution from analysis. The problem of the house – now a machine for living – was to be resolved in its functional improvement, its innovations for convenience, its potential for repetition and factory production. Alexander Klein introduced methods of functional analysis, previously ignored by architects. ‘”The functional house for frictionless living’ was designed from researches carried out for a German Housing agency in 1928 by Alexander Klein, who compared his plans to the odious if typical 19th Century layout. Flow line diagrams revealed the superiority of Klein’s improved plans.” Thus, a building can malfunction; and once revealed by research and analysis, it can be improved. The esquisse is replaced with the analytic diagram, revealing functional problems and through rational dialectics, suggesting functional improvements. Abstraction and analysis replaced conceptualization as the beginnings of architectural design. For Modernism, parti was no longer a concern – problems require solutions derived by scientific fact, analysis, industrial production, and standardization of materials.

Post-modernism and the Fragmentary Reintroduction of Parti
Modernism replaced the parti, a strategy conceived by intuition, with the solution derived from factual analysis. In Post-modem times, since Modernism made replacement possible, allowable -a linguistic model replaced the scientific methods of Modernism. The building was no longer derived from a program, or even a problem; it became based on a narrative. The Modernist penchant for the problems of mass housing, factories and, office workplaces has been replaced by the private residence, the corporate headquarters, the resort hotel, and the retail/entertainment complex. A narrative requires a figural response- a literal sign applied to a functional box. The sign offers allusions to literal sources that comprise a cultural myth (or cultural anxieties!). Buildings can be conceived much like automobiles: we expect them to work with efficiency and convenience – but, we also want their external appearance to have personality: sporty, sleek, basic, cute, or tough. And the ironic truth behind an analogy between automobiles and buildings reveals the fact: that Post-modernism is unabashedly a movement intimately linked to consumerism. The building is wrapped in advertisement (it calls attention to itself). Postmodernism’s foremost interest is the surface – it is a problem of surface. We have the fictional box surrounding the functional box. Post-modern design begins with an analogous reference. Post modernism operates by transposition, an object that refers to something outside of itself. Reference, analogy, critique and precedent form the collective basis of Post-modernism. Even Modernism is fair game for quotation. A “strategy” need no longer be coherent or hierarchical. We expect to be and choose to be confronted with an agglomeration of fragmentary references. A building may have multiple strategies, opposing strategies, and certain digressions. We are left with a beginning where coherence isn’t the aim – a beginning for design where uncertainty is “built-in.”

Parti Again

author – Bill Lindner

Architects trained at the Ecole learned to seek the balance between the intuitive and the rational, they learned to parti. The Bauhaus educated Architects abandoned the intuitive singular mind for the committee driven solution guided by the mantra Form follows Function. Today the design beginning has become a narrative where the goal is for the exterior to have personality. It is my hope that Architects are ready to rediscover a design beginning that includes the intuitive. That Architects are ready to reject group-think. That Architects are ready to parti again.