Between Words and Forms. The Design Project in Search for the Possible

Abstract

In the immense diversity of written texts on the subject of built environment, on the urban space and its architecture, we may distinguish one discoursive category that is worth considering in detail. It is a category which has been rarely analysed, scarcely discussed and often marginalised in doctrinal debate on architecture and the city. It's about the specific discourse (principally written) of architects accompanying their presentation of architectural and urban designs. This kind of presentation has at least in contemporary practice become an inevitable obligation, almost institutionalised, and an integral part of the actual projected design. We will call this discourse a discourse of legitimation. The objective of this text is to approach this specific type of discourse by way of looking at it from two complementary points of view. One starts out to delineate certain basic and fundamental specificities of its content. To examine the articulations of this content with the design activity and specially with the form of the expression of the "conceptual" primary material which structures the beginning of architectural and urban design. The other point of view starts out to examine the contents of the discourse of legitimation as the means through which we can reveal the modalities and the conditions of the design process.