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trasting appeals and > gestures, it is an example of a specific
interaction of forms, meanings, and modes of spatial experi-
ence. In the course of its history, type has endowed through
its spatial combination the most diverse functions with a spe-
cific meaning: below, market, court hall or restaurant, above,
council chamber, stables, museum or concert hall. On the one
hand, historic buildings, which represent certain types, serve
changing forms of utilization by adopting continually new
meanings. On the other, it provides solutions to current build-
ing tasks by relying upon established types. The decision in
favour of a specific type implies the construal of the building
task in the sense of typical spatial praxis associated with it, so
the design > concept, hence, involves a ‘typological decision’
(Rossi 1977). The types provide a repertoire of design sche-
mata of great Prägnanz, and are adaptable to the most diverse
building tasks.
Literature: Kemp 2009; Kuhnert 1979; Rossi 1977> type‘It is high time we began thinking about architecture urban-
istically, and about urban planning architecturally (...) ‘a city
like a house, a house like a city’ Aldo van Eyck (1960/2003,
38) implemented this recommendation, which goes all the way
back to Leon Battista Alberti, in his orphanage in Amsterdam,
with its interior plazas and streets. The architecture of the city
is not only similar to that of a house, but also sharply distin-
guished from it: both in the means through which it organizes
the relationship between > inside and outside, body/mass and
space, and in that between places and routes (1), as well as
its total gestalt (2), and in the specific mode of performative
experience (3).- The analogy between the rooms of the building and
those of a city is not just evident in the interior character of
Typology
Urban design