Rebecca Leclerc: Assignment #5b

Keywords:

Diagram, Typology, Form, Function,Program, Reinvent, Reevaluate, Relevance, Progression, Generative Tool, Lifestyles

New Sources: (w/some annotations)

Argan, Giulio Carlo, “On the Typology of Architecture”, Architectural Design, no. 12 (1963): 561-562.

“On the Typology of Architecture” is an editorial that begins to reconsider the notion of type as the essence of architecture. Argan makes the argument that typological and inventive aspects of the creative process are continuous and interlaced, and that only by criticizing and overcoming past solutions that were deposited from the synthesized “type” can the architect begin to properly utilize typology. He maintains that “type” is a principle allowing for variation, rather than a priori set of fixed entities. Argan investigates definitions and compares and superimposes the uses and forms of typologies to give evidence to his claim. This article is relevant for both historians and professionals because it speaks to the process of design and to the production of individual works. It is relevant for my research because it implies a way for typology and modern creation to work together. Argan was an Italian art and architectural historian and politician.

Colquhoun, Alan, “Three Kinds of Historicism”, in Kate Nesbitt (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture (1976): 202-209.

Foreign Office Architects, “Phylogenesis: FOA’s Ark” (Edited by Michael Kubo and Albert Ferre in collaboration with FOA), Actar, Barcelona (2003).

Rubio, Ignasi de Sola-Morales, “From Contrast to Analogy, Developments in the Concept of the Architectural Intervention”, Proceedings of the ACSA annual meeting, vol. 89 (November 1996): 125.

Vidler, Anthony, “The Idea of Type: The Transformation of an Academic Idea 1750-1830”, ed. K. Michael Hays, The Oppositions Reader, 437-459.

Vidler, Anthony, “The Third Typology”, ed. Kate Nesbitt, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture (1976): 258-263.

This important essay describes typology as inextricably linked to the origins of architectural discourse. Anthony Vidler’s editorial emphasizes the operation of type within the city as an important “emerging” third typology. Vidler goes on to argue how the first typologies were based on nature, and then on industry, but that the third typology seeks its inspiration and from internal, physical patterns of the synchronic city. He uses evidence of historical references when speaking about the first typologies, and then grounds his argument on the third typology speaking about postmodernism and the advents of the city. Anyone with interest in architecture and architectural theory would benefit from reading this essay. This editorial is a theoretical mapping and understanding of past typologies that benefits my own research in understanding the history of typologies. Vidler is a founding editor of Oppositions, as well as an architectural historian.

De Quincy, Quatremere, “Type”, The Oppositions Reader. Selected Reading from A Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 1973-1984, MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London (1998): 617-620.

Précis:

In Rebecca Leclerc’s thesis she makes the claim that typologies are preventing the advancement of ideas within the ever-changing spatial needs and wants of contemporary lifestyles. Her thesis aims to establish a break from typologies in order to reinvent and reinterpret the use, functions, and forms of both repurposed structures and future building constructs. To support these views, the thesis endures a thorough analysis of a series of precedent studies, examining the relationships between the buildings that are based on typologies and the buildings that break away from them, and also analyzes ineffective and out-of-date typological functions, programs and forms that still find their way into buildings by the application of the typological process. The audience that would best suit the article would be anyone interested or involved in the profession of architecture, and/or concerned in the rethinking of architectural approach.