Site and Composition: Design Strategies in Architecture and Urbanism

Site and Composition examines design strategies and tactics in site practice and site making. Some design has suffered due to an oversimplification of the definition of site, however many designers try to prospect deeper engagement with the physical qualities of place and the craft of the site. This book approaches the study of the wider significance of site as a crucial issue in the design process. It examines how designers perceive a site physically, in order to address its integration culturally and how this might be explored in both pedagogy and practice.

Divided into five main parts, the book:

• focuses on site and context interrelations, redefining these two entities from a theoretical standpoint and discussing their diverse interrelationships as design tactics
• explains projection and composition and how site lines can be derived from the physical qualities of a specific place and topographical premises, both in rural and urban settings
• discusses the nature of wholeness and fragmentation as a modern phenomena, to achieve a wider understanding of the notions of urban infill and intervention
• analyses the reciprocal relationships between the exterior and interior spaces, approaching the site not only from outside-in but also its profound interrelation to the inside-out
• studies materiality and how the use of site materials impacts the level of autonomy or dependence and continuity or disjunction of a building

Site and Composition provides an understanding of site as an entity that endeavours to achieve interrelationship rather than isolation, inclusion rather than exclusion, completion rather than incompletion. Written in a clear and accessible manner, it makes vital reading for students of architecture.