Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
931
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 20
Number 6
Sam Jacoby
During the eighteenth century, conventions of imitation and truth-to-nature were replaced by concepts
of abstraction and objectivity. This profoundly
changed the knowledge and practice of many disciplines. With disciplinary knowledge commonly
thought to derive from the past and to be defined
by a problem of origins, the very search for origins
disclosed a richer problematic: that of development.
The enquiries into development had several implications. If knowledge was not a static or universal
truth but continuously developing, then considering
the present and future was at least as vital as concerns with the past. This led to an understanding of
history as contingent and development as contextual, which meant that explanations were only possible in relative and comparative terms. Consequently,
classification became important to establish comparable, shared criteria. By the early nineteenth century,
the introduction of type as a conceptual and typology as a formal means of comparison in architecture
provided complementary ideas through which both
an existing knowledge of form and a modern form
of knowledge could be consolidated.
Type originally denoted a medium of non-imitative reproduction, as in its use in Johann Gutenbergs
modern printing press in the mid-fifteenth century.
Similarly, typology indicated a reasoning by
analogy, with the study of scriptures interpreting
the Old Testament as prefiguring the events of the
New Testament.1 Typology was a correlating of
# 2015 RIBA Enterprises
932
Type versus typology
Introduction
Sam Jacoby
933
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 20
Number 6
934
Type versus typology
Introduction
Sam Jacoby
935
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 20
Number 6
urban subjects. This positing of a discursive relationship between type and diagram is proposed in a
twofold manner: first, through a critical reading of
Kenneth Framptons article Twin Parks as Typology
(1973), and, second, through the typological experiments motivated by the problem of the ground as a
strategic instrument of urban development and
reform. These are discussed in relation to the specific
setting of New York City and the general context of
a disciplinary enquiry.
The importance of architectures spatial reasoning and transformation of the urban also dominates
the discussion of Cultural buildings genealogy of
originality: the individual, the unique and the singular by Pavlos Philippou. As does Finney, he proposes typology as a continuation of an existing
disciplinary enquiry, one that often occurs in a
serial development. This development is characterised by repetition, but moments of rupturethe
individual, unique or singularappear, which can
be understood, through Alan Colquhoun, as
moments when a displacement of concepts
takes place. Applying this comparative analysis to
the stereotypical cultural building of Bilbaos Guggenheim, an urban problematic common to cultural buildings emerges, which is concerned with
an urban iconography and scenography, and uses
a sequential articulation of the ground as a principal element of design and staging. According to
Philippou, the failure to question these urban conventions and its concurrent compensation by an
emphasis on material and formal virtuosity prevents
organisational experimentation and, as a consequence, realisation of new urban possibilities.
936
Type versus typology
Introduction
Sam Jacoby
937
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 20
Number 6
3.
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