(Un)Common Precedents in Architectural Design

by Federica Goffi (Editor), Isabel Potworowski (Editor), Kristin Washco (Editor)

Overview

(Un)Common Precedents in Architectural Design calls for an attentive examination of the uncommon that inspires creativity, prompting a re-examination of both common and marginalised precedents. Precedents and their origins can be idiosyncratic, and it is not surprising that they often lead to unpredictable outcomes. The uncommon is explored as an undervalued, unregulated, and informal approach to precedents, acknowledging a radical imagination in architectural design that extends beyond visual and typological considerations, expanding the field of influence beyond buildings to investigate interdisciplinary exchanges and a multisensory imagination. This book addresses a critical need to re-examine architectural precedents, understanding why, how, and what we study to reveal the intentions, transmedia explorations, and referents behind the workings of a more inclusive architectural imagination nurtured in multicultural practices and teaching environments. (Un)Common Precedents thus underlines the non-conformity and inordinance of precedents and the necessity of their divergence, drawing attention to different socio-political contexts that resist, reject, and replace the canonisation of precedents based on dominant ocular-centric approaches with local, experiential, transdisciplinary, and uncommon ones. The book offers an alternative to the compulsion to normalise, universalise, repeat, restate, and re-enact, transforming the documentation of far-removed precedents through first-person experiences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032823102
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/22/2025
Pages:	362
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

FEDERICA GOFFI is Professor of Architecture at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Her most recent book Architecture in Conversion: Time, Weather and Tempo in the Work of Carlo Scarpa is published by Lund Humphrey (2025). Earlier she published Time Matter[s]: Invention and Re-imagination in Built Conservation: The Unfinished Drawing and Building of St. Peter’s in the Vatican (Ashgate 2013). Her recent edited volumes include The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models: From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying (Routledge 2022); InterVIEWS: Insights and Introspection in Doctoral Research in Architecture (Routledge 2019); Marco Frascari’s Dream House: A Theory of Imagination (Routledge 2017); and the co-edited Architectures of Hiding (Routledge 2024); Ceilings and Dreams: The Architecture of Levity (Routledge 2019). She is the editor of And Yet It Moves: Ethics, Power, and Politics in the Stories of Collecting, Archiving and Displaying of Drawings and Models (Routledge 2021). She has been Co-Chair of the PhD and MAS Program in Architecture (2017–2025), Interim Director (2021–2022) and Associate Director of Graduate and Professional programs (2011–2017). She holds a PhD in Architecture and Design Research (Virginia Tech), a Dottore in Architettura (University of Genoa), and she is a licensed architect in her native country, Italy.

ISABEL POTWOROWSKI is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Cincinnati, where she teaches undergraduate design studio and drawing. She defended her PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa (2025) titled “Discovering Spiritual Atmospheres: Representation practices in Atelier Zumthor’s process of design buildings that amplify spiritual atmospheres.” She completed her Bachelor in Architecture at McGill University in Montreal, her professional Master in Architecture at TU Delft, and obtained a Master in Architectural History and Theory at McGill. In the Netherlands, she worked at Barcode Architects, the International New Town Institute, and Mecanoo Architecten. Her research interests include the spiritual dimension of architecture, embodied and experiential qualities of space, the design process, and design pedagogy.

KRISTIN WASHCO, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s School of Architecture, and a Registered Architect. She received her PhD in Architectural History + Theory at the ASAU, Carleton University, Canada, where she was the former co-coordinator of CR|PT|C (Carleton Research Practice of Teaching Collaborative). She received her Master's in Architectural History + Theory from McGill University and her professional degree in Architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She has practiced professionally across the United States and Canada, and her professional work with NOROOF Architects, DXA Studio and MADERA has won multiple awards, including the AIA Award of Excellence. In 2021, she co-founded the design firm Métier Projects. Her research interests are centered around the synaesthetic experience of architecture, methods of architectural representation, and the translation from page to built work.

Table of Contents

Introduction  Part I: (Un)Common Intentions: Why We Study Precedents  (Un)Common Workshop I: (Un)Common Relationalities: Between Architecture and Indigenous Engagement Research Practices  The Anti-Precedent  1. Encountering History: Precedent Avoidance at the Bauhaus and its Legacy  2. Precedents in Architecture: Design, History and Discontinuity  3. The Immanent Collapse as Precedent: Chronopathological Compulsions  Subverting Precedents  4. Dis/continuous Genealogies: Douglas Darden’s Ideograms  5. Uncommon References: Le Corbusier, the Primal and the Flesh of Matter  6. Architectures Beyond an Architect: Uncommon Practices from the Uncommon Global Majority in Post-Apartheid South Africa  7. The Drawings of Lat: The Graphic Novel as an Uncommon Precedent for Knowing, Seeing, and Thinking about Architecture  (Un)Common Workshop II: Between Music and Architecture: Sounding the Precedent  Part II: (Un)Common References: What We Study  The Divergence of Precedents  8. (Un)Common by Sex: Urgent Archival Inclusions and the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA)  9. Without Walls: Citing Sites Beyond “Parallel of Life and Art”  10. Architectural Rehearsal: Unearthing Embodied Architectural Precedents  Reexamining Typologies  11. Uncommon Constructions: Departures from the Ubiquitous Canadian Wood-Frame House  12. The Department Store’s Lapidary Imagination  13. Re-examining and Repositioning the Idea of Dwelling in Typological Planning in Post-World-War Japan  14. Observation, Documentation, and Imagined Situations of Life: The Yeouido Sibum Apartments as an Uncommon South Korean Modern Architectural Precedent  (Un)Common Workshop III: Between Literature and Architecture: Writing as a Mode of Investigation  Part III: (Un)Common (Trans)Media and Methods: How We Study Precedents  The Sensorium  15. Un/Sound Histories: Finding the Uncommon in the Work of Adolf Loos  16. Precedents as Spoken Constructions: Imagining Through Shared Oral Recollections in Architects’ Design Conversations  17. Poetic Language as a Thinking with Things: Storytelling and the Imagination of Matter in Bruno Schulz’s Mythization  18. Transversal Echotectonics: Finding an Uncommon Model of Architectural Sonics in the work of Athanasius Kircher  Drawings, Models, Film and Pedagogy  19. Film-Writing Architecture  20. A Path not Taken: A Study on the Beginning of Álvaro Siza’s Project for the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto  21. THEEND: Matta-Clark’s South American Cut  22. Drawing Continuously: A Report on Two Projects  (Un)Common Workshop IV: Between Gastronomy and Architecture: Recipes for Building

Editorial Reviews

Inclusive and playful, meticulous and thoughtful, the essays of this long-needed book liberate designers in their pursuit of architectural inspiration. Gems lurking in unexpected places—dismissed for years—are brought brilliantly to the fore by an impressive group of contributing authors. (Un)common Precedents will fast become a classic.”

Dr. ir. Angeliki Sioli, Associate Professor, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.

“Architectural imagination is an open search. This collection navigates new paths of inquiry, leading architects to an expanded repertoire of knowledge and inspiration. From fields of music, literature, gastronomy and Indigenous engagement, uncommon precedents appear as cunning protagonists in an architectural story ever unfolding. Be prepared to rethink the exemplary.”

Lisa Landrum, Professor and Chair, Department of Architectural Science, TMU. Co-editor, Theatres of Architectural Imagination.

"What inspires architectural ideas and designs?  This resourceful book provides many ingenious answers, valuable for students, practitioners, and scholars alike. Reaching far beyond traditional typology like J.N.L. Durand’s imposition of a grid to regularize all architectural history, (Un)common Precedents explores alternative contemporary and historical approaches that open and examine possibilities in media, materials, spatial justice, environmentalism and much more across the arts to inform the architectural imagination."

Paul Emmons, Patrick and Nancy Lathrop Professor of Architecture, Virginia Tech.

From the Publisher