Purpose This study investigates how computationally measured formal properties of building façades relate to human verbal perceptions of façade character. It focuses on two key formal dimensions, complexity and order, and examines whether these measurable visual properties correspond to the language observers use when describing façade drawings. Design/methodology/approach The study combined a dataset of 108 façade line drawings with verbal responses collected from 51 participants. Visual complexity was measured using fractal dimension, while formal order was measured using a computational framework based on bilateral symmetry and two-axis rhythm regularity. Participants' spoken descriptions were transcribed and processed to derive two image-level language variables: “complexity-language score” and “order-language score”. Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation, ordinary least squares regression, and a 2 × 2 complexity-order typology were used to examine the relationships between computational measures and verbalised perceptions. Findings The results show that façade drawings vary meaningfully in both computational complexity and formal order. Fractal dimension was positively associated with complexity-related language, while the order index was positively associated with order-related language. Regression models further showed that complexity predicted complexity-language, whereas order predicted order-language. The typology analysis suggested that order-related language was strongest for façades combining relatively low complexity with high order. Originality/value The study contributes a reproducible computational framework for analysing façade character from line drawings and linking formal image properties to open verbal descriptions. It also introduces a novel human-centred method for operationalising verbalised perception and connecting computational form analysis with architectural perception research.
Purpose Through a spatial and synergistic reading of relations between architecture and the city this article develops a hybrid instrument of architecture and urban theory, pedagogy and practice. Design/methodology/approach This article provides a spatial reading of typology's agency in long-term urban transformation. A synthesis extending from Aldo Rossi's urban dynamics and Colin Rowe's urban strategies underpins an examination of how spatial characteristics of architecture and urban elements (Rossi's artifacts) are catalytic in transforming their urban context (Rossi's Study Areas). Berlin's centre is examined as an exemplar condition: three urban corridors – each from different eras (1830; 1950; and 2020s) – converge on the Spreeinsel, indicating the Study Area's shifting extent according to architecture's agency. Analytical notations play a central role in communicating and generalising this intersection between type and Study Area. Findings This article foregrounds typology as architecture's process of reasoning and examines its under-explored role in the evolution of the city. Type's agency is held in the dynamism between Study Area and architecture, rather than the architectural object itself, constituting new urban patterns and synergies. The knowledge of architecture that is inherent in typology thus operates across scales. Originality/value Posited as an argument against the static, visual continuity of placemaking, this article draws upon and extends understandings of typology as architecture's immanent knowledge. Rather than focusing on the persistence of buildings alone, it foregrounds the innovative component of type in propelling (or stultifying) transformations within a specific local condition.
Purpose This article examines Aleppo as a long-term urban transformation process and asks how organizing centers, mobility/access structures and socio-spatial differentiation shaped its urban form across successive historical phases. Here, morphogenesis is understood as the historical-spatial process through which urban form is generated, stabilized, transformed and reworked over time. Design/methodology/approach The article uses a qualitative historical-spatial design based on documentary sources, historical cartography, secondary morphological scholarship and interpretive schematic reconstruction. Evidence is organized through a consistent analytical grid: organizing center, access/mobility structure, socio-spatial differentiation and morphological outcome. Findings Aleppo did not evolve as a homogeneous center-periphery system. Its urban structure was repeatedly reworked through the persistence of the citadel hill, the articulation of political, religious and commercial poles, the differentiation of confessional and occupational domains, the formation of threshold-like internal interfaces and later westward and proto-polycentric tendencies. Research limitations/implications The article is interpretive and historical-spatial in scope; it does not provide quantitative measurement, exhaustive archival reconstruction or direct evaluation of contemporary planning interventions. Its findings are therefore analytical rather than statistically generalizable. However, the framework offers important implications for urban morphology and planning by showing how historic cities can be studied through organizing centers, mobility/access structures, threshold configurations and evolving centralities. Future research may strengthen this approach through GIS-based reconstruction, georeferenced archival data, multi-scalar morphological mapping and comparative studies of other historically layered metropolitan cities. Practical implications The findings support heritage-sensitive planning strategies that protect the fragile historic core while strengthening secondary centralities, corridors and distributed functional organization. Social implications The article highlights that historically layered cities such as Aleppo should be planned in ways that protect living heritage while supporting more balanced urban life. By showing the risks of overconcentrating functions in a fragile historic core, it points toward a more equitable distribution of services, accessibility and urban opportunities across multiple centralities. This can help reduce pressure on vulnerable heritage areas, improve everyday mobility and support socially inclusive urban development. More broadly, the article reinforces the social value of linking heritage protection with quality of life and balanced metropolitan growth. Originality/value The article clarifies how morphogenesis can be operationalized within urban morphology by linking historical evidence to spatial mechanisms. It also integrates fragmented scholarship on Aleppo into one explanatory framework focused on centrality, access, socio-spatial occupation and form.
Purpose This study investigates how speculative cartographic methods can translate historical urban data into rule-based analytical structures for exploring long-term metropolitan transformation under Anthropocene conditions. Using Istanbul as a paradigmatic case of planetary urbanisation, the research develops the Anthropocene Istanbul Atlas to examine how architectural knowledge can interpret cumulative spatial change and generate alternative future trajectories grounded in empirical cartographic evidence. Design/methodology/approach The research reconstructs Istanbul's urban transformation between 1923 and 2026 through the reinterpretation of eleven historical maps, aerial photographs and satellite images. A three-phase methodology structured as (re)reading, (re)coding and (re)interpreting identifies five analytical dimensions: ecological systems, architectural typologies, infrastructural networks, socio-morphological indicators and megaprojects. Comparative cartographic analysis extracts persistent spatial rule sets, which are extended into four behavioural-based scenario families across temporal horizons of 2035, 2050 and 2100. Findings The analysis reveals four persistent dynamics: continuous typological and infrastructural expansion, ecological fragmentation, intensified socio-morphological aggregation and metropolitan-scale restructuring under saturation conditions. These dynamics generate three rule sets aligning typological growth with infrastructure, converting ecological surfaces into built programmes and concentrating socio-spatial flows along accessibility corridors. Scenarios demonstrate how persistence, adaptation, rescaling and disruption reorganise metropolitan morphology under alternative transformation trajectories. Originality/value The study proposes speculative mapping as a transferable architectural research methodology that integrates historical cartography, rule extraction and scenario construction within a single framework. By positioning mapping as an epistemic instrument linking archival evidence to future-oriented spatial reasoning, the Atlas advances cartographic methods for investigating urban futures beyond predictive modelling.
PurposeChallenges exist in the design-build (DB) research field to situate the variety of practices and approaches. Much research captures project outcomes and describes the process, but there are minimal frameworks or models of DB pedagogy. The following literature review begins this process, examining trends in publications, definitions of DB, gaps identified in the literature and discussion of recurrent themes in the field. Design/methodology/approachTwo methods of literature collection are compared, presenting results of a systematic quantitative literature review search method and the author's exploratory search. Discussion of the literature follows a narrative approach led by key questions: What is the definition of DB education in architecture? What are the main gaps identified in the literature? What themes are recurrent in the literature? The findings from these questions precipitate a thematic review of selected book publications. FindingsThe review identifies incongruities in this globally expanding, yet nascent field of research and the opportunity for more consistent definitions and terminology. The thematic review of selected book publications identifies eight themes as key attributes to be considered in DB education: agenda, pedagogy, student experience, project type, staffing and leadership, facilities and funding, teaching research nexus and risk. The proposed themes provide a frame of reference that seeks to unify and consolidate future research in this field. Originality/valueThis review focuses specifically on DB education in architecture, presenting emergent research in a narrower scope of reference than recent reviews in this field, which tend to look at the broader field of live projects.
