Architecture has often represented itself through permanence, stability, and formal autonomy while materially existing through irreversible exchanges, dissipation, aging, maintenance, and transformation. Situated within a cumulative research program on architectural conception, thermodynamics, constructal law, environmental transfer, digital design, and spatial morphogenesis, this article isolates a more specific question: how can irreversibility and constructal law become generative principles within architectural design rather than corrective considerations applied after form has been established? The study develops a situated theoretical-methodological framework in which the building is approached as a finite open configuration traversed by thermal, material, environmental, and occupational flows. Drawing on the second law of thermodynamics, exergy degradation, finite-time processes, boundary-layer reasoning, and constructal access, the framework organizes design through the definition of the finite domain, the identification of gradients, the localization of resistance and irreversible loss, the spatial and temporal staging of differences, the organization of access, and the evaluation of geometry through dynamic persistence. The framework is applied to an unbuilt amphibious dwelling as a research-by-design case study, examining its implications for site interpretation, flood accommodation, sectional organization, envelope depth, material differentiation, circulation, and maintenance. The application is not presented as a complete numerical performance validation, but as an architectural translation of the method that establishes the basis for subsequent computational, structural, material, and life-cycle testing. The article contributes a focused account of architecture as the organization of irreversible processes under finite constraints and proposes a design methodology through which gradients, resistances, transfers, and temporal transformations may participate directly in the generation of form.
Lazaros Mavromatidis (2026) studied this question.