<Symposium Overview: Presentations' outlines>ArchiteXt Mining: Taking advantage of Periodicals as an Architectural Data Base

Abstract

‘ArchiteXt Mining. Spanish modern architecture through its texts (1939-1975)’ is a research project funded by the Government of Spain through the 2015 Call for 'Excellence Projects' of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This project aims to explore a new view point and look into the special features of Spanish Modern Architecture. Despite the success of the development of data analysis as a tool in different disciplines, the research on architectural theory has never made the most efficient use of these technologies. The Spanish and International circumstances of the development of the Modern Architecture has been scrutinized through qualitative research which established a shared theoretical ground. It is time to face a new indepth research based on objective data. In order to obtain this, we propose the application of text mining techniques to take advantage of the best data source in the field: architectural magazines. Our objective is to offer a new vision of the transformation of the architectural production and how it is divulged through texts published on these magazines. In addition to this, we aim at creating a powerful database hosted in a public website for the scientific community. In this context, this project fulfills e-Research objectives: to make the computerization of research data easier, to support every stage of the data collection, and to contribute to the use of tools that allows big amount of data analysis. As a first step, this project focuses on the Spanish case as a pilot for a bigger worldwide scale research. In particular, this stage will begin with the Spanish architecture magazines published during the Dictatorship period (1939-1975), when the cultural relations of the country at an international level were more difficult. We will be able to compare the important issues to Spanish architects with the other subjects of interest in European, American and Asian magazines, which will provide a new interpretation of the Spanish Architecture regarding the international panorama.