Conceptual architecture

Conceptual architecture is an approach that draws ideas and concepts from outside the discipline of architecture to expand its boundaries, treating the finished building as less important than the ideas that guide its design, ideas often represented through texts, diagrams or art installations rather than through the building alone. It departs from the traditional model of the architect as master builder, in which construction and craftsmanship drive the design, placing the intellectual framework behind a project ahead of its physical realization. The approach was formally examined by Peter Eisenman in his 1970 essay Notes on Conceptual Architecture, Towards a Definition, and received renewed attention through articles in the Harvard Design Magazine in 2003 and 2004 that explored the blurred boundary between architecture and conceptual art. Diller and Scofidio, Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas are among the architects associated with the approach, and Louis Kahn captured a related idea when he said of Frank Lloyd Wright that Wright had the shape conceived long before he knew what was going into it, adding that this is where architecture starts, with the concept.