Diagram Ecologies - Diagrams as Science and Game Board

This paper will examine two ‘ecologies of thought’, which encompass architectural theory, history, pedagogy, and practice. A lineage of ‘scientific’ diagramming originates from scientific management and the Bauhaus-inspired curriculum introduced to Harvard by Walter Gropius; it incorporates diagrams into a problem-solving methodology, and is exemplified by the ‘bubble diagram’. This scientific emphasis is extended by Christopher Alexander’s urban analysis introducing mathematical set theory. In general, the scientific diagram emphasizes hierarchies and logical relations; it eschews visual resemblance to the subject of its analysis. The second, post-war, trajectory privileges the semantic and syntactic potential of the diagram, and shifts emphasis from “solving a problem” to “learning a language”; it may be best understood through the ‘Nine Square Grid’ design exercise introduced by John Hejduk, resonating with positions articulated by Colin Rowe, Rudolf Wittkower, and Rudolf Arnheim. The rendezvous of both trajectories with the digital screen sparks a new typology, diagrammatic controls.