Organizing the past 63types can also relate to their use, such as the examples intro-
duced above, where the type can be followed historically as
a series of changes, in the fi rst instance, to the organization
of the building plan. This is Vidler’s ‘second typology’. These
generic divisions tend to be extra-architectural in nature,
generated from outside of architecture and applied or evi-
denced in buildings. As such, these fi rst and second typologies
run in the opposite direction to style, which, although (as we
have seen) it responds to external forces and provocations,
is basically internal to architecture.^39 Typological divisions of
one kind of ecclesiastical architectural history from another
are largely determined by religious, cultural and social factors
rather than architectural or aesthetic qualifi cations. Churches
that are remarkably different in appearance and that follow
distinct theories of architecture can be connected typologi-
cally on these grounds and treated as a coherent basis for
architectural history.^40
(In addition to the categories above, Vidler also posits a
‘third typology’. This concerns the autonomous, self-referen-
tial form of architectural design that gained international
currency in the 1960s and 1970s most prominently through
the architectural projects and writings of Aldo Rossi. This
third approach to building type reduces historical works of
architecture to ‘architectural elements’ that can be trans-
formed into the material for design and composition. This
process very directly demonstrates the operative utility of
architectural history for architects, a theme to which we will
later return. Conceived thus, as Daniel Sherer puts it, ‘[T]he
type repeats nothing exactly, but reminds us, in a vague
sense... of earlier urban patterns and experiences.’^41 )
In his introduction to A History of Building Types (1976),
Pevsner suggests that the need for a typological knowledge
of architectural history is connected to the widened scope of
the architect’s activities in the nineteenth century. Where
architecture was once the domain of ‘churches and castles
and palaces’, runs Pevsner’s argument, the architect is now
concerned with ‘a multitude of building types’. Quoting the
American architect Henry van Brunt (in 1886), he adds to
the types named above ‘churches with parlours, kitchens and
society rooms’, hotels, school houses and college buildings,
skating rinks, casinos, music halls and many others that give