A Formal Approach to the Study of the Evolution and Commonality of Patterns

Abstract

The formal approach outlined in this paper uses symbolic memes as a framework for the hierarchical deconstruction of a cultural artefact, the traditional Korean pattern known as bosangwhamun, to describe the evolutionary development of such a pattern using shape grammar rules. The formal descriptions of this pattern are thus the basis for generating its variations, and the process is used to evaluate the validity of the rules and their appropriateness for the study of bosangwhamun.

Shape grammar, culture, and generation of vernacular houses (a practice on the villages adjacent to rice fields of Mazandaran, in the north of Iran)

“…The first application of shape grammars was used to analyse principles of existing architectural styles particularly vernacular architecture during the first two decades of its creation. Studies have been undertaken for vernacular architecture including; Ice-ray: a note on the generation of Chinese lattice designs (Stiny 1977), the Taiwanese traditional house (Chiou, Krishnamurti, 1996), Queen Anne houses (Flemming, 1987), Ndebele homesteads (Herberts, Sanders, Mills, 1994), and the Islamic gireh, Korean pattern (Lee, Park, Lim, Kim, 2013). The formalism of the shape grammar process is one of the most convincing methods available to show our understanding of the composition of existing designs (Koning and Eizenberg, 1981).…”

“…The first application of shape grammars was used to analyse principles of existing architectural styles particularly vernacular architecture during the first two decades of its creation. Studies have been undertaken for vernacular architecture including: Ice-ray: a note on the generation of Chinese lattice designs by Stiny (1977) and the Islamic gireh, Korean pattern (Lee et al., 2013), which provides rules in detail scale. Similarly but in large scale, the Taiwanese traditional house (Chiou and Krishnamorti, 1996) presented set up rules based on actual traditional method of construction process which inspired this research for rule set up.…”