Words and Buildings

【不直接摘抄原文，全是自己咀嚼过后的琐碎笔记。】 【流沙按，Forty的书在每个词条这里都提供了一个基本的文献导读，很好，朴实无华的写作，给愿意深入的人铺路。在type这个词条这里，我指出几点我读后的感觉，权当作补充：1.Forty尚未展开对18世纪的法语文献中genre与type的比较，这种正本清源的工作还是需要的，我今年会补上；2.关于Muthesius与Typisierung，看来尚且有很多可以深入，而且是关于类型、社会品味、资本与消费主义之间的对立，偏向社会思想史；3.在那批意大利建筑师那里，Forty的文章尚且没有很精致地区分出从Muratori到Aymonio，Gregotti乃至Rossi，关于类型的观点与实践用法有了怎样的递进变化，我正在写作的论文《类型-模型-类比城市：关于类型学与一种模糊普遍性》将要解决这个问题（拟发表于《时代建筑》2016年第三期上）；4.Ungers似乎被遗漏了；5.说到底，我们做历史研究的，读完了各段文献，还是需要对现实与当下作回应的，那在这个词条这里就是现实的问题——“当下类型学还可以怎么交？怎么用到设计里面去？”Forty没触碰到这个问题，这当然不是这本书要解答的，但不能说不是一个用心的读者的职责。】 [There are wo quotations at the beginning, both referring to typology as kind of essence in architecture.] Norberg-Schulz: Architectural history shows that the development of types is essential to the architectural system. Rossi: Ultimately we can say that type is the very idea of architecture, that which is closest to its essence. OK, Forty admits that almost every discipline has benefited from the concept of “type”. Two most common schemes of typological classification By “tema”/theme or purpose: churches, markets, libraries, tribunes, courts, schools, hospitals By morphology: long-shaped, I-shaped, T-shaped, with a portico or a long corridor, centric or de-centric, etc. To conclude the above, Forty: how could functional types and morphological types correspond to each other? A basic classification sets the criteria as functions (Jiawei would say a more accurate term might be “theme” or “purpose”.) In the mid-18th century, J.F.Blondel in Cours d’Architecture, compiled a long list of varieties of building (64 altogether) [see his “caratère”, p.122-23]. Blondel’s typological classification was regarded as the modern system of functional types, however Forty thought such an opinion was slightly misleading. For: 1.Blondel used the term “genre” instead of “type”, and we could say “genre” indicates the literary basis to his scheme; 2.his main purpose in listing all these varieties of building was to identify for each the appropriate “caratère”. Nevertheless, a constant typological classification of buildings by purpose has become popular since the end of the 18th century (namely after the French Revolution). Note: Pls read Pevsner’s A History of Building Types (1976), in this book types are all description of uses. The morphological classification begins at Durand’s treatise. What Durand emphasized in his Préçis de leçon (1802-5) was the techniques for the composition of different architectural forms without regard to uses. The so-called “use” is related to what I called “theme” or “purpose” above, and especially closely to the concept of “program” in recent modern architectural education. Notice, what Durand used is again “genre”, instead of “type”. OK, in the following Forty gives a brief narration on several purposes for which this concept of “type” has been used in architecture. 1. The idea of architecture as the imitation of nature. To protect this. Carlo Lodolí, Quatremère de Quincy First of all, we should be clear of two sorts of arts since classical tradition: les arts libéraux et les arts mécaniques. Notice, in the 18th century the debate was about the idea that architecture should be listed as one of the “arts libéraux” as opposed to “arts mécaniques”. The mimetic theory of architecture (representatives such as Lodolí, De Quincy and so on) encountered confrontation, so thus then De Quincy attempted to protect this mimetic theory by his remarkably ingenious writing. Here we go on to see what exactly De Quincy has said. De Quincy holds a position that architecture does not imitate nature literally (建筑并没有从字面上直接模仿自然), but only metaphorically (而只有隐喻性地模仿). This imitation is fictitious, while nonetheless being aware of its supposedly real reference to “nature”. In order to elaborate what it was in the “nature” that architecture referred to, De Quincy introduced the term “type”. 接下来Forty还是引用了德昆西那段最著名的关于type与model的段落。 “Everything must have an antecedent. Nothing, in any genre, comes from nothing, and this must apply to all the inventions of man”. (quoted from De Qunicy) “Type” was not the primitive hut, the tent or the cave, all of which were “models”; but the “type” was (in the case of timber building) that kind of combination to which the use of wood is susceptible, once adopted in each country. Forty: “type”, as the original reason of the thing, can neither command nor furnish the motif or the means of an exact likeness; “model” is the complete thing which is bound to a formal resemblance. By concluding as such, De Quincy affirmed that architecture is the imitation of nature, instead of a copy. Such an architectural theory as De Quincy wrote in the entry “type” aroused no concern at all to Semper. Goethe has his theory of art as a “second nature”, and this influenced Semper to believe that architecture is quite independent of nature even might be like nature in its formative processes. However Semper stuck to De Quincy’s proclaiming that “architecture can come from nothing”. Semper was critical of the strongly idealist character of De Quincy’s thought, and would like to give the De-Quincian “type” greater identity and substance so that it might be of more practical use to the architect. In the 1830s, Semper developed a more sophisticated account of both “nature” and “type” based on natural science. By direct analogy from animal and plant morphology, Semper formulated his theory of architectural types. Semper in 1843 wrote: certain standard forms conditioned by primordial ideas, yet permit an infinite variety of phenomena. Semper aims “to trace these prototypical forms of architecture”. His terminology for the “prototypical forms” varies between Urformen, Normalformen, Urkeim and Urmotiven, all of which are drawn from Goethe’s theory of plant and animal morphology. The merit of Semper’s classificatory scheme was to preserve the “type” as a generic idea, and to give it determinacy and practical application, but this nonetheless lets itself become confused with a “model”. 2. As a means of resistance to mass culture作为大众文化的抵抗 Deutsche Werkbund, Muthesius/Tessenow, 1911 “Typisierung” – translated in the past as “standardization”, however now it seems that a better translation is “type” according to present consensus. “Wo stehen wir?” – by Muthesius, he attacked the tendency towards stylistic individualism in the arts of the time. Opposing to this, Muthesius affirms that “architecture as one of the major arts should tend towards a type/typisch”. His policy for Werkbund could be concluded as two points below: 1. Only through “types”(Typisierung) can architecture recover the universal significance which was characteristic of it in terms of harmonious culture. 2. Types, to be understood as the result of a beneficial concentration, will alone make possible the development of a universally valid, unfailing good taste. （1.建筑只有通过类型才能在一种协调的文化之下找到普遍意义。2.类型可被理解为浓缩后的结果，它有教益；即便只有它，也能够使得发展出一种普遍合理的、永不堕落的好品味成为可能。） Henry Ford saw the standardization led to economies of production, and all such interpretation by economists and management experts had nothing to do with the concern of Muthesius and his colleagues. To them, type became a means of bringing order to the chaotic world of mass consumption, ruled by fashion, individualism and anomie. In this respect, “type” occupies a similar position to that of “form” in the same debate. Karl Schmidt, “type means nothing other than replacing disorder and lack of discipline with order.” OK, AEG by Behrens was referred to as a “type”. In Le Corbusier’s l’art décoratif aujourd’hui, the notion of “objets-type” was adopted. “hysterical rush of recent years towards quasi-orgiastic decoration” manifested by furnishing manufacturers. The architectural “type” developed by LC, for example the Maison Citrohan, Pavilio de l’Esprit Nouveau, served the same purpose, distilling the chaotic disorder of bourgeois individualism into a rational, ordered existence. 3. To achieve “continuità” Vidler, a “third typology”, and Forty sees two quite distinct motives in it: 1. one linked to the specifically Italian debates about continuità; 2. the other to Anglo-American preoccupations with “meaning”. Notice that the theme “continuità” was together with E.Rogers and Casabella. It became a critique of orthodox modernism, and partly a solution to specifically Italian difficulties. Nel continuità, tre concetti: “storia”/history, “ambiente”/context, “tipo”/type Vidler puts it, on “the city as the site for urban typology”. Typology was a means of describing the relationship between buildings and the city of which they formed part, and thereby of showing how individual buildings were manifestations of the collective and historical processes of urban development. In this way, an “architectural event” becomes defined far more than the mere constructional substance but including general urban phenomenon, considered both spatially, socially, and historically. We mention the Venice School here (Muratori, Aymonino, Rossi) Muratori, Studi per una Operante Storia Urbana di Venezia (1960), was a study of the morphology of building lots and open spaces in Venice, and the first time to raise the concept of “type”. Historical geographers had previously treated things such as the growth, milieu, class within the process of a city only as abstractions. Aymonino, Gregotti, Rossi were thinking about “types” in similar terms as Muratori. Whatever disagreements there existed, they all saw typology had the value in describing the relationship of architecture to cities. For Rossi, “type” served two explicit purposes: 1.a means of thinking about urban architecture independently of the function (theme or purpose) to which it was put; 2.certain building forms and street patterns persisted throughout the history of cities regardless of the various uses to which they were put, could be taken as manifestations of “type”. 4. In the pursuit of meaning In the 1960s there emerged the “crisis of meaning”. Rossi had equivocal position towards this whole question, and never addressed it directly. The book Il Territorio dell’Architettura by Vittorio Gregotti in 1966 had a far more direct attention to the problem of signification and meaning. Gregotti suggested that the “semantic crisis” of modern architecture was in part related to typology. He regarded the projects by Enlightenment architects such as Ledoux as an intention “to bring the problem of the semantics of the type under control”, establishing “the possibility of an urban semantics”. The English-speaking world began to take notice of the Italian discourse about “types” in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A quotation from Alan Colquhoun: the analogy of architecture to language – for language pre-exists a group or individual speaker (“langue” is different from “parole”), the system of architecture pre-exists a particular period or architect. These forms, or we call “types”, interact with the tasks presented to architecture, in any moment in history, to form the entire system. Micha Bandini “typology as a form of convention”

探寻形式问题一定要回溯德国观念论。Adrian Forty的写作是比较真诚的、希望将事理简明化的，从他这一段关于19世纪德国观念论哲学家的援引里读得出来。不妨读读关于Form在康德、谢林、歌德、黑格尔行文中的内涵差异：

一如惯例，Forty对form进行词源梳理。哲学常说“形式与质料”嘛，那肯定得梳理到本源。读完了顺手贴一段译文：

——第一个使用circulation来描述人在建筑中的运动的人是Viollet-le-Duc在1850年使用在《讲义》第二卷中。——“循环”1682年被哈维爵士首创：其作为隐喻描述在另一介质中的流动的潜能——经济学中开始运用这个词汇——首次将circulation引入建筑学的是法语；以及1769年Pierre Patte出版的Memoires sur les Obiets les Plus Importans de I'Architecture——1850年后，法国建筑师和评论家开始提到建筑的“circulation”，赋予其双重含义——早期有提到建筑中的circulate（路线etc）但是从未提及人在建筑中的运动被当做建筑的一个独立构成部分——