Moduel 5 Ordering Principles Part 2

Today in class, Professor Huang continued with the design process by talking about the ordering principals, operational principals and materiality. As a reminder to myself and those reading, the six ordering principle as written in "Ordering Principals Addendum."are:

• “Axis:  When the prevailing order is axial, a straight line organizes two or more buildings.”  

• “Symmetry: “Describes the equivalency of forms or spaces across a dividing line or plane.”

• “Hierarchy: The importance of a particular element is elevated over the other elements in the composition due to its distinction by scale, shape, and/or placement.” 

• “Datum: Is an ordering principle that may be described by a varying number of dimensions. Ignoring the issue of dimension, the core concept is that a geometric zone is utilized to organize and measure other spatial components. This geometric zone – be it a line, plane, or volume – is called a datum. A datum is defined by the fact that all other elements of the composition relate to it.”

• “Rhythm or repetition: Is the principle that a particular element is repeated. Although the repeated element may vary in exact character or form, the individual element nonetheless is characterized by a relationship to a larger set of elements. Also note that repetition, at a minimum, requires three elements.”

• ”Transformation: Describes the modification of structure and organization within a specific framework in order to allow for conformance with a specific context or program. The modification of the framework results in a set of different permutations of the same concept.”

These six ordering principals are crucial to architecture because they govern and give identity to a structure or building with out the use of these principals its hard to establish a notable design.


Operational Principles  such as ramping, weaving, slicing fracturing, flocking are the next step in the design process there is no set list like the ordering principals. These are the way in which smaller elements come together to form larger elements through the ordering principals.

The next step in the design process is materiality. Materiality refers to the material used to construct the building and can come from anywhere and is either man made, organic or a combination of both. As seen below when materiality and operational principals collide we get an astonishing reaction. below is an example of Shigeru Ban's work this dome ceiling is made of paper tubes and glass which make up the material aspect of his design and the weaving refers to the operational principal.    




As viewed above these techniques are vital to an architect if he or she craves to create works of art.