Lehrinhalte
In the module Type and Model, seminars, exercises and lectures provide the basis for the theoretical-historical understanding of typological thinking and design in architecture. Its focus is on typological thinking in the context of the architecture of modernity, which has been formed over a period of more than 500 years. An awareness of the development of typological thinking will be aroused in the context of the process of the differentiation of the world of life and, thus, the differentiation of architecture. Typeand archetype, model and matrix are the basic themes, especially in times of transformation of typological thinking under the conditions of computational design, BIM, and mass customization. Types are understood here as basic modules of a language of architecture, through which they can refer to the facts of life and their changes. Types are always part of an area of models that makes the thinking about material things at all possible. Models are the carriers and reference points of knowledge. In addition to symbolic generalizations and model examples, models are-- in the sense of thinking models-- one of the three components of a paradigmatic reference system or a disciplinary matrix. Through them the knowledge of architecture becomes visible; one speaks of knowledge in the model. Models are the prerequisite for the formation of an architectural syntax, upon which the determination of architectural types first becomes expressive.
Deeper historical research will show the proximity of standardization, typologization and notation processes. It will become as plausible as type and model first were as formal elements—for example asin the orders of columnswhich characterized architecture as a symbolic statement and phenomenal effect. The orders of columns, too, are standardized, pre-designed and systematized models in their graphic representations, through which the architecture, on the basis of its grammar, becomes capable of speech. Later, with Alberti and the Renaissance (from the middle of the 15th century), the basic principles for poetic expression were laid onto the further typologization of architecture and its differentiation. In contrast to Gothic and Romanesque, architecture became a means of individual expression of the modern artist-architects, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Palladio, Scamozzi, etc. Under the influence of a further differentiation in the age of industrialization, typological thinking advanced to a more social process, i.e. social differentiation and cultural identification. Type and model have, first of all, a culturally formal-visual aspect; secondly, they are characterized by the material and construction methods, and thirdly, they are characterized by questions of use, i.e. of purpose. This distinguishes the historically and theoretically critical approach of this module, in that it frees itself from the concept of typology within the narrowness of function in the discourses of 20th century modernity.
