Fe Typical Plan a, | Typical Plan is an American invention. Itis zero-degree architecture, architecture stripped of all § | traces of uniqueness and specificity. It belongs to the New World. 335[The notion of the typical plan is therapeutic; itis the End of Architectural History, which is noth- ling but the hysterical fetishization of the atypical plan. Typical Plan is a segment of an unacknowl- © Jecigea utopia, the promise of a post-architectural future dust as The Man Without Qualities haunts European literature, “the plan without qualities” is the great quest of American building. From the late 19th century to the early 1970s, there is an “American century" in which Typical Plan is developed from the primitive loft type (ruthless creation of floor space through the sheer multiplication of a given site) via early masterpieces of smooth space like the RCA Building (1933) —its escalators, its elevators, the Zen-like serenity of its office suites—to provisional culminations such as the Exxon Building (1971) and the World Trade Center (1972-73). Together they represent evidence of the discovery and subsequent mastery of a new architecture (often proclaimed but never realized at the scale of Typical Plan)ch is noth- | The ambition of Typical Plan is to create new territories for the smooth unfolding of new mecsncw- processes, in this case, ideal accommodation for business. But what is business? Supposedly \| the most circumscribed program, itis actually the most formless. Business makes no demands, lities” isthe The architects of Typical Plan understood the secret of business: the office building represents yp | the first totally abstract program—it does not demand a particular architecture, its only function plypical is to letits occupants erist. Business can invade any architecture. Out of this indeterminacy nthe sheer Typical Plan generates character. feino |) Raymond Hood, one ofits inventors, defined the typical plan with tautological bravura: "The plan jisional ~«||is of primary importance, because on the floor are performed all the activities of the human. Rg Together a x |joccupants.” (often | (Typical Plan provides the multiple platforms of 20th-century democracy.) 678road St, 1928