Floating Mansions, Empirical Inquiry and the Appraisal of Architectural Theories

Authors

  • Jorge Mejía Hernández Delft Universit of Technology
  • Jasper Cepl

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.19.2.8407

Abstract

It was through our shared interest in the adaption of Lakatosian research programmes that the topic for this issue emerged. More specifically, the issue originates in our respective studies of fellow architects Stanford Anderson and Royston Landau, who used Lakatos’s methodology to systematically explain architecture and determine some of the principles on which its practice was based throughout the twentieth century.

 

 

 

 

Author Biographies

Jorge Mejía Hernández, Delft Universit of Technology

Jorge Mejía-Hernández graduated as an architect in Colombia, and
developed his PhD at TU Delft, where he currently researches and
teaches. His dissertation Transactions; or Architecture as a System
of Research Programs (2018) advances a methodological framework
to examine the individual and social rationales that determine
the growth and development of architectural knowledge. He was a
member of Footprint’s Editorial Board between 2015 and 2024.

Jasper Cepl

Jasper Cepl, born 1973, Architect. Chair for the Theory and History
of Modern Architecture at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany.
Studied architecture at RWTH Aachen and TU Berlin, where he
graduated in 2000. He received his doctorate in 2006 for a study
on Oswald Mathias Ungers, published as Oswald Mathias Ungers:
Eine intellektuelle Biographie in 2007. Jasper Cepl taught at TU
Berlin (2003–2013) and, as a professor for architecture theory, at
Hochschule Anhalt, Dessau (2014–2019) before being appointed as
a professor at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in 2019. His research
focuses on the history of ideas in modern architecture.

References

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York: Picador, 1997

Aldo Rossi, The Architecutre of the City, intr. Peter Eisenman, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman. Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1984

Frederick Crews, Skeptical Engagements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986

Imre Lakatos and Elie Zahar, ‘Why did Copernicus’s Research Programme Supersede Ptolemy’s?’, in

Jasper Cepl, ‘Royston Landau and the Research Programmes of Architecture’, in Architecture Thinking Across Boundaries: Knowledge Transfers since the 1960s, ed. Rajesh Heynickx, Ricardo Costa Agarez and Elke Couchez. London: Bloomsbury, 2021

Jorge Mejía Hernández, Transactions, or Architecture as a System of Research Programs. PhD dissertation, TU Delft, 2018

Juan Antonio Cortés, Nueva consistencia: estrategias formales y materiales en la arquitectura de la última década del siglo XX. Valladolid: Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, 2002

Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978

Peter Eisenman, The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2006

Rafael Moneo, ‘On Typology’, Oppositions 13 (Summer 1978): 22–45

Rafael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies In the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects. Barcelona: Actar, 2004.

Royston Landau, ‘Methodology of Research Programs’, in Changing Design, ed. Barrie Evans et al. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982

Royston Landau, ‘Methodology of Research Programs’, in Changing Design, ed. Barrie Evans et al. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982

Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, eds., Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000

Stanford Anderson, ‘Architectural Design as a System of Research Programs’, Design Studies (Vol. 5, no. 3, 1984)

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Published

2025-12-15

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 2 (2025): Issue # 37 |Architectural Theories, their Performance, Quality and Effect: An Appraisal

Section

Editorial

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Jorge Mejía Hernández, Jasper Cepl

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