In the decade prior to his untimely death in the mid 1990s, the American architect Douglas Darden pioneered a system of architectural composition that he called the Composite ldeogram or (Dis)Continuous Genealogy. This method involved juxtaposing a number of related two-dimensional images on top of each other and using the resultant collage to generate the plan or section (or both) of a hypothetical building. Darden's carefully chosen images (all linked to the historical or social context of the building) can be traced in the final composition in a heavily abstracted form providing an intellectual context for the work, or an architectural genealogy. Darden's work follows stylistically from the work of the French architects Lequeu and, more distantly, Ledoux who both deployed self-parody, allegory and polemic to establish a discursive approach to architectural composition. Darden's work can also claim a peculiar lineage to the semiological theorising that dominated architecture throughout the 70s and early 80s.
1st Dresden International Symposium of Architecture 2004. Aesthetics and Architectural Composition: Proceedings of the Dresden International Symposium of Architecture 2004 (Dresden, Germany 16-19 June, 2004) p. 209-216