The Fifth Typology: A Symposium on Type and Architecture

A type is not a model or an image to be copied, but the deep structure of how things are put together. 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. 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 spatialisations 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 that range from the feminist and class critique of type to its use in the building and managing of institutions.