For an old college assignment way back in my very first year I had to refer to Francis D.K. Ching’s seminal work Form, Space and Order. At least, that was the idea, but I took one look at it, didn’t understand anything (which is ironic seeing that 75% of it is drawings and illustrations) and did something else. At that particular point in time, “doing something else” was likely to be looking for Kelvin, a Sabahan of indeterminate ethnicity (I never asked) I knew from work and picking up big bottles of beer at 7-11 and proceeded to get drunk whereever we happened to be, which too often included erm… public places.
uhh..Moving along…
I picked it up in the uni library a couple days ago, and going through it in my penultimate year of architectural education and with 20/20 hindsight it’s suprising how many of the things in the book are now intimately familar to me and how some of them are practically second nature thought processes when plowing through design studio work. Of course, I suppose the idea is for a “successful” architect, so to speak, to be intimately familar with EVERY single idea the book expounds.
Anyhow. I don’t know about others, but Frank Ching left deep impressions on me (not thaatt first time, of course). It’s remarkable how well the guy can draw, and all in pencil to boot. Excellent book, very good. Wished I looked it in sometime between my first year and my second last year. Better late than never, I suppose. Even more, I wished the lecturer who introduced me to it in the first place did a better job at the introducing. But. Architecture has always been a very self-motivated and individualistic area of study; there is only one direction responsibility should eventually fall on, really. :)
