ABSTRACT
Precedents serve several purposes in the practice of architecture. They establish a loose canon of exemplary projects, providing architects with a shared understanding of the traditions – and latent potential – that resides in the work of their peers. Diagrams are inherently formal. As instruments of analysis, they can reveal geometric patterns providing order to a work of architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright described geometry as ‘the grammar, so to speak, of the form. At the outset of their studies, designers may deem diagrams to be superfluous, assuming that a simple description pointing out activities and features is sufficient. Yet mapping occupation is not the same as diagramming buildings. The history of the structural frame in architecture is a product of rationalization, contingent upon a number of concurrent advances in the understanding of the properties of matter, applied mathematics and the standardization that accompanied the onset of industrial modes of production.
