___Dalibor Vesely

From Typology to Hermeneutics in Architectural Design

London

It is not a long time ago that typology was seen as a

most promising new approach to design.

The interest in typology as a new design strategy

was probably one of the most influential challenges
in the post second world war development of
architecture. In a situation dominated mostly by a
narrow modernist agenda, based on structural and
functional determinism, typology appeared as a
healthy corrective to the deterministic vision of
architectural order and even more to a growing
relativism of design principles and values. However
the new, more subtle and critical thinking, did not in
the end change the nave objectivism of most
modern trends. What brought typology on the scene
and to such a relative prominence?

We have to look for an answer to 18C, when the

transformation and to a great extent suppression of
traditional architectural thinking created a vacuum
filled with new instrumental principles. Among the
most influential were character and type. Character
was known already to the Greeks particularly in its
relation to ethos. It played an important role in
Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics, was developed
more explicitly in Theophrastus' Characters, and in
that form had a great influence on the development
of the rhetorics of Cicero and Quintillian and the
poetics of Horace. Character became an important
critical term again at the end of the seventeenth
century. In 1688, Jean de la Bruyere published
his Les Characteres de Theophraste, traduits de
Grec, avec les Characteres ou les moeurs de ce
siecle, followed by an important second edition of Le
Brun, Conferences sur l'expression generale et
particulier, published in 1698 (originally it was a
lecture delivered in 1669). Architectural character as
a critical term was derived mostly from the rhetorical
tradition and from the treatises on painting (study of
individual expressions and physiognomy).

Both terms, character and type, acquired new

importance during the second half of the 18C. It was
at that time that type emerged as a result of the
historical and aesthetic transformation of an older
term character.

The historical origins and nature of character

The deeper meaning of character was not entirely

lost. Its presence and significance is still apparent,
though sometimes only indirectly, even today, for
instance in our concern for a proper relationship
between the purpose of a building and its
appearance, or in our care for the right choice of
materials and structures in relation to the overall
nature of a particular building or space. What the
'presence and significance' of character really
means, is nevertheless very often obscured and
partly lost in the introverted and highly personalised
version of character accepted today. Nonetheless,
we cannot ignore the fact that it is the prime, if not
the only link still preserved with a more authentic
tradition of representation. It is important to
remember, that character is still closely linked with its
earlier equivalents convenance and bienseance.
Both terms are inherent to a tradition which
originated in classical decorum and of which they are
simply later equivalents. In one of his earlier texts,
J.F. Blondel mentions this correspondence:
'convenance(suitability) ought to be regarded as the
most essential aspect of building; by means of it the
architect ensures the dignity and character of the
edifice. What we mean here by convenance is called
by Vitruvius bienseance (decor) '. In character we
clearly see a tendency to move towards the surface
of a building or its interior, towards the experience of
appearances, while
in convenance and bienseance there is a tendency
to move into the depth of architectural reality,
towards its order understood still in terms of ethos. It
is interesting to recall that the Greek term for
character is ethos. This points also to the Greek
equivalent of dcor (decorum, bienseance), in the
term prepon expressing what is proper. Only that
which is good can be proper and, in that sense, 'the
morally good is nothing else than a harmonious
fulfillment of human nature, which becomes part of
the beautiful, manifested in the particular as prepon'
In its fully articulated sense, prepon (decorum)
means a harmonious participation in the order of
reality, and the outward expression of that order.

It is to that tradition, radically changing in the

eighteenth century, when it became for the first time
the dominating concept in architectural thinking, that
character explicitly belongs.

The dominating role of character was categorically

emphasized, among others, by Germain Boffrand
when he wrote 'a man who does not know the
different characters, and who is unable to sense their
presence in his buildings, is not an architect'. The
eighteenth century notion of character was derived in
the first stage largely from contemporary rhetoric and
from the treatises on painting. The renewed interest
in individual expression and physiognomy, treated in
the earlier tradition as secondary issues, was
probably one of the main motives behind the modern
study of character. The introduction of character into
architectural thinking was not without difficulty.

It was a notion which has emerged from a vast

cultural field encompassing not only architecture and
painting, but also rhetoric, poetry and philosophy was
loaded with a range of meanings which architecture
on its own could not readily absorb ( remember the
loss of the traditional close relation and cooperation
between architecture and other arts). The
simplification of the earlier modes of representation
was a first consequence. The aestheticization of
character was a second. This is clear in Boffrand's
statement, which may even be taken for a definition
of character:
 Architecture, although its object seems only
to be the use of that which is material, is
capable of different genres (characters or
types?), which serve to animate its basic
solutions by means of the different characters
that it can express. A building expresses
through its composition, as if on a stage,
whether the scene is pastoral or comic,
whether it is a temple or palace It is the
same in poetry: here also are different
genres, and the style of one does not
contradict the style of the other. Horace gave
us excellent principles for this in his Art of
Poetry.

The ambition to subsume the traditional nature of

architecture into the aesthetics of character created
an illusion of order, but in the long run proved to be
the basis for relativism, arbitrariness and confusion.
The general aesthetisation of character made it
vulnerable to the operations of taxonomy in which it
became possible to isolate individual manifestations
of character from the context of tradition and from the
culturally established norms. This was already
evident to J.F. Blondel, who wrote 'after all it matters
little whether our monuments resemble former
architecture, ancient, gothic, or modern, provided
that they have a satisfactory effect and a character
suited to each genre of edifice.' (The critical turning
point in the development of modern art was the
transformation of traditional poetics into aesthetics.)

The nature of the transformation was most clearly

summarised by Hans Georg Gadamer: 'for now art,
he writes, as the art of beautiful appearance, was
contrasted with practical reality and understood in
terms of this contrast. Instead of art and nature
complementing each other, as had always seemed
to be the case, they were contrasted as appearance
and reality'. In aesthetic experience the work of art
loses its place in the world to which it belongs in so
far as it belongs to aesthetic consciousness. On the
other hand, this is paralleled by the artist also losing
his place in the world'. In aesthetic experience
nothing is known about the objects which are judged
as beautiful. The nature and meaning of the object
does not affect the essence of aesthetic judgement.
As a consequence the work of art has nothing to do
anymore with truth, it is only a beautiful form, a
"mere nodal point" in the possible variety of aesthetic
experiences'.

The deeper relation of character and the inherited

culture was eventually replaced by a detached image
(type) which could be manipulated with a much
greater degree of freedom and persuasive power. As
Blondel admits, 'a building can by its appearance
(aspect) take away, move and so to speak raise the
soul of the spectator, carrying it to a contemplative
admiration which he himself would not be able to
explain at first sight (coup d'oeil) even though he
were sufficiently instructed in a profound knowledge
of art. The emancipation and formalization of
character requires a more focused and precise
definition of appearances, a demand fulfilled by the
notion of type in its relation to the modern notion of
style. J.F. Blondel was one of the first to use this
term in its modern sense. In his understanding style
can be seen as a culmination of the history of
character. 'We have tried', J.F.Blondel writes, 'to
present a precise idea of what is to be understood by
an architecture whose ordered arrangement
(ordonnance) distinctly presents a style, an
expression, a particular character (i.e. type).

It is clear that in this context type is only a partial

representation of the deeper structure and content of
architecture. In contrast with the depth and richness
of the situational nature of architecture, type, seen as
a self-sufficient notion, may be instrumentally useful
but remains culturally problematic. How problematic
the instrumental notion of type, particularly in its
relation to style became, is particularly clear in the
period of historicism, anticipated by J.F. Blondel, who
writes: 'There is no doubt that one can arrive, aided
by rules, by reason and by the taste for the art at the
true style, that assigns to each building the character
(type) that is proper for it and it is by that alone that
one can sense masterpieces.' The history of the
nineteenth century shows what the expected
masterpieces were like. The emancipated nature of
type as a condition for its possible manipulation was
expressed very clearly by Ribard de Chamoust
(1783) in his treatise on the foundation of the new
French order: I mean by this word type the first
attempts of man to master nature, render it propitious
to his needs, suitable to his uses, and favourable to
his pleasures. The perceptible objects that the artist
chooses with justness and reasoning from nature in
order to light and fix at the same time the fires of his
imagination I call archetypes.

The transformation of character into a type via

typicality of character can be seen in the so called
larchitecture parlante for instance in the works of
Boullee. Court de Gebelin speaks about the image of
physical objects that speak to the eyes.

The dream of enlightment to construct artificially a

new perceptual and intelligible world of typical forms
typology, determined in different ways and very
often under a different name the development of
architecture in the last two hundred years (see
historical revivals, modern elementarism, industrial
object typique, neue sachlichkeit, modern design
methodologies and morphologies etc.). The most
problematic assumption behind all typologies is the
belief that explicit knowledge embodied in the fixed a
priori image can substitute historical tradition, and
that this tradition can be replaced by a direct
imitation of types, which represent only idealised
essences of historical experience in itys density.
Once the type has been isolated from this density it
becomes a derivative representation a mere
illusion of reality.

Type may appear at the end of the creative process

but not at the beginning.

The typololgy of Aldo Rossi

One of the best illustrations of the true nature of type
and typology, is the work of Aldo Rossi. What is most
clearly illustrated in his work is the ambiguity of type,
its oscillation between its origins in the culturally
situated character and object-like reality which can
be defined and classified. This oscillation is clearly
apparent in the contrast between his drawings and
executed buildings and even more in the contrast
between the final version of his projects and the
richness of their background which consists of
sketches, collection of curiosa and surreal setting of
the personal space of his flat and studio. The
oscillation, mapping the ambiguity of the type and
typology, can be seen as a result of the modern
crisis of an object of Breton and de Chirico.

It is rather characteristic, that in the works of Rossi

the individual design steps end up almost without
exception in the domain of typology and type.

In his autobiography Rossi recollects his early

intentions and emerging philosophy of design, he
writes: I searched for the fixed laws of a timeless
typology. I saw courts and galleries, the elements of
urban morphology, distributed in the city with the
purity of mineralogy. I read books on urban
geography, topography and history, like a general
who wishes to know every possible battlefield the
high grounds, the passages, the woods. I walked the
cities of Europe to understand their plans and
classify them according to types.

In his Architecture of the City he writes: We must

begin with a question that opens the way to the
problem of classification that of the typology of
buildings and their relationship to the city. This
relationship constitutes a basic hypothesis of my
work and one that I analyse from various viewpoints
always considering buildings as moments and parts
of the whole that is the city. This position was clear to
the theorists of the Enlightenment.

Type is thus a constant and manifests itself with a

character of necessity; but even though it is
predetermined it reacts dialectically with technique,
function and style as well as with both the collective
character and the individual moment of the
architectural artefact. Typology is an element that
plays its own role in constituting form; it is a
constant.

Though Rossi does not explicitely acknowledged the

sources of inspiration of his own position, it is clear
that the architectural discussions in his time and the
influence of some older contemporaries such as
Muratori for instance was decisive.

Foundations of typology in the work of Savero

Muratori

Muratori Saverio (1910-1973) was one of the first to

formulate the typological interpretation of cities and is
considered to be also one of the fathers of the
international studies in urban morphology. Muratori
responds to the impoverishment of the discipline, of
technical planning in contrast to the richness of
historical foundations. His background sources and
inspirations was the generation of Gustavo
Giovannoni, Calandra, Fasolo, Piacentini. The main
idea of his approach was Operative history
(operante storia)used first consistently in the study of
Venice published as Studi per una operante storia
urbana di Venezia (1959). The controversial nature
of his approach was apparent already in 1954 during
his first teaching appointment in Rome where he
became professor of architectural composition,
followed soon by student revolt and boycott. His
closest disciples were Caniggia and Maffei who
published his writings under the title Ragionamenti di
Tipologia.

Muratori studied what he presumed to be a cohesion

between the form of a site, the houses and the
quarter in a given part of the city. This, according to
Muratori, was an important key in revealing the ideal
structure of the city in question. Muratori spoke of Il
valore fondativo dellarchitettura come proiezione
concreta ed organica del mondo spirituale
delluomo.

In his morphological analysis, Muratori used two

instruments. Firstly, for a precise historical
reconstruction of the houses in a given quarter of the
city, historical maps were of great importance to him.
For Muratori, these maps not only contained
geographical or historical information, but in an
almost mystical way, the maps also enabled an
intuitive perception of the cultural individuality of a
city. For example, in Venice he reconstructed the
form and structure of its quartieri and sestieri during
the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque period: the
decisive moments in the history of the city, Muratori
argued, that each period contributed to the ideal form
enclosed in the buildings of the city. Secondly, with
his theory, Muratori took a stand against the
fragmentation and the loss of unity of modern times.
It is also from this perspective that the study of cities
was so important for him. The historical city was the
summa of unity, a spiritual unity, or an expression of
a collective consciousness, which became manifest
at the level of material reality. The challenge of
modernity was important to regain the ability to
perceive this essence, according to Muratori. It was
all a matter of la lettura del reale a correct reading
of reality leading the architect to recognize the
truth hidden in the urban texture.

The idealist and systematic nature of Muratoris

thinking had led him to transform a positivist concept
into an a priori notion. Due to a longing for synthesis
and wholeness, Muratori was found to have turned
the notion of the organism into a meta-historical,
absolute form. For Muratori the organic form of a
chapel, for example, was the reflection of a meta-
historical archetype and these archetypes should
dictate each concrete architectural form in the
present. Thereby the positivist notion of organic form,
which by its very nature is immanent, is falsely given
a transcendent interpretation.
The relation of typology and form

Form is a very elusive term. On the one hand, it

belongs to sensible reality and may appear as its
very essence, but it is also an invisible concept. The
oscillation between the visible and invisible, real and
the possible, the imaginative and the imaginary, the
concrete and the abstract is what makes form such a
powerful and at the same time elusive and difficult
concept.

As a concept, form has its origin in the Aristotelian

understanding of creativity (poiesis) in terms of
matter and form. Matter (hyle) is everything that can
be formed, while form was originally seen as
idea (eidos), which in the sphere of visual reality
appears as icon (eikon). In the process of creation
or making the forming power of idea was known as
morphe hence morphology and the process itself as
hylemorphism. Morphe is a change a process of
coming into appearance. Throughout most of the
history of the visual arts, form, (Latin translation of
morphe) as a critical notion, was hardly used. The
attempt to reduce the diversity and richness of the
visual world to 'visual form' took place only in the late
eighteenth century. Until then a whole spectrum of
terms such as paradigm, typos, schema, symbolic
imagel, allegory, emblem, impresa, figura, were used
to grasp the meaning that was later given to the
simple notion 'form'. All these terms should be seen
as particular revelations of a primary
(transcendental) reality (divine order, the world of
ideas, etc.), and only in that sense were they also
revelations of the invisible forms (ideas) and their
particular visible manifestations and embodiments.
These need not be discussed in detail. Suffice it to
understand that all these terms participate in one
way or another in the formative power of invisible
forms (ideas). This property we may describe as their
structural (or morphological) aspect, which becomes
visible as a recognisable and meaningful
representation. This in turn may be described as
their physiognomic or iconic aspect.
The critical and rather problematic tendency in the
development of the physiognomy of representation,
particularly in architecture, is a tendency toward
idealisation. i. e. formalisation Through idealisation
(formalisation) visible representation moves closer to
ideal forms which thereby acquire a status of
appearance rather then substance of reality.

Urban morphology

Muratori and Conzen were the founders and fathers

of urban morphological studies, that became already
in their lifetime an influential international movement,
International seminar of urban form (ISUF) or,
Seminaire internationale des forme urbaine(SIFU).

New centres soon emerged in Genoa, Florence,

Venice and in US at Berkeley, Penn State, in France
it was mainly the Versailles school, (Panerai, Castex
and also Lefevbre, Chastel, Boudon).

There is a common assumption, that city or town can

be read and analysed via the medium of its
physical form. Morphological analysis is based on
the following principles:

1. Urban form is defined by three fundamental

physical elements: buildings and their related
open spaces, plots or lots, and streets.
2. Urban form can only be understood
historically since the elements of which it is
comprised undergo continuous
transformation and replacement.

Thus form, resolution and time constitute the three

fundamental components of urban morphological
research.

From typology to hermeneutics

Even the most recent reformed typologies and

morphological studies do not offer more then
encyclopedias of forms and formal configurations
devoid of true historical context and understanding.
Typology relates to a historically evolved
architectural order and physiognomy in the same
way as historicism does to tradition. In both cases
the primary reality of meaning is exchanged for a
secondary reality of problematic and very often
meaningless certainties. The restoration of tradition
from the domination of historicism must be therefore
completed by the restoration of historical reality of
experience and its typicality from typologies.

The typicality of experience in contrast to a type is a

historically evolved phenomenon which cannot be
understood by reference to form only. It is a
sedimented and embodied meaning which always
precedes a particular form. Reading, for instance, is
essential to the vision of a library, but always
transcends it, it can take place elsewhere or even
without it. On the other hand the concept of a library
without a vision and understanding of the conditions
of reading, borrowing of books and the inner life of
the library is empty. Library seen as a type is not an
original reference, it is always preceded by the
typicality of particular experience of using the library.

The typicality of experience has its origins in a

situation which is also the source of its stability and
meaning. In a situation people are not only doing or
experience something, but it also includes things that
contribute to the fulfilment of human life. Situations
represent the most complete way of understanding
the condition of our experience of the surrounding
world and the human qualities of the world. They
also endow experience with durability in relation to
which other experiences can acquire meaning and
can form a memory and history. The temporal
dimension makes the process of differentiation and
stabilisation of situations more comprehensible. The
deeper we move into history, the more situations
share their common precedents until we reach the
level of myth, which is their ultimate comprehensible
foundation. Myth is the dimension of culture which
opens the way to a unity of our experience and to the
unity of our world. In its essence, myth is an
interpretation of primary symbols which are
spontaneously formed and which preserve the
memory of our first encounters with the cosmic
condition of our existence. The mediated persistence
of primary symbols, particularly in the field of
architecture, contributes decisively to the formation
of secondary symbols and finally to the formation of
paradigmatic situations. The nature of paradigmatic
situations is similar to the nature of institutions, deep
structures or archetypes. Paradigmatic situations
have their ultimate source in the praxis of everyday
life and in the tradition of common sense.

The role of common sense

Situations are dependent and closely related to

habits, tradition and customs.

Gadamer sees the primary role of humanist tradition

in bildung, common sense, taste, and judgment.
Common sense links the modern hermeneutics with
the work of Giambatista Vico. Gadamer I have
rightfully claimed for my own work the testimony of
Vico.

And further in Truth and Method: There is something

immediately evident about grounding philosophical
and historical studies and the ways the human
sciences work on the concept of the sensus
communis. For their object, the moral and historical
existence of humanity, as it takes shape in our words
and deeds, is itself decisively determined by the
sensus communis.

Common sense is a knowledge of the concrete and it

is concrete knowledge because it is a sense
acquired by living in a concrete community and
determined by upholding the value of communal
traditions. Common sense is historical in that it
preserves tradition and not just as a datum of
knowledge but as a principle of action.
Common sense is related to the meaning of common
place and thus to the topology of being.

Vico writes: Human choice, by its nature most

uncertain, is made certain and determined by the
common sense of men with respect to human needs
or utilities, which are the two sources of the natural
law of the gentiles. (NS 141)

Common sense is judgment without reflection,

shared by an entire class, an entire people, an entire
nation, or the entire human race. (NS 142)

(Vico common sense and Heidegger pre-

understanding, the structure of the latent world).

The example of typical situation

If we look closely at a concrete example a French

caf for instance it is obvious that its essential
nature is only partly revealed in its visible
appearance; for the most part it is hidden in the field
of references to the social and cultural life related to
the place. Any attempt to understand the character,
identity or meaning of the situation, and its spatial
setting, using conventional typologies is futile. The
essential reality of the situation is not entirely
revealed in its visible appearance, it cannot be
observed or studied just on that level.

Its representational, ontological structure can be

grasped through a pre-understanding based on our
familiarity with the situation and with the segment of
world to which it belongs. Pre-understanding in this
case is a sedimented experience of the world
acquired through our involvement in the events of the
everyday life. The identity of the French caf is to a
great extent defined by its institutional nature, rooted
in the habits, customs and ritual aspects of French
life. The formation of identity is a result of a long
process in which the invisible aspects of culture and
the way of life are embodied in the visible fabric of
the caf in a similar way as is language in the written
text. The visible text of the caf reveals certain
common, deep characteristics, such as its location,
relation to the life of the street, transparency of
enclosure, certain degree of theatricality expressed
in the need to see the life of the outside world, but
also a need to be seen in it like an actor, the
ambiguity of inside and outside expressed not only in
the transparency of enclosure, but also in the choice
of furniture etc. These are only some of the
characteristics which contribute to the identity and
meaning of the French caf as a culturally distinct
typical situation. In hermeneutical understanding of
design the typicality of primary human situations are
not only a point of departure but a constant measure
of the success or failure of the results.