Tag Archives: Architecture

Visual Pangrams

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Graham Shawcross

How Space Begins: Georges Perec This is an extract from The Page the first essay in Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Perec (1974, 1997).  “This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Brain Physiology, Enumeration, Graphics Technology, Visual Pangrams | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Doing Things The Hard Way

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Graham Shawcross

Andre Cassagnes the inventor of Etch A Sketch died at the weekend. Etch A Sketch is an ingenious analogue  device, that paradoxically makes sketching more difficult  yet has sold over 100 million copies since 1960. Some of its charm must … Continue reading →

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Enjoying Randomness

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Graham Shawcross

This came about after visiting Loch Maddy in North Uist and trying to think of ways to emulate the  strange way that the land and sea merge into each other there and realising that the technique had wider uses as well. … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Randomness | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Visual Thinking

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

I have recently become interested in visual thinking, probably because I like making arguments visually but also as a result of having encountered problems in producing simple easy to understand diagrams. Diagrammatic Illustrations The minimal (graphics only) version above contains … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Geometry, Logic | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Design Methods

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

Design Methods are now so out of fashion that some of its most important documents have recently been thrown out of the Minto House library, including The Design Method (Gregory S. A. 1966) I was trained, 1963-1968, at Sheffield School … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Design, Design Methods | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Find Your Own Space

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

A randomly distributed sets of points can be considered as the lowest state of architectural order; the placing of the simplest object, a point, with the least degree of structure, being randomly placed. Well distributed point sets are important in … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Aperiodic Tiling, Architecture, Geometry, Tiling | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wang Tiles and Turing Machines

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

Wang pointed out that it is possible to find sets of Wang tiles that mimic the behaviour of any Turing Machine (Wang 1975). A Turing machine can compute all recursive functions, that is functions whose values can be calculated in … Continue reading →

Posted in Aperiodic Tiling, Architecture, Geometry, Tiling, Turing | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

Periodic and Non-Periodic Tiling

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

The concepts of periodic and non-periodic tiling are defined so as to clearly distinguish them from aperiodic tiling; the subject of a future post “Aperiodic Tiling”. Informally a tiling (of the 2D Euclidean plane) is a collection of subsets of … Continue reading →

Posted in Aperiodic Tiling, Architecture, Geometry, Tiling | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Container for The Thing Contained

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

This post is the result of a recent first visit to Berlin; and in particular to the Altes, Neues and Jüdiches Museums there. These irreverently brought to mind James Thurber’s story Here Lies Miss Groby and her concept of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Thawing Frozen Music

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

Goethe is usually credited with using the phrase “I call architecture frozen music” in a letter published in 1836. (Eckermann 1836) A similar phrase “Architecture is like frozen music” seems to have been used earlier in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art. (Schelling 1802-03) … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Frozen Music | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment