TYPOLOGY — AN ARCHITECTURE OF LIMITS

Abstract

This paper is about the virtue of limits in architecture. Open-ended, heroic Modernism gave way in the 1970s to a sense offinitude in both architectural form and space, as well as natural resources. Modernist functionalism had been more concerned with utility and internal consistency than relating to urban context. Typology, eschewed by Modernists in their blanket rejection of precedent and history, has the power to restore historical continuity and spatial hierarchy to the ciy. The problems of obligatory invention and chronic originality are discussed, as well as the roles of background and foreground buildings. Typology is defended as a language of urban design that can provide coherence and shared meaning in the built environment.

To the universal plan which inspires, governs and tirelessly reconstructs the great universe, man was able to add a few pleasant footnotes. Particular cities and particular buildings can always be but imperfect realizations of these quasi-divine addenda. The house, the temple, the campanile, the roof, the column, the architrave, the frieze, the window, the door, the atrium, the street, the square and the city are inventions of man's genius, enriching nature's typological family. They are his proudest achievements, exceeding by far the discoveries of the wheel and fire, because for them he found no models but mere hints and analogues in nature.

Leon Krier