operative criticism

the great manfredo tafuri defined a form of precedent analysis like this:

[operative criticism] is an analysis of architecture (or of the arts in general) that, instead of an abstract survey, has as its objective the planning of a precise poetical tendency, anticipated by its structures and derived from historical analyses programmatically distorted and finalized.  ...

[o]perative criticism plans past history by projecting it towards the future. ...

[t]his type of criticism, by anticipating the ways of action, forces history: forces past history because, by investing it with a strong ideological charge, it rejects the failures and dispersions throughout history; and forces the future because it is not satisfied with the simple registering of what is happening, but hankers after solutions and problems not yet shown (at least, not explicitly so).  its attitude is contenting towards past history, and prophetic towards the future.

- manfredo tafuri, theories and history of architecture

some thoughts on precedent analysis

its always helpful to think of these possibilities:

• program precedent (ie. find a project that has a similar program to yours and see how it is organized, break it down, study the % relationships bet. spaces, amount of sq.ft. allowed for circulation, expected occupancy-to-program ratio, etc.)

• idea precedent (ie. some project/art piece/etc. that tries to materialize an idea like yours... and, then, diagram it... to see how it works, how its author tried to give it shape, etc.)

• negative precedent (ie. a project like yours that doesn't work... and why?  this can be done as a variant of the program precedent)

• site precedent (ie. if you have a peculiar, different, problematic, etc. site, find a precedent with a similar condition and see how the author solved for it). [this also works for structure/tectonics, materiality, etc.]
  

at the core, of course, is ANALYSIS... after all, it is through the act of investigation, unfolding, breaking down into component pieces, drawing, redrawing, mapping, investigating again, etc. where one tries to make sense of the precedent and "translate" it for ones own use... after all, what good is a precedent if you can't really use it to help you think though your own project?