Form

This chapter presents techniques for reading architecture through its form, an essential interpretive tool. Colin Rowe and Heinrich Wölfflin established important methods that contributed to the development of architecture’s formalist orientation. These methods are considered in the course of the chapter. The terms plan libre and raumplan enter the discussion as an example of the comparative method of formal analysis in the work of Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos. Peter Eisenman’s work serves as another exemplar of the formalist tradition. Baroque architecture and its unique affiliation with the complex curvatures emerging from parametricism takes the discussion into contemporary design practices.