Abstract

The study of architectural design bridges various approaches focusing on design sciences, cognitive psychology and architecturology. Architecturology aims to describe the full range of changes that appear during the design process. We are able to describe, by means of scales, the operations by which an architect gives size to the building. This modelling seems adequate when the morphological model is not adulterated during the design process (as in some projects of Jørn Utzon or Alvar Aalto). In other cases – as in some projects by Philibert de l'Orme, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Norman Foster – changes of state adulterate the very pattern of the morphological model. Such changes can no longer be covered by scale operators. Taking up an idea by Herbert A. Simon, it is suggested that the description of these new transformations requires another class of operators. These could be called schemata, with the term understood as the prototypical actions that could be rendered by basic verbs as open, close, separate, bind, etc.