TYPOLOGY AS A FORM OF CONVENTION

Author(s): Micha Bandini

Source: AA Files , May 1984, No. 6 (May 1984), pp. 73-82
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/29543402

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 TYPOLOGY AS A FORM OF CONVENTION
Micha Bandini

That the architectural community appears to be searching attracted to new concepts after their formal education, are
anxiously for a raison d'etre is hardly an original observa? reached mainly through picture magazines. Richardson's draw?
tion. However, the extent to which the search is channelled ings, accompanied by a modest text, have been extensively
through established and accepted patterns and programmes of published and cannot fail to make an impact. They will mingle, in
research has yet to be recognized by its community of producers. the minds of readers, with memories of authoritative historical
This paper examines one of those channels in the belief that it is interpretations. Thus the house-type pattern-book, through its
more useful, for a radical transformation of our understanding of manipulation of agreed and legitimized conventions, begets a
architecture, to investigate the formation of contemporary archi? modus operandi.
tectural conventions than it is to establish new ones. While as a functional and instrumental device typology seems
In recent years typology has been at the forefront of the cul? to have been accepted and its importance as a convention not yet
tural debate, and its influence as a critical and functional tool has seriously challenged, it is as an enterprise of explanation and
grown to the extent that it is now impossible for architectural understanding that the notion has come under close scrutiny in
commentators to ignore it. In fact, the notion has become conven? recent years. Moreover, no agreement has been reached on the
tional, hence an easily recognizable and transmittable password. exact meaning of the concept. Quatremere de Quincy's definition4
The canonic process is always one of oversimplification, and is still possibly the most comprehensive, and a good starting
architecture, particularly its conventions and polemics, is very point, as reflected in the following attempt by Raphael Moneo:
susceptible to it. Pevsner not only legitimized this practice and What then is type? It can most simply be defined as a concept which de?
gave it the necessary historical pedigree in his History of Building scribes a group of objects characterized by the same formal structure. It is
Types,1 but also, by selecting particular examples and organizing neither a spatial diagram nor the average of a serial list. It is fundamen?
them into chapters, left no doubt that there was a clear difference tally based on the possibility of grouping objects by certain inherent
structural similarities.5
between a hospital, a school and a prison, each of which ought to
present a well-defined image. To design, therefore, is to respond Moneo's definition is certainly very general and open to a variety
to the tradition of type and to the requirements of the pro? of interpretations. But rather than suffering from such vagueness,
gramme. It is to this vague notion that most architects subscribe typology seems to thrive on it. Indeed, one of the features com?
in their design activities. mon to architectural ? if not all ? conventions is that they seem
One example of the way in which Pevsnerian functionalism to derive effectiveness and power from a confused agreement, a
influences practitioners is Martin Richardson's pattern-book of cultural consensus which can operate only in so far as it is not
house types (Fig.l). His study, commissioned by a timber-frame required to be precise.
house manufacturer, is aimed at that upper end of the housing The editorial of the Lotus International issue devoted to
market which still yearns to live in an 'English village'. 'Architecture and Its Conventions' is very revealing in this re?
Richardson claims that he only wants to show them 'the effects on spect. Commenting on the entries for a recent competition in
siting of aspect, access, view, plot, shape, while bearing in mind Berlin, the Editor writes, 'The novelty lies in the fact that they all
the individual requirements for privacy, garden, garages, etc.'.2 In base their solutions on a dialogue and an interplay with conven?
fact he does much more and, through his endorsement of 'a type tion: and these involve both typological regularities and the
with certain classic Tightness',3 he sells a life-style and a view of layered image of the contemporary city.'6 We find here the notion
society. His plans, based on a standard model allowing for some of convention associated with that of typology: both are all
permutation and flexibility, are combined with 'vernacular' encompassing categories, almost magical words which by their
elements in such a way that the range of the user's choice is mere utterance yield hidden meanings.
limited, and it is doubtful that a higher income would be suf? The power of the convention is such that even Alan
ficient to secure genuine freedom for these users. Richardson's Colquhoun, in the introduction to his collected essays, describes
very explicit views against modern, and especially post-modern, the entire architectural debate as circumscribed by 'attitudes to
architecture inform his choice of house patterns to such an extent type'.7 Colquhoun can argue this only because he has first estab?
that the ideological message becomes almost inadvertently part of lished a parallel between structural linguistics and art, hypoth?
the project. With typical English 'charm', he proposes not only a esizing that the relationship between langue (fixed) and parole
role for the architect ('a vernacular midwife') but also a pattern (changeable) is similar to the relationship between a set of artistic
for urban development. rules and a set of socially acceptable aesthetic norms. These con?
Without entering into the stylistic polemic implicit in Richard? stitute those 'typologically fixed entities which convey artistic
son's proposals, it is interesting to note the popularity of such meaning within a social context'.8 This is rather too concise a
ideas. Practising architects, for the most part only reluctantly proposition ? and it could be argued differently ? but it sup

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Fenesiratim system WaUstyUng Vunef Variable ptoh ports the even stronger assumption which follows: 'Given that
r
?
architectural meaning depends on the existence of such pre
99 rjB
Fixed
??VilMiiTi'i1 established types. . . .,9 And it is from this point of view that he
writes:

Optional Fewer Smaller

T C
a? Either they can be seen as the invariable forms which underlie the infi?
nitely varied forms of actual individual buildings ... or alternatively, they
can be seen as historical survivals which have come down to us in a frag?
mented form but whose meaning does not depend on their having been
organized in a particular way at a particular time.10

It is understandable, then, that he associates the neo-rationalists

1 ?Q
More Bigger
with the first interpretation and Venturi and his followers with the
second, and that he sees the work of the so-called post-modernists

?
Symmetry as dangling somewhere between the two.
We see here that typology as a convention is operating at a dif?
ferent level. The sophisticated public to whom Colquhoun directs
implied symmetry and Wear^ah^iaMhis product has, in the past few years, been involved in the typo?
logical debate to such an extent that the notion has become almost
?? optional Jar extra .
depleted, and, following the fate of all too many similar pass?
words, it has become unfashionable in scholarly discourse, and
poorly understood and frequently abused in the schools. Ty?
/. Martin Richardson: Detail from pattern-book of house
pology istypes
an indispensable tool for the critical community pre?
commissioned by Guild way Ltd (International Architect 7, 79#7).
cisely because its role as a convention has been established by the
same group of critics and architects who have exhausted its
novelty. Colquhoun's characterization of both architecture and
typology, while adequate as a broad introduction, can lead, in its
oversimplification and acceptance of the indiscriminate appli?
cation of labels, to the kind of cultural reductionism which
defines the critic's function as polemical and explores theoretical
Villa Thiene at Cicogna Villa Sarego at Micga Villa Poiana at Poiana
Maggiorc categories only to produce consumable items. Certainly today's
architectural scene contains more protagonists than Venturi, the
neo-rationalists and the post-modernists. And even if we could
accept typological concerns as the factor which could unify the
scattered factions (which we can't), a closer look at various indivi?
dual statements makes us sharply aware of the fragmented nature
of architectural discourse and of the methodological differences
1 I and difficulties which prevent the application of easily compre?
Villa at
Villa Badoer at Fratta, Villa Zeno Cornaro at hensible (but inaccurate) labels.
Polesine Cesaltp Piombino
Therefore, rather than pursue this sort of contemporary debate
which has addressed typology either as a morphological category
or reduced it to a classificatory device, it would be more fruitful
to survey the debate itself, and to clarify, using the example of
typology, the manner in which architectural ideas, through their
endurance and usage, acquire the status of convention. And it is
Villa Pisani at Villa Emo at Villa Malcontenta to a theory of use that I refer in order to characterize the three dif?
Montagnana Fanzolo fering attitudes which have informed most recent typological
studies.
In the first approach we find typology used as a means of
'reading' the city. The Venice School and some of the French
CTTJ urbanists are perhaps its most conspicuous exponents. It is a
useful methodology in so far as it clarifies the process of the
transformation of cities and allows urban phenomena to be per?
ceived both diachronically and synchronically. Because it links the
Villa Pisani at Villa Rotonda Geometrical Pattern morphological nature of the urban fabric with its social, political
of Palladio's Villas and demographic aspects, the results are likely to be more com?
prehensive than any of the products of those disciplines taken
2. Rudolf Wittkower: Schematized plans of eleven of Palladio's villas individually. But this comprehensiveness is a by-product rather
(Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 1952). than the main objective: the formation of 'a scientific method?
ological tool for investigating the relationship between urban
morphology and building typology',11 seen as central to the under?
standing of contemporary architecture. Its claim to status as a
theory of use is very weak. 'Understanding' remains the key
word, and design is left to another, presumably compatible, line
of investigation.

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 The second approach contains a stronger component of useful?
ness: typology as a way of discussing 'high' architecture in
stylistic and cultural terms. Scholarly studies either use archi?
tectural type as a tool for comparing or recreating the cultural
influences operative at a given time (as in the case of Wittkower
? see Fig.2)12 or treat it as a cultural topic belonging to the aes?
thetic world and therefore worth investigating both by itself and
in relation to similar categories in painting and sculpture (as in the
case of G.C. Argan). Treatment of the topic wavers between
investigation and interpretation, and it is often only scholarly
restraint which prevents typology from becoming a criterion for
aesthetic evaluation.
There is a stronger emphasis on typology as a theory of use in
the third approach: typology as a theoretical tool for the produc?
tion of architecture. Its role is precise. Either it is dealt with in a
treatise, as in the eighteenth-century tradition (Fig.3) which
reached its culmination with Quatremere, or it is the concept
which informs a meta-project, as in the case of Rossi, the Krier
brothers, and some of Purini's and Ungers' work (Fig.4).
But inflexible definitions belong to reductionist criticism. In
reality, neat distinctions between levels of use, in typology as in
other varieties of architectural categorization, are not observed.
The desire to employ any notion is such a strong part of the
making of architecture, even more so when presented in attractive
images, that it overrides other considerations to the extent that a
consistently low level of theory13 is used by most architects to
explain their products. What could be more serviceable than a
conventionally acceptable theoretical notion such as typology,
which permits a variety of interpretations with metaphysical over?
tones?
A useful way to illustrate how the critical is confused with the
instrumental in the architectural debate is to follow the develop?
ment of typology from one level of use to another. I would like to
trace the circular and progressive reductionism of typological
research, the argument which, through Argan's interpretation of
Quatremere de Quincy's definition of type, has led to the urban
studies of Rossi and Scolari; how these have shared a parallel
development with Aymonino's notion of type and influenced
French urbanists; how typology has been utilized by various
'rationalist' architects; and, finally, how this wealth of theoretical
elaboration has been received by the English-speaking culture. It
is out of this rather convoluted process, over the course of a few
years, that the status quo has evolved.
Italian architectural culture of the sixties was concerned mainly
with urban problems. It is quite astounding, in the present climate
of apolitical individualism, to consider the scope of the debate in
those days. In the best tradition of the Gramscian intellectual,
architects saw architectural problems as part of a wider social and
cultural arena. Because their awareness of the limits of the so
called Modern Movement was more pronounced at the theoretical
than at the stylistic level, most architects were striving to establish
a methodology capable of uniting the urban with the architectural
? a corrective tool for the problems of the city. It was predictable
that they should look with sympathy upon Enlightenment
architects who, in their break with baroque traditions, established
new rules and invented new architectural forms for the changing
needs of their societies. It is therefore not by chance that the pure
forms of Ledoux and Boullee became influential at the same time
that Argan presented his article on typology.14 A new intellectual
mood had been established, focused on the common concerns of,
on one hand, a group of architects seeking to discover new
practical and intellectual methods and, on the other, a historian
who looked back to a neglected past. Argan's influence must be
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considered in the light of the way in which he appropriated
Quatremere's definitions of model and type and offered them as
passwords, but also the more considered reflections prompted by
his observations. Designers seem to find in these definitions both
the inspiration and the authority for a new architectural meta
theory, for a methodology which reinstates the importance of
history and liberates the avant-garde from the immediate past.
Argan's argument is compelling. Having defined typology as an
analogous system of classification, he establishes its limitations as
an aesthetic or analytical criterion for creative use, especially in
architecture. Bramante's project for S. Pietro in Montorio
prompts him to ask if typology can be used only in certain
periods, or if it should be considered a meta-historical constant.
His belief in this latter hypothesis, supported by Quatremere's
idealistic definition, is clearly expressed throughout the paper. He
declares in fact that, if type is the end-product of a reductive pro?
cess, the form which results cannot be seen as a mere model but
must be regarded as the internal structure of a principle which
includes not only all the formal manifestations from which it has
been derived but any future elaborations developed from it.
Argan proceeds to demonstrate that typology is not merely a
system of classification but rather a creative process. First, he
states that typological series, in the history of architecture, have
been formed more for their morphological configurations than
for their functional uses. Second, he states that the usual means of
classifying typology is according to the following hierarchical
categories: first, the urban scale, with its configurations of
buildings; second, the building scale, with its large constructed
elements; third, the detail scale and its decorative parts. Argan
then links these categories with the successive phases of the design
of a building, indicating that the uses of typology are not limited
to a learned a posteriori evaluation, echoing those hierarchical
design stages through which each design is initially conceptualized
and ultimately verified.
One can easily see how this point became influential: it per?
fectly suited the modus operandi of architects. But it is in the
argument immediately following in which Argan offers more
intriguing suggestions, in which he claims that the inherent ambi?
guity of type, both as an operative tool and as the standard from
which one does not depart, makes it applicable to more general
questions related to the creative activity versus its history. This,
reinforced by his belief that type is always formed through
historical experience in its idealized Platonic mode, brings him to
the following conclusion:
The artist, having accepted a priori the reduction to type, can free himself
from the conditioning influence of a determined historical form, neutral?
izing it, by assuming that the past is an accomplished historical fact not
capable of further development.15
This de-historicizing moment was, for Argan, present in different
guises throughout the Renaissance until the beginnings of Neo
classicism. Through an established historical pattern, the attitude
becomes a historical convention. It can therefore be deduced that
the artist has, with regard to history, 'two moments: that of
typology and that of historical invention'.16 Where typology is
concerned,
the artist does not really look for the most appropriate solutions to a
given objective need, but looks for the formal solution which, little by
little, developed in order to answer that need in its historical
development...
It is not difficult to measure Argan's influence: most Italians
writing between 1965 and 1975 took up, in one way or another, his
argument. The article was quoted not only by anyone writing on
6 75
3. J.N.L. Durand: Graphical system for vaulted public buildings, the separate parts of which are intended for different uses (Lemons d'architecture.
Partie graphique des cours d'architecture, 1819-21).

4. O.M. lingers: Typology of detached houses that show a different conception based on a constant grid (Architettura come tema, Electa, 1982).

76
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the subject, but also, and more to the point, by architects trying to
develop through their drawings a new meta-theory for design.

_10 jjiiim w I? m ' it jlllllli

Even his way of using words is echoed in many writings, for
example, those of Rossi and Aymonino which started to appear
around that period. By the time his article was enlarged into the

p B y IS lm H JO!II
typology entry for the Universal Encyclopaedia of Art,17 its auth?
oritative role was undisputed. For the architect of the 1960s who
was involved in the painful task of finding an ethically responsible
scientific relationship between urban morphology and building
typology, Argan's operational typology, combined with Durand's
geometrical prescriptions, Quatremere's open definition and
? ? l ^ 111 ^ ^ : ~ ~ ~ |||||||||
Wittkower's analysis of Palladian villas, must have seemed very
useful indeed.
A combination of the previous and other, less clearly traceable
influences can be seen in a series of studies which appeared in
Italy in the mid-seventies, for example, in the work of Franco
Purini. While still a student, he developed an 'alphabet' of archi?

BiilllSlillBK
tectural forms which stressed the necessity for a meta-design stage
before the formal elaboration of a project. In a complex drawing,
Classification, by sections, of architectural systems (Fig.5), he
reduces architecture to its primary elements. This generates a
basic grammar which allows, through permutations and combi?
nations, the reformulation of architecture in an appropriate hier?
archical dimension and spatial configuration (Fig.6).18 This wilful
schematization owed probably as much to Wittkower's pre? PUB R! lilLldi
?
IP^ SoII1T [FJ P!^
i=lLl ?=? fe?? LLL>iU
??'??? ?4 ? ??
scriptive models as it did to Argan's ideal type, and it exemplifies
the more creative work of the Rome school, distant, both geo?
5. Franco Purini: Cla
graphically and intellectually, from the Milan Triennale of 1973 1968.
and its 'autonomous' Tendenza.
In the meantime, a book which is fundamental to European
urban studies has appeared: La Citta di Padova,19 co-authored by
a number of leading Italian architects whose polemical and leftist
stance impelled them to become involved in urban studies. It is
here that the main difference between Aymonino's and Rossi's

?madiiH~| m mpfyrTi
m ?a-ja a
treatment of typology becomes apparent, and the debate engen?
dered by the book starts to acknowledge distinctions between the
two methodologies which co-exist in the book. While Rossi sees
pr] rr^i
typology as the mediating tool for a formal analysis of the city,
Aymonino is more interested in its functional component. He sees BS IC \?2 LMj ? ?? 31
illllil
typology as an instrument, not a category. It is understood at two
levels: the first is formal (independent typology), where it is seen
as a means of classification for identifying formal differences,
and the second functional (applied typology), in which it is used
to understand the endurance of a specific type in the trans? I I'j'll'i QBBTj MB
formation of the city. Aymonino's attitude towards problems of
urban analysis, largely unresolved in this first period, becomes
more critical in his later work. In // significato delle citta20? a
?
6. Franco Purini: Block of det
" Inll
protest against the plethora of drawings derived from the Testaccio areas, Rome (Lotus In
analytical tables of La Citta di Padova ? he clearly condemns the
'naive results' of those who believed it possible to assemble urban
morphologies from typological analyses. His comment on the
nineteenth- and twentieth-century relationship between architec?
ture and urban design (essentially correct, notwithstanding its
polemical bias) leads him to acknowledge the difficulties built into
the methodology, and this is the origin of his emphasis on the
relationship between urban morphology and building typology
rather than their autonomy. This perhaps is the reason why he
sees typological analysis, not as a low-level theory, but as a
method, and why he avoids employing the concept as a
mechanistic explanation of his projects. In fact, he says,
If we start with some contemporary 'deformed' tools of design, such as
the coincidence of functional with formal typology, those seen in their
architectural stereotypes (kindergarten, hospital, skyscraper, stadium,

AA FIL ES 6 77

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 etc.), I can see that at the urban design st
negated, through their reductive different
1111 I
their contributions, just that relationship
!!!il urban analysis, just that richness in implica
li which, in the end, only architecture can ex
Therefore, for me, analysis and intervent
find their uses where I try to solve the rel
and city, between urban form and architectu

While Aymonino's treatment of typol

both the 'Modern Movement' and the
Quaroni and Samon?, Rossi has been
questions related to urban morphology
I I I I i I i I I I I I I I I I I I
o o part of his poetic of the city and r
Movement'. Typology was already an
Architecture of the City,22 and even m
111111 o o 111111111111111 where his interpretation of type follo
batim. Almost paraphrasing Quatreme

JLJIUILJILJIUIL If . . .the type is a constant, it can be foun

^?????c
ture. It is therefore also a cultural elemen
the different areas of architecture; typolo
analytical moment of architecture and can

3D?D?DC
the urban level.23

It is at this level where typology, for

innnnnr
bridge the gap between the urban and
1970 he even went so far as to define it
level:
7. Aldo Rossi: Typological diagram of (from top) XIII Triennale;
housing at Milan ? typical plan and ground-floor plan; and residential
The problem is to design new parts of the city choosing typologies able to
unit in S. Rocco a Monza (Lotus International 7).
challenge the status quo. This could be a perspective for the socialist
city.24

But Rossi too was later to redefine his position. Sharing the
detached mood prevalent among Italian intellectuals, his later
work lacks political edge, though typology still remains a power?
ful tool. Its usefulness, now more circumscribed at the design
level, he sees, rather, as 'poetic'. Considering typology at the
meta-theoretical level, he writes:

The typological moment, the moment of typological choice, was and is ?

and for me still is ? stronger than the formal stylistic choice. (For
example) ... the building at Gallaratese could just as well have been
given a completely different portico. Its importance is altogether relative,
and style recedes in the face of these fundamental questions of
architecture.25

The political leanings of Italian urbanists of the recent past are

a complex cultural phenomenon. By the beginning of the sev?
enties, the combined pressure of the students' movement and the
economic recession had caused most intellectual architects to
question their Gramscian approach. The alternatives were either
all-out non-architectural political involvement, or a redefinition of
architecture as a scientific discipline. The autonomy of architec?
ture, one of the canons of the Tendenza, was born from the
rejection of 1968-style demagoguery and easy urban prescriptions.
Typology found itself at the centre of this debate. Massimo
Scolari's article,26 published in the summer of 1971, is particularly
pertinent to the issue. Having quoted Lenin's dictum that 'Truth
is revolution', he proceeded to attack both the consumerism of
the bourgeoisie and the pseudo-revolutionary ventilations of the
far-left fringes. He challenged these through a rigorous urban
analysis where 'the relationship between urban morphology and
building typology' is the key factor. Further urban studies have
presented
8. Type and variation: variations on the basicthe same intransigent
form (J.line.Castex,
Typology, for Scolari, is not
a morphological
P. Celeste, P. Panerai, Lecture d'une ville toy (when he wants
Versailles, Paris:to dream, he paints). Itdu
Edition is a
Moniteur, 1980). scientific tool for understanding the dialectics of urban politics.
Consistent in his search for themes, he writes, in an article on
nineteenth-century European housing typologies:

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Thus, even choices of design (topographical and typological) become
metaphors by which the ruling class controls the distribution of the
various social classes in the big industrial towns.27
Scolari is perhaps alone in maintaining this uncompromising
line. For others, Rossi's work on typology had opened the door to
design speculations, though some, like Grassi, emphasize the
tautological aspects of La Tendenza and build this weakness into
a strength:28 type becomes model and the city the historical field
where architectural forms can be read. Others, like Canella,
Semerani, Gregotti, perhaps more pressed by building work, have
a more ambiguous attitude towards typology. While they main?
tain its usefulness as a cultural tool, they use it both as an arche?
type and as a functional model.
By the end of the seventies the methodological tension of urban
studies which investigated typology in a highly charged political
and cultural climate had slackened and it had become a low-level
theory. Nevertheless, a vague consensus about the notion had
been achieved in such a way that its role as an architectural
convention, both historic and contemporaneous, was firmly es?
tablished. It is interesting to observe how a cultural phenomenon
which has lost its polemical edge in the original cultural context is
exported. As a convention, typology became more powerful
through distance and the unfamiliarity of the original language.
Original assumptions were no longer questioned, and the distor?
tion of the concepts occurred at the same time that the authority
of this badly-worked-out but attractive-enough-to-be-transmitted
notion was confirmed. A cursory review of European, British and
American articles on this and related topics reveals an open and
almost unquestioning adherence to Italian propositions, which
were always acknowledged as the source of authority. Italian
urban theories were eagerly adopted also by the French, and
through them the Swiss and Germans, at first because they re?
sponded to a deep cultural need, and later because they soothed
generational and cultural anxieties. After the political events of
1968, it is not surprising that in the early seventies the same
'folding back towards a secure position' was evident in different
countries. When unions, radical fringes and proletariat enjoyed a
brief fusion under the banner 'Fight for Homes', architects who
had been at the forefront of the intellectual left were unable to
ride the tiger and responded by fortifying their discipline and
adopting typology, among other tools, as a convention which
could unlock, by defining the relationship between the city and
architecture, the door to urban power.
Most research was organized in such a way that typology
became a political category, so that housing was classified
according to the class of its inhabitants. The attention that these
studies received among the architectural community makes one
suspect that this was a means of exorcizing dangerous truths: that
architecture was no longer socially relevant, as the 'Modern
Movement' had wanted us to believe, that architects were not its
prophets (left-wing intellectuals between structure and superstruc?
ture), that the most unacceptable ideologies were probably har?
boured among the working classes, and that those pockets of
society which had not already been swallowed by the production
for-consumption process could find no use for badly trained,
inefficient architects. When, by the end of the seventies, both
students of architecture and their teachers had come to
acknowledge these 'truths', consensus on typology as a low level
of theory was established in Europe in much the same way in
which it had previously been in Italy. From then on, its attraction
was purely intellectual and formal.
On the one hand, it probably appealed to the French critics that
their Italian colleagues based their work on Quatremere and
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Durand. On the other, 'the relationship between urban mor?
phology and building typology' inspired the kind of alternative
history which was rapidly becoming popular in France. The
concept of more comprehensive, 'human' history had long been
influential. Febvre and Bloch, in their writings and through the
Annales29 had demonstrated for more than half a century that a
broader approach yields more accurate and lively historical work,
a technique which Fernand Braudel refined, especially in the first
of the three volumes of his monumental and well known work on
the Mediterranean in the age of Philip II.30
Although these and similar work hardly touched the architec?
tural community, they were in the background, and by the time
Michel Foucault had published his seminal alternative account of
medical institutions within an architectural framework,31 there
was a wealth of scholarly apparatuses to latch on to. Architects
began to shift their attention toward marginal environments, to
'architecture without architects'. Typology again provided the
starting-point. For example, Philippe Panerai, concluding a
survey of the 'official' presentations of theories of type in his
widely circulated essay 'Typologies', writes:
These established types do not belong only to sophisticated monumental
architecture, the result of specialist interventions which are mediated
through the project, but appear also in vernacular construction. One of
the works which have signalled a revival of interest among architects for
typological problems is a study of the rural architecture of Pouilles; and
the study of the rural houses of the Massif Central shows a small number
of distinguishable types, whose adoption to local conditions can be
measured: materials, site and evolution, according to the method of
breeding (sheep or cattle).32
While this interest in alternative critical methods might have
directed research towards minor urban environments and pre
industrial and industrial settlements neglected by the mainstream
histories, it is clear that both Panerai on Versailles (Fig.8)33 and
Devillers on Le Creusot34 still consider Italian urban theories, and
especially Aymonino's applied typology, to be a theoretical
source. The two previous works exemplify the line of approach
pursued by Bernard Huet in the Institut d'Etudes de Researches
Architecturales. It is through this establishment that most
typological researches are disseminated and publicized ? with the
inevitable time-lag: by the time Panerai's article was translated
into German, typological debates in France had for the most part
shifted to the line of political disengagement and formal closure
already taken by Italian urbanists.
The French situation is instructive. It embraces both politically
conscious urban research and formal experiments which, though
loosely based on it, reflect a completely different structure of
beliefs. Philippe Panerai's writings exemplify the dilemma of
those who, while using early Italian urban theories, are neverthe?
less inclined to search for a 'use-oriented' justification for their
design work. At one stage he seems content to influence the archi?
tectural community with a more open debate when he writes:
The objective is to work towards an understanding of the relationship
between architecture and the city, in the conviction that the surmounting
of the disciplinary crisis in architecture will only be attained by means of a
wide view outside the 'querelles' over fashions and styles.35
In another instance, he describes his anxieties as a designer:
In other words, what is the good of wasting time minutely observing a
section of a town and understanding the mechanisms constituting its
texture, if the starting hypothesis is a tabula rasa operation or a bulldozer
renovation. If one stops pretending to believe that there is one time for
analysis and another for the project, . . . then one would perhaps
understand that analysis and project are just two moments, two faces of
the same theoretical reflection, of the same engagement with the town....
Without this it (urban analysis) is just an alibi.
6 79

9. Rob Krier: Simple geometrical variations on a four-sided square
(Urban Space, Academy Editions, 1979).
10. Front cover of the Typology in Design Education' issue of the
Journal of Architectural Education, Winter 1982, depicting Eight
Square Pavilions' by James Gibbs.
80
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Aymonino, if we have understood him correctly, designates knowledge
as preliminary to a lucid intervention.36
While Aymonino's theories are here not completely misunder?
stood, it is evident that a great deal of 'interpretation' has taken
place. The gap between analysis and project, so clearly acknowl?
edged in the early Italian work, becomes more and more narrow.
Moreover, the breadth of the previous work has disappeared and
with it the possibility of verifying typological studies according to
criteria external to architecture. Bernard Huet's 'Small Manifesto'
is a clear indication of this trend. In the same breath he invokes
Benjamin's challenge for intellectual work 'in relation to the condi?
tion of production of an era' and Brecht's justification of the
pleasure conferred by intellectual work. And again, he condemns
the 'impossible situation of the avant-garde' while using both its
rhetoric and techniques of refutation. While the author ? quite
wisely ? at first 'will not try to define architecture', he is neverthe?
less drawn into claiming that 'the solution consists in a correct
discipline, in the dialectical relationship of productive forces,
architectural typology and urban morphology'.37
Paradoxically, the very theoretical positions which demanded
an architecture related to other kinds of cultural production are
those which forced it to restrict its boundaries in order to define
its scope. The issues underlying the Rational Architecture move?
ment are illustrated by work produced and published under the
title 'Archive d'Architecture Moderne'. Maurice Culot and the
Krier brothers, perhaps the most articulate exponents of the
'reconstruction of European cities' enterprise, have repeatedly
attacked contemporary architecture, its mode of production, and
the intellectual and economic assumptions on which it is based.
Type and typology are very much at the centre of A.A.M.
publications but, while Robert Krier takes for granted the exist?
ence of such concepts and begins his Urban Space3* by establish?
ing a personal typology of urban spaces (Fig.9), the papers pre?
sented in Rational Architecture Rationelle39 are still, for the most
part, focused on the legitimacy and usage of the notion.
It is also interesting to note that, while a certain kind of formal
experimentation may still be operating, the theoretical debate
seems more and more centred on its most reductive axioms. This
is neatly exemplified by Serge Santelli's concluding line in 'Re?
habilitation et Regle Typologique':40 'Architectes createurs,
abstenez-vous et rehabilitez selon la regie typologique!' The nar?
rowness of this approach is symptomatic of architectural as well
as typological preoccupations of today. Convention plays a major
role here: it assumes that both belong to the same field; it
establishes rhetoric fortified with metaphors and allusions to
sympathetic 'authoritative histories' as the proper and accepted
way of writing about such subjects; it makes conscious a
programme of beliefs which would otherwise have rested only on
the vague affinities of formal imitations. Indeed, as a form of
convention, typology can be canonical both in its theoretical
definitions (via Quatremere de Quincy or Durand) and in its for?
mal appearance (white geometrical shapes, often based on har?
monic proportions, stripped of overt ornament, symmetrical,
evocative of the pictorial representations of the twenties and
thirties).
There is, of course, scope for variation within the established
boundaries. Certainly Leon Krier's poetic urban inventions reflect
a much subtler imagination than his brother's reductivist urban
spaces composed of squares, circles and triangles, in the same way
that Delevoy's introductory essay in Rational Architecture
Rationelle,41 in which he calls for an 'operational typology', is
much more convincing than Anthony Vidier's justification of a
'third typology'.42
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 A key article for our argument is Vidier's editorial in Opposi?
tions 1 (1968), which focused on rational design processes and,
obviously, typology at a moment when the Institute for Archi?
tecture and Urban Studies was promoting the work of Aldo Rossi
and La Tendenza on the East Coast of the US. This issue also
contains a revealing series of letters and a review of a forum held
at the Institute on Rossi's work which clearly indicate that, at this
stage, the East Coast intelligentsia were far from unanimous in
their acceptance of European fashions. Obviously polemical
necessities have played a major part in the formulation of Vidler's
arguments,43 and their shortcomings are aptly revealed by Mary
McLeod, a sympathetic but acute critic who notes not only the
main omission in the argument ('The nineteenth-century notion
of type related to building functions') but also that
The confusion in Vidler's editorial is ... a confusion that exists within the
Rationalist movement itself. ... as a basis for a critical social role for
architecture it leaves much unanswered. To the extent that it establishes a
priori canons, it risks leading, as did previous 'scientific' methods, to a
new positivism.44
Unfortunately McLeod's arguments have not been pursued
with the same enthusiasm that has finally opened the floodgates
on the East Coast to the latest European formalist experiments.
Rafael Moneo's survey of typological theories, written in 1978,
summarized the present condition:
typology has come to be understood simply as a mechanism'of composi?
tion. The so-called 'typological research' today merely results in the pro?
duction of images, or in the reconstitution of traditional typologies. In
the end it can be said that it is the nostalgia for types that gives formal
consistency to these works.45
Schools of architecture are often the best places to measure the
degree of consensus that an idea receives. The progressive
reductionism of the typological debate is strikingly apparent in
the issue of the American Journal of Architectural Education
devoted to typology in design education (Fig. 10).46 While the edi?
torial starts with the defensive statement that the issue 'does not
deal with a subject which all would recognize as essential in design
education',47 it is clear from the list of contributors that typology
as a 'vague form of convention' has a place in the most respect?
able American teaching institutions. The nature of this place,
though, is questionable. Gone are the references to the original
Italian texts, not yet available in full translation. The interest
seems to be focused on type as historical precedent, and current
design research completely overlooks the relationship between
building typology and urban morphology, regarding typology as
only a convenient repository of authoritative imagery waiting to
be transformed by personal creativity. It is interesting that the Time: Toward a History for the Duration and Change of Artifacts' (Perspecta 18,
only article in the JAE which tries to relate typology to wider
architectural issues is also the only European contribution.
Gulgonen and Laisney, both teaching in the Unite Pedagogique 8
of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, attempt, in fact, to provide a broad
set of references for their students' exercise.48 Nevertheless they
seem to fail on the same grounds as their colleagues: the complete
absence of a non-formal framework of references; the failure to
perceive the series of hierarchical levels (both theoretical and
operative) which were so clearly spelled out by Argan, and which
contributed much to the richness of the Italian research; and the
obliviousness that architecture increases its chances to fulfil its
task when it increases the parameters to which it must respond, as
opposed to reducing them. As far as typology goes, the Rational
Architecture movement is partly responsible for encouraging this
trend among the English-speaking public. Leon Krier's work and
teaching in London,49 as well as the dissemination of typological
notions through Oppositions, have resulted in their application in
a much narrower enterprise than, perhaps, the authors originally
envisaged.
The reductionist process I have outlined so far has been most
pronounced in Britain and America, where the contributors make
only ephemeral appearances and there are no discourses which
can sustain a broad and productive debate. The pragmatic and
empirical cultural climate in which we live seems to favour studies
which regard typology as a collection of easily appropriated icons.
The lack of substance and cultural depth in current architectural
debates is owing not only to the incompatibility of European
rationalism and Anglo-Saxon empiricism (a much-abused
generalization) but, as Jorge Silvetti has noted in a survey of the
debate (the 'Venturi versus La Tendenza' examples),
It is also because the idea of type in this Anglo-Saxon interpretation does
not correspond to that of the tradition of the Enlightenment. . . . Here we
have a purely iconographic interpretation and use of the idea of type.
From this perspective, type is far from being an abstraction or a rational
principle. Rather it is the cultural icon that appears and circulates in
society that is made identifiable and becomes, in turn, the 'represented
symbol'.50
If these are the prevailing concerns, it is understandable that
European architectural products have been favourably received in
certain US circles which emphasize creative individuality and are
not preoccupied with the relationship between 'urban mor?
phology and building typology'.
While at its outset typological research showed few signs of for?
malist escapism and contributed a broader spectrum of references
for architecture, the latest phase of the debate has shown a
dangerous shift towards reductionism. Instead of being a 'pro?
gressive programme' of research, typology has become a 'de?
generative one'51 which no longer possesses those regenerative
features which could redirect it towards a more fruitful, non
tautological search for knowledge. This is partly caused by the
monetary pressures of an architectural market-place where ideas
are uprooted from their original cultural context and speedily
passed on in their most popular and superficial form. Although
typology is only a small part of this phenomenon, its role as a
form of convention is paradoxically strengthened by the empty
rhetoric of some of the most fashionable and consumable
examples of current architecture.
I am grateful to Professor Stanford Anderson, who was responsible for the
conference 'Canons, Conventions and Criticism' jointly organized by the History,
Theory and Criticism Section of the Department of Architecture, MIT, and the
American Academy of Art and Science in 1982, and for whom a version of this
paper was first prepared. Professor Anderson's article Types and Conventions in
1982) was a most important source for the preparation of this article.
Notes
1. Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types (London, 1976).
2. Martin Richardson, 'Pattern Book Design: English Housing and the Vernacu?
lar', International Architect I, no.6 (1981), p.29.
3. Ibid., p.30.
4. A.C. Quatremere de Quincy's entry on 'Type' in Dictionnaire d'architecture
encyclopedic methodique (Paris, 1788-1825), vol.Ill, part 2.
Type: ... On en use aussi comme d'un mot synonyme de Modele, quoiqu'il y
ait entre eux une difference assez facile ? comprendre.
Le mot Type presente moins l'image d'une chose ? copier ou ? imiter com
pletement, que I'idee d'un element qui doit lui-meme servir de regle au
Modele. . . .
Le Modele entendu dans l'execution practique de l'art, est un objet qu'on doit
repeter tel qu'il est.
Le Type est, au contraire, un objet d'apres lequel chacun peut concevoir des
ouvrages qui ne se ressembleraient pas entre eux.
Tout est precis et donne dans le Modele, tout est plus ou moins vague dans
Type. Aussi voyons-nous que Limitation des Types n'a rien que le sentiment et

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 Pesprit ne puisse reconnaitre, et rien qui ne puisse etre conteste par la preven?
tion et Tignorance.
C'est ce qui est arrive par example ? l'architecture.
En tout pas Part de b?tir regulier, est ne d'un germe pre-existant. II faut un
antecedant ? tout. Rien, en aucun genre, ne vient de rien, et cela ne peu pas ne
point s'appliquer ? toutes les inventions des hommes.
Aussi voyons nous que toutes, en depit des changements posterieurs, ont con?
serve toujours visible, toujours sensible, au sentiment et ? la raison, ce
principe elementaire, qui est comme une sorte de noyau, autour duquel se sont
agreges, et auquel se sont coordonnes, par la suite, les developpements et les
variations de formes dont Pobjet etait susceptible.
Ainsi, nous sont parvenus mille choses, en tout genre, et une des principales
occupation de la Science et de la Philosophie, pour en saisir les raisons est d'en
rechercher Porigine et la cause primitive.
Voil? ce qu'il faut appeler Type en Architecture, comme dans toute autre
partie des inventions et des institutions humaines. . . .
5. Raphael Moneo, 'On Typology', Oppositions 13 (Summer, 1978).
6. 'Architecture and Its Conventions' (editorial article), Lotus International
no.32 (1981), p.3.
7. Alan Colquhoun, Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and
Historical Change (Opposition Books, MIT Press, 1981), pp.11-19.
8. Ibid., p.15.
9. Ibid., p,15.
10. Ibid., p.15.
11. A statement which recurs in the writings of Italian authors concerned with this
topic, especially A. Rossi and C. Aymonino.
12. Rudolph Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism
(London, 1952).
13.1 use the term 'low level theory' in the scientific sense, as meaning a theory that
is weak in explanatory power.
14. G.C. Argan published a series of articles on the typological theme before his
seminal 'Sul concetto di tipologia architettonica' was given first as a lecture in
the School of Architecture in Rome and published in the 'Bol. A. Palladio',
and then reprinted in Progetto e Destino (Milan, 1965), pp.65-81.
15. Enciclopedia Universale dell'Arte (Fondazione Cini, Venezia), 1, XIV, p.4.
16. Ibid., p.6.
17. Ibid., p.6.
18. Franco Purini, 'Classificazione, per sezioni, di sistemi architettonici' (1968), in
Franco Purini, Luogo e Progetto.
19. C. Aymonino, M. Brusatin, G. Fabbri, M. Lena, P. Lovero, S. Lucianetti, A.
Rossi, La Citt? di Padova (Rome, 1970).
20. C. Aymonino, // Significato delle Citt? (Laterza, Bari, 1976).
21. C. Aymonino, V. Gregotti, V. Pastor, G. Polesello, A. Rossi, L. Semerani, G.
Valle, Progetto Realizzato (Polis Progetti, Marsilio Editori, Venice, 1980). See
Aymonino's contribution on p.9.
22. A. Rossi, The Architecture of the City (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1982). First
published, in Italian, as L'Architettura della citt? (Marsilio Editore, Padua,
1966).
23. A. Rossi, 'Tipologia, manualistica architetture', in R. Bonicalzi, Scritti scelti
sull'Architettura e la Citt? 1956-1972 (CLUP, Milan, 1975), p.304.
24. A. Rossi,.'Due progetti', Lotus International no.7 (1970), p.9.
25. Rossi, 'Progetto realizzato', op. cit., p. 158.
26. M. Scolari, 'Un contributo per la fondazione di una scienza urbana', Contro
spazio nos.7&8 (1971), p.40.
27. M. Scolari, 'The Origins of the Working Class House: Design and Theory',
Lotus International no.9 (1975), p. 116.
28. Grassi's own definition of typology seems to be closer to Viollet-le-Duc's and
Hilbersheimer's than to that of Quatremere de Quincy. He quotes both exten?
sively as authorities in La construzione logica dell'architettura (Marsilio,
Venice, 1967), pp.64-5. That Grassi is prepared to acknowledge typology as a
useful tool only in so far as it operates within a convention does not seem to
help him to explore the boundary and the limitations of his own very strict
framework of reference.
29. The Annales d'histoire economique et sociale was launched jointly by Febvre
and Bloch in January, 1929, as a historical journal devoted to a more 'total'
(Febvre's word) and a more 'human' (Bloch's word) history.
30. La Me'diterrane'e et le monde mediterranean ? l'?poque de Phillippe II, (Paris,
1949). Now translated into English: Braudel, The Mediterranean and the
Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Fontana, 1981).
31. Les Machines a gu?rir (aux origines de l'h?pital moderne), ed. Michel Fou
cault, Dossiers et documents d'architecture, Paris Institut de PEnvironment
(Paris, 1976), a collection which includes Foucault's own 'La Politique de la
sante au XVIIIeme'.
32. P. Panerai, 'Typologies', in Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale no.4
(December, 1979), pp.3-21, and reprinted in Panerai, de Paule, Demorgon,
Veyrenche, Elements d'analyse urbain (Editions des Archives d'Architecture
82
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Moderne, Brussels, 1980).
33. P. Panerai, 'Space as Representation and Space as Practice ? A Reading of
the City of Versailles', Lotus International no.24, p.85. In the introduction to
the article, Panerai writes, 'This formulation shows an obvious debt to the
work of S. Muratori, C. Aymonino, and A. Rossi, and more generally to the
Italian urban studies of the last twenty years as a whole.'
34. C. Devillers, B. Huet, Le Creusot, naissance et dtveloppement d'une ville
industrielle, 1882-1914 (Editions du Champ Vallon, 1981). This study was initi?
ated in 1973-4 by Bernard Huet at the Institut d'Etudes et de la Recherches
Architecturales. C. Devillers had already published in 'Typologie de 1'habitat
et morphologie urbaine', L*Architecture d'aujourd'hui no. 174 (July-August,
1974). Most of his methodological framework for the typological classification
of Le Creusot is found here. It is interesting to note that not only does the
article start with the full quotation of Quatremere de Quincy's definition of
type but that it also follows, in the general organization and gist of the argu?
ments, the line of research proposed by La Citta di Padova, which is further
reinforced by the authority given by Aymonino's references in the footnotes.
35. P. Panerai, 'Space as Representation and Space as Practice ? A Reading of
the City of Versailles', op. cit., p.85.
36. P. Panerai, 'Typologies', op. cit., p. 14.
37. Hernard Huet, 'Small Manifesto', Rational Architecture Rationelle (AAM,
Brussels, 1978), p.54. Huet reinforces this argument in his article 'The
Teaching of Architecture in France, 1968-1978'.
38. Robert Krier, Urban Space: Theory and Practice (AAM, Brussels, 1975).
39. R. Krier, Rational Architecture Rationelle, op. cit.
40. S. Santelli, 'Rehabilitation et regies typologiques', AAM Journal no.2\ (1981),
pp. 108-13.
41. R.L. Delevoy, 'Towards an Architecture', Rational Architecture Rationelle,
op. cit., p. 14.
42. A. Vidier, 'The Third Typology', ibid., p.28. Previously published as editorial
in Oppositions 1 (1976).
43. See also Oppositions 8 (Spring, 1977), edited by Vidier, containing his 'The
Idea of Type' and the 'Introduction to Quatremere de Quincy's "Type"'.
44. M. McLeod, 'Letter to the Editors', Oppositions 13 (Summer, 1978).
45. R. Moneo, 'On Typology', Oppositions 13 (1978).
46. E.K. Morris, E. Levin (guest editors), 'Typology in Design Education',
Journal of Architectural Education XXXV, no.2 (Winter, 1982).
47. 'Prologue: On the Discipline of Architecture', ibid.
48. A. Gulgonen, F. Laisney, 'Contextual Approaches to Typology at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts', ibid.
49. Robin Evans' comment on the design work produced at the AA in 1975 under
Leon Krier: 'The search for typologies was on, and invidious Continental
influences were apparent in the new predilection for the inadvertent monu
mentality characteristic of the nineteenth-century institutional building.' (!!)
In Architectural Association School of Architecture Prospectus 1982-83
(London, 1982).
50. J. Silvetti, 'On Realism in Architecture', The Harvard Architecture Review I
(MIT Press, 1980).
51. I use the terms 'progressive' and 'degenerative' in the sense used by Imre
Lakatos in 'Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes', in Criticism
and the Growth of Knowledge, eds. Lakatos and Musgrave (Cambridge Uni?
versity Press, 1970). According to Lakatos, a progressive programme is one
that develops by increasing its explanatory powers over increased empirical
content, leading to the prediction of novel facts. A 'degenerative programme'
is one that proceeds without any of the 'progressive' characteristics. The lack
of success in a degenerative programme would normally lead to the abandon?
ment of the programme.
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