The Fifth Typology

Conception, organization and introduction Rafael Moneo once said that to talk about type in architecture is to talk about the essence of architecture. Indeed, when conceiving architecture is almost impossible to not start from an existing type, no matter how strange or peculiar a building may look. A type is not a model or an image to be copied, but the deep structure of how things are put together. Although typology is a recent concept, to think and build architecture typologically goes back to immemorial times. There is a strong kinship between type, ritual, and forms of life that can be clearly observed especially in ancient cultures. Within modernity, the emergence of type is linked to the politics of property and land use, the construction of gender and class relationships, and the industrial reification of both design and building materials. Moreover, type could be understood as the strategic link between architecture and policymaking, since the latter, whether it focuses on welfare, subsidies, and other forms of large-scale political intervention, always implies a typical spatial organization of things. And yet within the neoliberal economy, when uniqueness, newness, and competition are celebrated as indispensable values for architecture, the concept of type, which understand uniqueness not per se but as the product of sameness, is considered an anachronistic method of understanding and designing architecture. The symposium revisits the concept of type by critically reading its previous definitions and by offering a new interpretation of this rather elusive, but crucial architectural concept. The main thesis that will be discussed in the symposium is that type should be reconsidered as one of the most productive ways to teach, study and criticize architecture. Rather than considering type as a mere disciplinary tool, the symposium will debate how this concept could offer a precise understanding of the social and political forces that produce architecture. Historically, architectural types have always been spatializations of the governing politics through which society is organized. Following Anthony Vidler’s seminal essay “The Third Typology” (1978) which addressed the first three historical turns of the concept of type, Enlightenment, modernity, and the 1970s’ return to the discipline, the Fifth Typology acknowledges a return to this concept in the last decade—the “Fourth Typology”—but aspires to push it further as a method of formal and political investigation on architecture. Contributions will reconsider typology with concrete case studies such as the concept of typological transfer, the relationship between planning and typological research, feminist critique of type, the idea of copy in medieval architecture, the rise of “non-typological” architecture, and the use of architectural types in the building and managing of institutions. Invited guests: Brendon Carlin, TUW, AA / Sophie Delhay, EPFL / Christoph Gantenbein, ETH / Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, AA, RCA / Marson Korbi, EPFL / Christopher C.M Lee, GSD / Enrica Mannelli, AA / Gili Merin, TUW / Davide Sacconi, CAMPO, RCA / Alfredo Thiermann, HITAM, EPFL.