Concepts
The Parti
par-TEE
Also Known As Parti Pris
Design Principle
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The parti is the central organizing idea an architect commits to early in a design, the basic diagrammatic scheme, a courtyard around a void, a tower over a plinth, a sequence along an axis, from which everything else is developed. The term comes from the French prendre parti, to take a position, and was formalized in the design pedagogy of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where students sketched an esquisse, a quick first parti, before elaborating a project in detail. It remains ordinary studio language: to lose the parti partway through a design is to lose the idea the whole building was meant to argue.
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The parti as a named design step was formalized in Beaux-Arts studio pedagogy.
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