The Program

• The program can be thought as the functional or typological underpinning of the thesis.

• It is one of the three mandatory requirements of the submission.

• The most conventional and ordinary way to think of the program is the menu of spaces and occupancies within a building. There are, of course, other ways to think of program but we will start with this one.

The Profession:

• In the profession, particularly on larger projects, architects are rarely asked to produce a program.

• There are firms that specialize in preparing programs for government, corporate or institutional clients.

• Many smaller projects such as modest religious buildings or residential projects may involve a programming phase done with the assistance of the architect.

• It is common in foreign competitions, particularly in Italy, to not state a program but invite the architect to propose one.

vs the Schools:

• Note that the NAAB (the accrediting body for schools of architecture) includes no requirement or expectation that students be instructed in the methods of preparing a program.

• Note also that the NCARB architectural licensing exam includes no component on program generation.

• However, both clearly do expect the student and the architect to be able to interpret the program.

Policy:

• For the purpose of Thesis and Thesis Prep, the School of Architecture has no policy mandating that you generate a program.

• It does require that by the end of Thesis Prep you have one.

So ... where does a program come from?

• "Borrow" one.

• Reverse design one.

• Invent one.

1. Borrow one.

• There is nothing to prohibit you from using a program that has been generated by someone else.

• The three most obvious sources are:

• 1. A previous thesis or thesis prep, from this or some other school.

• 2. A design studio project that you have done or have obtained from a studio project in this or some other school.

• 3. A competition brief. These can be particularly useful because they are professionally written and usually quite complete and well documented.

• While this is a simple and often useful method, it is more common to derive one program from another. In other words, to use another program as a point of departure.
• It is also very helpful to base a program on one that you personally know.

Examples would be:

• A university department would be based on the School of Architecture.
• A theater could be based on the Syracuse Stage.

• If you use this method you must give credit to the actual source by use of footnotes and bibliographic reference.
• If you have derived the program from another you must state that your program is "Based on a program by …" or "Derived from a program by … ".

• Reverse engineering is the process of taking a product (like a transmission for a car, a piece of electronic equipment or a piece of software) and engineering it backwards, disassembling it step by step, to determine how it was made or how it works.
• The process can be extended to determine what it was intended to do in the first place, meaning what was the charge or objectives issued to the designers.
• Reverse programming in architecture starts with a given building and simply determines from the spaces within it what the program for it must have been.
• The process includes noting the number of rooms, what they are used for, what equipment they have, what are their sizes, how they relate to circulation and what their adjacencies are.

• This process may produce a workable program for you.
• More likely it can serve as the basis from which your program can be derived.

As with the borrowing strategy credit must be given.

• Naturally you begin with the actual plan of a building;.
• Determine the scale of the plan.
• Transform the drawing into a known scale.
• Measure the rooms.

Or

• Scan the plan.
• Save it as a .tiff file.
• Load the file into AutoCAD or Form•Z as an underlay.
• Set another layer.
• Trace the outline of the rooms, making sure that every figure is a closed figure.
• Find something on the plan that is at a known scale or that has a known dimension.
• Compute the scalar factor.
• Scale the image to a known scale.
• Query the program for the areas of the rooms.

3. Invent a program:

• The process of inventing a program is actually not a difficult one, particularly since the program being proposed is typically not for a building that will be built.

  Thus the program does not have to be accurate or believable.

• It only has to be accurate or believable enough.

Consider:

• Who is the sponsor of the building?

• Who will fund the building?

• Who will administer the building?

• Who will occupy the building?

Also consider ...

• The mission statement for the organization that will occupy the building.

• List the most basic purposes for which the building exists.

• Can often be stated as an infinitive:

• To Preserve …..

• To Exhibit …

• To Archive …

• To Research ….

• To Educate ….

• To Heal ….

• To Provide a Forum for ….

• To Entertain …

• To Administer …

An example:

• The Department of Architectural Technology within the Secretary of Technology for the government of France on Place Soufflot, Paris.

• Mission:

• To Research building assemblies for new buildings.

• To Research building assemblies for historic buildings.

• To Archive the results of the research and serve as a repository for historic information on architectural technology.

• To Educate architects, engineers, politicians, educators and manufacturers on the issues related to architectural technology.

• To Administer the facility.

• To Research becomes large scale labs with overhead rolling cranes and extensive support facilities.

  To Archive becomes the library with special facilities for storing drawings.

  To Educate becomes a series of classrooms, seminar rooms, faculty offices and a lecture hall.

• To Administer becomes the administrative office for the building.

• Feed the program into a spreadsheet
• so that it can easily manipulated.
• so that amounts for circulation and mechanical spaces can be readily computed.
• So that the FAR can be readily computed.

Question:

• Once the program is written, how closely is one expected to stick to it in the Thesis design phase?

• There is no agreement on this one.

• Some faculty believe the program is not important at all. It is only a generator, a starting point.

• Some faculty argue that the quality of the final design is more important and if making a better design means stretching or violating the program, then it is justified.

• Some faculty argue that, if thesis is a precursor for professional practice, then the program is a contract which cannot be changed under any circumstances and which the designer is obligated to deliver in the architectural solution.

• Of no thesis which has succeeded or won an award because it adhered more closely to the program than any other project.
• Of no thesis that failed because it did not adhere to the program.

You must choose the level of believability for the exercise

• A strong bias among the faculty for the necessity of the program as one of the fundamental generators of architectural form.
• No doubt that the presence and adherence to the program lends credibility to your design and your design skill.