A Typology of Dwelling Arrangements

Abstract

Architectural typologies are a way in which the designer's awareness of fundamentally different design options and his or her understanding of their appropriateness to various desires and requirements can be supported. The shortcoming of conventional typologies is that types are not described independently but are interpreted from paradigmatic instances—which is a serious threat to their reliability. In this article a tentative demonstration is presented of the possibility of defining representations of architectural form which are sufficiently abstract and which concern spatial components more complex than individual rooms. The demonstration involves, first, the definition of an abstract representation of dwelling arrangements repeated along corridors and vertical circulation axes and, second, a limited enumeration and exploration of ranges of types. The article is concluded with a brief speculation about the possible implementation of such ‘type representations’ in the context of a computer database of architectural examples.