Typology and its Vicissitudes: Observations on a Critical Category
by Daniel Sherer
The typological category first entered the critical lexicon of architectural history and theory when Quatremère de Quincy defined it between 1825 amd 1832, the dates of the publication of the last volume of Encyclopédie méthodique and the first edition of the Dictionnaire historique. In the latter, type provides a regulative principle governing the formal and practical aspects of architecture, and assumes an overarching theoretical role in contrast to the specific tasks assigned to the model:
The word type represents not so much the image of a thing to be copied as the idea of an element that must itself serve as a rule for the model.... The model, understood in terms of the practical execution of art, is an object that must be repeated such as it is; type, on the contrary, is an object according to which one can conceive of works that do not resemble one another at all. Everything is precise and given in the model; everything is more or less vague in the type. Thus we see that the imitation of types involves nothing that feelings or spirit cannot recognize...1
Implicit in this passage is the problem of situating architecture in relation to normative aesthetic categories. More precisely, the entire framework of Kant's aesthetics, aimed at bringing the sensations and experience under the aegis of reason and the antinomies of taste, is presupposed when Quatremère invokes the typological concept. In line with the dual tasks of description and classification and the aesthetic imperatives inherent in them, typology is, for Quatremère, the antithesis of the repeatable object. Yet it must have something to do with mimesis, the model and precedent if it is to make sense at all. Effecting a compromise between opposed alternative, typology thus exposes an affinity between discrete orders of architecture, lending them a relative degree of specificity between categories. Like Kantian judgment, it mediates between the general and the particular. Hence, when typological discourse first appeared in the Enlightenment it did so in the guise of an epistemological criterion, a standard of knowledge which ensured the proper functioning of the critical category. For Quatremère, the critical category of type inhabits a paradoxical epistemological space between the realm of practice and models and the realm of theory and rule.
In this sense, architecture is regulated by the demands of a typological
norm; conversely, these demands achieve concrete form and figurative expression
in specific buildings which exemplify design decisions that articulate
and lend coherence to the model. Now this architectural epistemology has
had a precise historical trajectory and critical fortune, which one might
associate with a particular figure, Aldo Rossi. As the contemporary architect
most clearly responsible for lending the typological aspiration its actuality,
Rossi is also the most significant late twentieth century architect to
have based his design methodology on the architectural heritage of the
Enlightenment. In light of ideas articulated in Architecture and the
City (1966) --ideas which have by no means lost their cogency in the
three decades since the bookâs appearance-- it seems to me that a
new assessment of the complex field of typological research implies a hueristic
reduction that yields three distinct levels of interpretation: the level
of the geometrical figure, the level of combinatory relations, and the
level of urban form.
The figural dimension of typology emerged as a feature of architecture for the first time in the Baroque period. Specifically, it played a conspicuous role in the dialectic of geometrical articulation and formal unity inaugurated by Borromini. In his project for the Palazzo Carpegna (ca. 1640), this archtiect, as Manfredo Tafuri recognized,2 harmonized an autonomous approach to the figural potential of the palace type with a concrete appeal to conformity of its parts and wholes (Fig. 1). This design decision imprinted the building onto its site without perceptible residue. Borromini's careful meshing of the demands of the site, the existing structure, and the formal pressures of an internal logic resulted in surprising novelties that were however not entirely without precedent. Bearing in mind the sixteenth century licenze of Peruzzi, Borromini organized the axiality of his palace around an ellipse which suddenly erupts within its central core, as can be seen most clearly in the plan of the ground floor. From this example, it seems clear that a strategy of figural invention aimed at altering the normative typological lexicon can be justifiably identified with the internal critique of typology as such3. This experimental typological attitude was not without issue, for in Borromini's case the use of hybrid or unusual geometries did not only sanction inventive modification of typological models drawn from the recent past or antiquity; it also had important consequences for future developments such as the conception of the city as ordine infranto in the poetics of Piranesi4.
Whereas figural typology refers to a design process articulated
without visible contradiction at the level of the particular elements,
conbinatory typology implies a design method formulated at the level at
which wholes relate to parts while subjecting the latter to a logic which
may initially seem antithetical to them. Palladio is perhaps the most conspicuous
practitioner of combinatory typology, as is clear from the historical and
formal analyses of Wittkower, Rowe, and Tafuri. In this sense, grafting
of elements characterizing one religious or social order onto another persupposes
a new category of architectural practice and, more precisely, an unprecedented
conception of the suburban villa. The Villa Rotonda (ca. 1550) is probably
the most celebrated instance of the application of features previously
reserved for sacred architecture (domes, pedimented porticoes typical of
temple façades) to this building type (Fig. 2). Yet the way for
this radical transformation was paved by Giuliano da Sangallo, who at Poggio
a Caiano had already introduced some of the same typological components
-- quite possibly on the suggestion of Alberti, and perhaps with the active
participation of Lorenzo deâ Medici, the patron -- as early as 1485
(Fig. 3). In Tafuri'âs view, this transposition signalled a profound
ideological shift, since Palladio'âs exhaustive recombination of
typological elements connected to a particular social, functional, and
semantic field implied a reorganization of the field itself5.
This in turn, presupposes the historical thesis of disenchanted
architecture that marked the advent of the age of secularization in which
all that had been the preserve of the sacred suddenly became available
for a new mode of artistic production. Thus, it seem possible, in light
of the novel villa types formulated by Sangallo and Palladio, that abrupt
regroupings of architectural form and function are indicative of wider
cultural processes involving the liberation of an entire corpus of practices
from traditional patterns of use and meaning. Yet it is at the level of
concrete urban experience, not at the level of abstract combinatory relations,
that typology plays its first truly modern role, one in which the forms
of the past find themselves not so much violated or transgressed as transvalued
and resemanticized. In his study of the city, Aldo Rossi mentions the example
of the city of Split, which grew up within the ruins of Diocletian's massive
palace6 (Fig. 4).
Though Split may appear to be an unusual example of the
coincidence of building typology and urban morphology, the eloquence of
its archtitectural situation makes it in some sense generalisable, and
not only in terms of Rossi'âs theory of urban space as locus of incessant
refunctionalization, or in light of Alberti's conception of the city as
an extended house. For Split, like the implacable investigations of the
principle of architectural autonomy which Rossi carried out in the 1970's
(here I am thinking above all of the Modena cemetery) implies a revolution
in architecture's form, function and meaning which is an essential feature
of typological investigation, and which may be one of its preconditions.
In light of the preceding, one might be tempted to locate the paradox of
urban typology in a complex epistemological space determined by three factors:
an internal formal necessity peculiar to cities, an intermediate process
of collective historical, political, and social memory, and an external
criterion of aesthetic visibility that is a property of all works of art.
This means that the city, if conceived typologically, implies the confluence
of the stable geometry of the urban grid, the semantic solicitation of
the image, and multiple dimensions of historical meaning and formal articulation.
Thus Also Rossi and Gianni Braghieri's 1972 proposal for the city hall
of Muggio (Fig. 5) recalls the traditional Italian piazza with its open
forum and its framing of a central vertical component as emblem of civic
liberty or princely authority. Yet at the same time it formulates a thoroughgoing
challenge to this time-honored typological model. In altering the overall
form of the city square, contracting it to the confines of a single geometric
figure marked by different articulations, Rossi, like Quatremère
before him, assimilates the typological fact to a unified work that urban
space interrupts, erodes and penetrates, thereby rendering exact replication
impossible. In this way, the type repeats nothing exactly, but reminds
us, in a vague sense --the sense of memory-- of earlier urban patterns
and experiences. Therefore, in its specificity as an artifact, the city
implies a concatenation of typological motives, just as typology, at the
highest level of generality, implies an established urban standard, sanctioned
by history and use. This standard, the rule of typology, remains an ideal
type unchanged and unchanging over time; yet at the same time it permits
processes of accretion, disturbance, and modification to gradually alter
the body of the city -- processes emerging between form and history that
we have come to identify with architecture itself.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. ACKERMAN, "Sources of the Renaissance Villa," in Distance Points. (Cambridge, MA, 1991), pp 303-324.
G.C. ARGAN, Sul concetto di tipologia architettonica. Rome, 1964.
C. AYMONINO, Aspetti e problemi della tipologia edilizia. (Venice, 1964).
G. CANELLA, Il sistema teatrale a Milano. (Bari, 1966).
M. CERIA, "La ricerca tipologica residenziale," Contraspazio 5. (Sept. 1973), pp 96-90.
A. COLQUHOUN, "Typology and Design Method," Perspecta 12 (1969), pp 71-74.
M. KUBELIK, Die Villa in Veneto, Zur Typologischen Entwicklung im Quattrocento, 2 Vols. (Munich, 1977).
W. LOTZ, "The Rotonda: A Secular Building with A Dome," Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture (Cambridge, MA 1990), pp 190-96.
A.C. QUATREMERE DE QUINCEY, Dictionnaire historique.... (Paris, 1832), v.2.
Encyclopédie methodique.... (Paris, 1788-1825), 3 vols.
L. PATETTA, Storia e tipologia. (Milan, 1989).
A. ROSSI, The Architecture and the City. (Cambridge, MA, 1984).
Contributo al problema dei rapporti tra tipologia edilizia e morfologia urbana
. (Milan, 1964).
C. ROWE, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. (Cambridge, MA, 1989).
D. SHERER, "The Politics of Formal Autonomy," Assemblage 15. (1996), pp 99-101.
"Tafuriâs Renaissance: Architecture, Representation, Transgression," Assemblage 18. (1996), 34-45.
"Progetto and Ricerca: Manfredo Tafuri as Critic and Historian," Zodiac 15. (1996), pp. 32- 51.
"Vasari as Architect: Urban Strategies, Artistic Theory, and the Language of Disegno," Design Book Review 32. (1994), pp 39-42.
M. TAFURI, "Committenza e tipologia nelle ville palladiane," B.I.S.C.A. 11 (1969) pp 120-36.
"Borromini in Palazzo Carpegna," Q.I.S.A. 79/84 (1967).
Teoria e Storia dellâArchitettura. (Bari, 1968).
"Das Konzept der typologischen Kritik," Arch-Plus 37. (1978) pp 48-49, 62.
A. VIDLER, The Writing on the Walls. (Princeton, 1987).
R. WITTKOWER, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. (London, 1949).
Notes
(1) "Dictionnaire historique dâarchitecture comprenant dans son plan les notions historiques, descriptives, archéologiques, biographiques, théoriques, didactiques et practiques de cet art, 2 vols. (Paris, 1832), vol. 2, under the section Type. I have used the translation found in A. Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA, 1984), p. 40. Return to text.
(2) "Borromini in Palazzo Carpegna," Quaderni dellâInstituto de Storia dellâArchitettura, n. 79/84 (1967), p. 92; D. Sherer, "Progetto and Ricerca: Manfredo Tafurio as Critic and Historian," Zodiac 15 (1996), p. 37. Return to text.
(3) Cf. Sherer, "The Politics of Formal Autonomy," Assemblage 15 (1991), p. 100. Return to text.
(4) M. Tafuri, "Borromini e Piranesi: La città come ordine infranto," in A. Bettagno, ed. Piranesi tra Venezia e LâEuropa (Venice, 1983), pp. 89-91. Return to text.
(5) "Committenza e tipologia nelle ville paladiane," Bollettino del Centro di Studi Andrea Palladio no. 11 (1969), pp. 120-36; cf. W. Lotz, "The Rotunda: A Secular Building with a Dome," in Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 190-96; D. Sherer, "Progetto and Ricerca," cit., pp. 37-38. Return to text.
(6) Architecture of the City, cit., p. 178. Return to text.