Before talking about the concept in architecture should write something like: What is in reality "concept" ... perhaps elaborate on that ... what?! How to define? How to apply? ...

For now and in pragmatic terms is preferable to reduce to the most elementary and basic and find an easy word, that works as a synonym in the case - the idea ...

This question fraught with dilemmas, drawing as many questions in the minds of architecture students, some, in the fact and in effect, trying to follow the resoning of teachers and understand their language, others up to and just out of curiosity, to know about what they talk!

Of course, once again we could be here to define and ramble on what is an idea, how it arises and finally materializes as a work, a project ...

This philosophical wandering and other, more practical as Project design, are to later. So, the idea of ​​architecture, the concept of the architecture is not more than "just the only way to do."

Soon we would have to define what an idea! ... If something ingenious, innovative and nothing planned or based on something we see, know, or just a set of experiences and experiences, we define to be a "simple idea" ... do something like ...

Albeit with a program, with some influence or constraint in some way, the first step is always ... an idea!

The truth is not always the architecture was seen as a profession or creative and artistic performance as we live right now. This plastic world, formal, "magazine" and fashions, where the information is repeated, is seen at breakneck speed, this creative act in opposition to rationalism imposed by the profession foundations, since it would be another topic for another chapter ...!

Great works we now call reference architecture, are no more than mere physical exercise, engineering, clear response to requests, the programs and stripped of a priori or intentional concept, a process that we now understand inevitable, essential and mandatory, or it's not me teacher of a course in architecture! ... Otherwise, I would be preaching a teaching and practice another.

Once again digress should anticipate a chapter: what is the concept, to have concept in architecture? The truth is that it is difficult to have an idea and set up where it is an idea ... where and from when and how it became in fact ... an idea!

Well, the idea of ​​architecture, can be gone in days gone by in a simple and humble response to these requirements, the necessity or even an established way of being that "the way of making architecture."

The idea of ​​the shape of pyramids, the idea of ​​a summit of a Gothic church with his paintings of skies, with the heavens lived there and how the stone that separates them is as light as a cloud. The idea of ​​a square or a planned city, the idea of ​​an arc of a Romanesque bridge and reinforced concrete ...

If we take the previous paragraph, reread now carefully and we add a supposed read more on the theory of continuity and evolution: the form that comes from the mastabas and stepped pyramids that formed what we now see as the pyramid of excellence . The dome as a result of crossing the cradle vaults or gun through the arc cruzeria, through interception in the aisles. Or the experience of building stone for centuries and knowledge of their physical behavior in experimental field.

The idea that the heavens have always been part of the architectural form for religion, the arts in general, the policy and the economy merged in interests and ways to communicate and control the different social and cultural classes. And the experience of Roman camps in "thistle" and "decumano" which marked a rule or measure still exists in the most basic of our thinking and mental structure, marked in everyday life, in the simplest act of measurement, the repeated human pitch, feel the space in modules that are repeated endlessly and endlessly. Or the structure calculated in a computer system, to carry out a bridge where the bow and the closing stone remain the reason and logic of all this calculation ...

And like thousands of other analogies, we could understand "the idea", "the concept of" an evolution sometimes more empirical or sensory, other more mature and thoughtful, tidy and set in rules and steps. Today would be much more important, we think more about the concept and how to apply it in a conscious way in the practice of architecture, and do not define an idea, a concept as a recipe "for the architecture," or to a type of architecture that recognize, (today) and we identify ourselves ... just because.

We should in fact and indeed, stop to think what a concept, an idea, establish a methodology, a processing organize, just to build our "idea", the way we come to a hand, a thought. Only then should with this frame of mind, try to be able to apply a method, and with it to see what would such architecture.

Today I share and I identify in the design and dedication that Eduardo Souto Moura devoted me and ostento as single basic principle for my exercise. Live My post-classical period.