THE STRUCTURE OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: MERGING ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

Architecture and built environment clearly co-exist in terms of interaction, interdependency and mutual borrowing. Today, alongside the traditional task of designing architecture, understanding the complexity of the built environment remains a challenge for architects and planners. This book studies decentralization, wholeness and the relations of dominance in form and space, and a specific theoretical framework is created to approach the inherent underlying order of the built environment. Three case studies based on different built environments are used to demonstrate the potential of the analytical and interpretational method proposed in the specific framework, and to create operative links with the urban design process. The findings confirm the applicability of the framework and contribute greater knowledge of the built environment. This greater understanding reveals a constant relation between endogenous and external models, and some suggestions for their coexistence are discussed.