Introduction: Form

This book is primarily concerned with form as the essential foundation of architecture and through which architectural principles can be explained. Form is the physical part of the building we can touch and experience, but its not just matter. Form can carry with it tons of associations and be influenced by so many factors that it is a much more interesting thing than it sounds like on the surface. Architecture is essentially creating a form to be used and inhabited and arranging the form to fit its use and, in some cases, represent specific ideas related to its use. In this book, the principles are divided into six categories, each under a singular principle. These are Geometry, Program, Space, Scale, Tropes, and Representation. I hope that this book helps you to better understand many of the essential principles of architecture as they relate to how and why an architect creates form the way they do.

Photo by Samantha Panzera.