To complete an architectural project, there must be a beginning. This can be the most difficult task in designing a building. Architects sometimes invent a strategy before beginning a project. This is called a parti. This word is from the French language and is a derivative of the verb for departure. In other words, a parti is a beginning. These beginnings can take many forms. They can also be a written statement of an idea. However, architects generally make a graphic representation of the parti.
Once a parti is established, it serves as the organizing idea behind the rest of the project. This can include everything from the organization of the spaces to the elements used as decoration.
(from: An Architect's Toolbox, AIA Houston.)
- A Scheme or Concept for the Design of a Building
In architecture, there are many types of thinking shorthand including the representational and the abstract diagram. The representational diagram is designed to be interpreted relationally, visually, geometrically and topologically. The bubble diagram is an example where the architect is released from the strictures of the plan but may still freely manipulate a series of functional relations that are beginning to represent a strategy for planning arrangements. The bubble diagram can be made quickly, changed constantly, interlaced with text and collaged over images. For the rational architect it is an essential representation for thinking that can also be used as a substitute for sketching.
- se separer de quelqu'un ou d'un lieu
The first meaning of the French verb partir--'se separer de quelqu'un ou d'un lieu' (to part from someone or from some place)--promulgated le parti as a noun representing a second meaning viz 'Conception d'ensemble une oeuvre architecturale ou picturale': an overall architectural or pictorial concept. During the process of diagramming architecture, especially at the conceptual stages of drawing, there is a necessary separation or parting. This is when the concept becomes clear enough to develop its own identity, or when the first drawings have choreographed the idea to produce a sufficiently confident parti.
The word parti passed into architecture (via l'Ecole des Beaux Arts) to represent that freehand sketch diagram that was at the tangent between idea and imagination. The parti is the threshold sketch. If the parti--the first critical diagram--is not made well, it will be difficult for architecture to follow. If there is no parti, there will be no architecture, only (at best) little more than the utility of construction. Buried within their early sketches is the germ of a narrative or language. The early diagrams are reflective conversations with the language of architecture.
They are also cultural moments. An English architect will think in English, speak in English and therefore draw in English. The sketches will say in lines and marks what the author would also express in language. The drawing becomes a philosophical and dialectical illustration of what the author would also say in writing. Writing architecture with drawings at the stage of le parti is the ultimate manifestation of imaginative consciousness heading for realisation.
Qualitative judgements are commensurate to the clarity of the language. The better the parti, the more quickly architects are able to consider folding into the sketch the notation of materials, structure and mechanics. The architectural language will evolve simultaneously with the language of the drawing. If the drawing is in English, English architecture will be made. If the drawing is in Finnish, there will be a Finnish building.
Admittedly this may not be true for the Rationalists. Architects who depend on pre-set/pre-cast ideas, which are based on catalogue systems and predefined pre-tested methodologies put together on production lines, do not need le parti. But despite all the phenomenologists and poetical architects in a century where complexity triumphed over comprehension, the drawing or diagram is a quintessential moment which comes with a caution. If at first you don't succeed, you don't succeed.
- A Scheme or Concept for the Design of a Building
In architecture, there are many types of thinking shorthand including the representational and the abstract diagram. The representational diagram is designed to be interpreted relationally, visually, geometrically and topologically. The bubble diagram is an example where the architect is released from the strictures of the plan but may still freely manipulate a series of functional relations that are beginning to represent a strategy for planning arrangements. The bubble diagram can be made quickly, changed constantly, interlaced with text and collaged over images. For the rational architect it is an essential representation for thinking that can also be used as a substitute for sketching.
- se separer de quelqu'un ou d'un lieu
The first meaning of the French verb partir--'se separer de quelqu'un ou d'un lieu' (to part from someone or from some place)--promulgated le parti as a noun representing a second meaning viz 'Conception d'ensemble une oeuvre architecturale ou picturale': an overall architectural or pictorial concept. During the process of diagramming architecture, especially at the conceptual stages of drawing, there is a necessary separation or parting. This is when the concept becomes clear enough to develop its own identity, or when the first drawings have choreographed the idea to produce a sufficiently confident parti.
The word parti passed into architecture (via l'Ecole des Beaux Arts) to represent that freehand sketch diagram that was at the tangent between idea and imagination. The parti is the threshold sketch. If the parti--the first critical diagram--is not made well, it will be difficult for architecture to follow. If there is no parti, there will be no architecture, only (at best) little more than the utility of construction. Buried within their early sketches is the germ of a narrative or language. The early diagrams are reflective conversations with the language of architecture.
They are also cultural moments. An English architect will think in English, speak in English and therefore draw in English. The sketches will say in lines and marks what the author would also express in language. The drawing becomes a philosophical and dialectical illustration of what the author would also say in writing. Writing architecture with drawings at the stage of le parti is the ultimate manifestation of imaginative consciousness heading for realisation.
Qualitative judgements are commensurate to the clarity of the language. The better the parti, the more quickly architects are able to consider folding into the sketch the notation of materials, structure and mechanics. The architectural language will evolve simultaneously with the language of the drawing. If the drawing is in English, English architecture will be made. If the drawing is in Finnish, there will be a Finnish building.
Admittedly this may not be true for the Rationalists. Architects who depend on pre-set/pre-cast ideas, which are based on catalogue systems and predefined pre-tested methodologies put together on production lines, do not need le parti. But despite all the phenomenologists and poetical architects in a century where complexity triumphed over comprehension, the drawing or diagram is a quintessential moment which comes with a caution. If at first you don't succeed, you don't succeed.
(from: Lines of Inquiry, by Alan Phillips, A. Review, Jan. 2006.)
