The Production of Types
The idea of type, dorman,t in
architectural theory since the thirties,
has, in the last decade, been
re-invoked by the n e w rationalists.
Following the essays of A r g a n and
Rossi in the sixties, a n increasing
n u m b e r of architects have seen
typology a s the agent of architectural
regeneration in a n era of dispirited
functionalism and willful
eclecticism. The n e w theories of type
unite around a critique of
programmatic determinism in
architecture and radiant city images
in u r b a n i s m . T h u s , a n e w sensibility
toward formal precedent i s joined to
a n effoort to reconstitute a city
demolished by the disurbanist
projects of the Modern Movement. I n
this w a y , scarcely twenty years after
S i r J o h n S u m m e r s o n proposed that
the source of u n i t y in m o d e r n
architecture resided in the program,
a n e w source of u n i t y has been
presented in the guise of the type.
The idea of type has, since the late
eighteenth century, informed the
production of architecture in two
dqferent ways. First, by rooting
architecture in a notion of jirst
principles, either in nature or
industrial production, it has provided
a n ontology, so to speak, for the
legitimacy of design in a n age which
has large1y discarded the ancient
theory of imitation and absolute
beauty. Second, w h e n assimilated to
the emerging theories of typology in
the natural sciences i t has provided a
ready basis for the generation of
entirely n e w species of building
demanded so insistently by the rising
consumption and productio~zsociety.
T h u s , the elements of architecture,
their rules of combination, and the
characteristic f o r m of the resulting
building type were, in some w a y ,
seen a s similar to the generation of
types in nature.
Type theory, however, was
ideologically split between a n older,
neo-platonic t h e o of ~ original ideal
types that stressed the existence a
priori of suitable forms in nature
and in architecture either in
geometrical or constructional
perfection, and this newer
understanding of the production of
types. The leading exponent of the
classical view, Quatremere de
Quincy, succeeded in infusing the
neo-platonic theory into the tradition
of neo-classicism by the 1830's; for
h i m the eternal type of architecture
was the primitive h u t , and its perfect
achievement the Creek temple. T h e
type theory of D u r a n d , o n the other
h a n d , stressed the productive
capacity of rules and elements
according to programs inductively
defined. B y the middle of the century
both theories of type had in some w a y
merged within the rational vision of
structure and program held by
classicists and gothicists alike
(Labrouste, Viollet-le-Duc), while by
the last decades of the century
organic metaphors and w~achine
images were indiscriminate1y erected
to support all k i n d s of functionalism.
F r o m there, this ambiguous heritage
w a s t a k e n wholesale, or else in parts,
by the polemicists of the Modern
Movement, who grafted evolutionary
theory onto production technology,
thereby developing a theory of the
perfectibility of mass-produced
objects. T o this w a s added a notion of
the classical residing in the very
nature of standardization and
regularization, which enabled
H e r m a n n Muthesius for the
Deutscher W e r k band and L e
Corbusier for the architects of the
twenties to range the Parthenon and
the Bugatti side by side (see fig. 2).
The classical idgal type w a s t h u s , by
1927, firmly wedded to the cause and
processes of m a s s production. The
type theories of the Constructivists in
R u s s i a and the socialists in G e r m a n y
in the twenties were similarly built
o n nineteenth century precedent,
going back to the social typologies of
the utopian socialists for their
inspiration. A1 1 fina Ely came toget her
in the artifact, idea and building
type, in the Unit6 d9Habitation of L e
Corbusier.
I t i s w i t h such a mixed pedigree that
the idea of type has been resurrected.
I t i s perhaps parhdoxical, or at best
a critical response t o technological
positivism, that the idea of type now
acts a s a counter to the Modern
Movement. T h u s type i s now seen
more in the old eighteenth century
sense; Quatremere de Quincy, far
f r o m seeming like the old reactionary
he was, i s lauded for resisting a
mechanistic theory of type which
ultimately resulted in the
consumption of architecture itself
within the process of production.
AV