Ralph Erskine Arkitektkontor’s project for a 2,000-unit housing estate in Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1969–82) was the result of an unusually long and complex design process. The critical literature highlights Erskine’s humanist position and socialist inclination, but the operations of the project have never been explained in detail. Based on literature and archival research, this essay examines Erskine’s response to the challenges of the commission. As a reaction against the modernist ideals of efficiency and homogeneity, the project sought to absorb the pre-existing social structure, approximating the image of a medieval city, with its perimeter wall, and its houses and alleys of varied scales and irregular patterns. The term isomorphism – a structure-preserving map – is proposed here to capture the procedures that the architects deployed to give the project a theoretical and formal grounding, establishing continuities with the past that would soften the impact of the radical physical transformation imposed on the site. The ambiguous spatial and material qualities that characterise the project for Byker were fundamental in creating the conditions of reception that made this process viable.

When, in 1619, Frederick V of the Palatinate accepted the crown of Bohemia, he justified his action, which challenged the authority of Emperor Ferdinand II and precipitated the Thirty Years’ War, by the need to uphold the public order, rights, and responsibilities connected to the estates of the empire. English engagements with the German vocabulary of estates drew upon the concept of reason of state—those amoral political calculations needed to maintain a group's estate, or standing. The article examines the significance of these differences in a vocabulary of estates and state.

Christopher Alexander famously maintained that traditional architecture is inherently more ‘whole’ – and consequently more beautiful and alive – than modern architecture because the former is the product of organic processes, while the latter is the product of mechanistic processes. The central concept in Alexander’s theory – that architecture can be more or less whole – has only rarely been quantitatively examined. Furthermore, his claims about the superior wholeness of organic architecture have similarly remained untested. In response, this paper critically re-examines Alexander’s definition of wholeness in the context of A Pattern Language, along with previous attempts to quantify its properties. From this basis, the paper proposes a new pattern-based quantitative method for examining and measuring wholeness. This method is then tested through the analysis of seven ‘organic’ houses by Frank Lloyd Wright and seven ‘mechanistic’ villas by Le Corbusier. Through this process, the paper demonstrates a method for measuring wholeness, and quantitatively tests Alexander’s assertion that organic environments are more whole than mechanistic ones.

In a highly urban environment like Hong Kong, young architects progressively lose their physical connection with materials and manual construction skills and rely mostly on computer-aided design software to conceptualise their architectural design projects. This extreme condition exists within a global phenomenon that increasingly confines architecture to its mere scenographic character. This article presents and discusses the use of bamboo as a building material by second-year architecture students from Hong Kong engaged in an international design and build competition with peers from Southeast Asia. Over three consecutive academic years, students were exposed to the rediscovery of an artisanship tradition and the physical properties of bamboo as a construction material. The exercise allowed students to explore tectonics and reposition architecture as a culturally grounded act and art of construction. The experience achieved onsite is significant for the realisation of context-responsive, environmentally sensitive, and culturally orientated forms of architecture. In Southeast Asia, the use of bamboo enables the architectural project to arise from the roots of a long-standing vernacular tradition and as a result it can become a medium through which the essence of architecture can be discussed. This article investigates the extraordinary pedagogical value provided by student competitions, such as the one organised by the Nansha Wetland Bird Park and the South China University of Technology, which requires the use of local natural materials and the construction to be carried out by the designers.