American housing and typology
Preface
Housing is a fundamental type that architects have to care about. However, it is not just a matter of construction. Housing has its cultural, contextual, social, and economic values, which sometimes lead to a sort of housing crisis, lack of affordability, community, or sustainability. Then, my question is how we can have a better understanding of a house? And how we can suggest alternative future of it? Housing type has its own long history. Some of housings come from sepcific condition, which can be read as one single unique housing design, but some of them stem from histroical precedents, such as shotgun house, triple decker house, or plentation house. Therefore, I scrutinize the housing topic from looking at the idea of type, which has enormously rich, deep, and multifarious meanings through history, finally to some of recent population study under the categorization of rural and urban areas. My final goal is to understand what can be future alternative of housing.
1. Vidler, Anthony. “From the Hut to the Temple: Quatremere de Quincy and the Idea of Type.” In The Writing of the Walls : Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment, 147-164. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural Press, 1987.
There is a huge time gap between now and the 1780s when Quatremrere de Quincy established his clear theory of type. This temporal gap makes the seemingly absurd application of his concept of type to modern times. However, the importance of his concept of the type remains crucial to understand architecture in contemporary society.
Typology rarely changes based over a long period of time, but it is also newly invented when new values appear in society. This can be explained through Quatremrere’s concept of the type, which was simply an idea of antecedence. Thus, typology cannot be a fixed form. To be specific, he explained his understanding of type by suggesting three models, such as the hut, cave, and tent as fundamental architectural models, an attempt to connect the type with the history of architecture; The light and movable structure of the tent became the origin of the thin wooden structure in China, the dark caves became Egyptian religious architecture, and the hut became the Greek Stone structure. More importantly, however, these principal models imply that the idea of the type is embedded in the transformation of them through customs, tastes, and use of each nation. Type does not mean any specific form or dimension but is inherent in temporal flow.
Although the form of architectural objects has continuously changed, the way architecture is built in modern society is the same as the way a primitive hut was built. The act of building columns, raising beams, and covering roofs, is still repeated. With the development of new materials and technology, the only changes were construction methods and detailed joints of materials. The development of architecture, so to speak, has diversified the logical system that architecture constitutes space, a series of rooms in architectural plans, but architecture has never been subordinated to technology. However, the values and standards that people consider important in society have changed, and accordingly, the way humans occupy, and experience spatial structure has continuously changed.
All architecture is an act of producing architectural order. From structural orders such as columns, walls, floors, and roofs to relational orders such as doors, windows, and stairs, it is ultimately expanded to the order of architecture, ground, surroundings, and nature. Considering that architecture is a social product, an architect reveals what he wants to argue by changing the preexisting order, and he announces that new values in society appear. This changed order creates a moment that distorts the user’s perception, which got used to traditional architectural order and let the man to occupy the space according to the artist’s thoughts and intentions. As Quatremrere argued, the value of society seems to affect a change in architectural objects. For instance, manual labor during the industrial period was replaced by machines, and architectural objects had a new form for factories.
On the other hand, typology as a given example triggered by the environment no longer exists but seems to be a medium for architects to make their own voices. Seemingly, the current situation is that the meaning of all typologies eventually converges to create the reproduction of architecture. Therefore, the power of architecture is to pinpoint a phenomenon that we need to look at and publicize changes in values to the world or to urge a solution to the problem in society. Therefore, the meaning of typology is not to focus only on its morphological features but to look at the rationale and reason behind the composition of spaces.
2. Moneo, Rafael, ‘On Typology’, Oppositions, 13, p.23-45, 1978.
According to Rafael Moneo, type can be defined as the simplest group of objects with ‘a formal structure.’ However, it cannot be argued that certain images are shared between types within this group. For example, when we talk about skyscrapers, one can imagine the Renaissance Palace, one can think of a Gothic tower, and one can think of a pyramid. Therefore, the type is only based on the possibility of grouping objects by their unique structural similarities. However, as the type becomes increasingly clear and specific, the type can lead to another level of the group. Therefore, different groups of types can be made. For example, the skyscraper can be divided into different groups again. In addition, architects start designing from existing types, but they also create new types by breaking, transforming, and respecting them.
Mentioning Quatremere and Durand, he also argues that the idea of type should be distinguished from that of model. The idea of type is connected to its history and the past because type has evolved through history. Conversely, 19th-century architecture focused on the idea of Composition, gerne, and model, pursuing freer plan and section exploration. All of this series of ideas were used as tools to escape the hierarchy held by classical types. Durand therefore classified buildings by their functions in a way that could be seemingly called typological.
In the early 20th century, modern movement theorists rejected the architectural theory established in the 19th century. To them, type meant immobility, and to designers it was considered a kind of shackle. Therefore, there was an effort to develop architectural vocabulary under the belief that architecture should provide new vocabulary. For example, Mies van der Rohe’s work was a series of attempts to characterize Generic Space, which suggests that architecture is a simple construction/tectonic. Therefore, rather than setting the program first, it is an attempt to create a space where people’s actions are produced later.
In addition, as mass production and mass housing boom occurred, repetitive residential forms were steadily reproduced under the idea of proto-type. For example, Le Corbusier was interested in an industrial prototype that allowed unlimited repetition, and the Unite davitacion is a perfect example of this. The concept of units, the result of factory production, tells the similarity between the architecture industry and the automobile industry, and the meaning of type in the past has completely disappeared.
Modern movements to use types in cities failed, and theories began to emerge in the 1960s to explain the morphological/structural continuity of traditional cities. This was an attempt to understand the city as a morphological structure through continuous historical development. Aldo Rossi’s work can also be described in this concept, where Aldo Rossi’s Modena Cemetery takes its shapes from building types in a city and is seen as a kind of whole-part relationship that builds over time. Therefore, in Aldo Rossi’s architecture, type is based on the juxtaposition of memory and reason. The reason why he used the corridor as his preferred architectural vocabulary is also that it has neutral characteristics, which can be used from private residences to student dormitories.
Since then, Robert Venturi has focused on the relationship between type and image and tried to define the type in terms of cognition rather than the structure of the building. Looking at Houses in Nantucket, it has the traditional image of a typical house with piched roof, but the interior or plan of the building has characteristics that are completely different from its image. Through this series of historical processes, Rafael Moneo argues that the idea of type has failed greatly in architecture, asking a question, “the most important question is, is it valid to talk about types today?”
3. Holl, Steven. 1983. Rural & Urban House Types in North America. San Francisco: Pamphlet Architecture and William Stout Architectural Books.
His book is laregely categorized into two categories: rural houses and urban houses. This categorization might come form historian Fred Kniffen’s research, which Steven Holl directly quotes in his writing; “There are, architecturally speaking two cultures, rural and urban.” Cultural historians such as Fred Kniffen or Edna Scoffield have researched about the american housings, but their categorization is not from architecture, but the fact that rural area has hugely different culture from that of urban area. Then, Steven Holl’s attention might not be just to find architectural continuity in USA without enough historical time span, but to find interrelationship between culture and architecture. It is little bit different approach from 19th century architecture, even though research about typology had also been carried out vigorously. In 19th century, architecture theorists tries to find universal rules that can be applied to all buildings. For example, Durand argues architecture has genre and model and he actually tried to escape from the idea of typology, which Quatremere defined at that time. From his argument, architectural genre is from programs, such as a prison, school, library, house, town hall, etc. Therefore, in Steven Holl’s research should be understood under the idea of typology which Quatremere once defined. However, Steven Holl was more interested in the cultural reasons that generates vernacular housing types. According to his categorization, rural houses have eight different types: One Room House, Stack House, Saddlebag House, Dogtrot House, I Type House, Highway House, Plantation House, Octagon House. Urban houses have nine different types: Father-Son-Holy Ghost House, Shotgun House, Double Shotgun House, Camel-Back Shotgun House, Flounder House, Double House, Row House Group, Courtyard House, Continuous Row Houses. Steven Holl described each housing types with plan, section, elevation and sometimes with photograph of each type. For example, Octagon House in rural houses is good for poor man because a minimum exterior wall of octagon shape allows maximum enclosed areas. Plantation house is related to the sugarcane business in Louisiana and the history of black slaves. All rooms are connected to each other and open air-galleries surrounds rooms. Also, some of housing forms are from the state’s tax system or based on the climate and soil conditions of the region, or the shape of the plot. Therefore, from Steven Holl’s research, I personally think architectural forms are more from cultural reason, not architects’ intention to find a common rule that can be applied to every building as Durand pursued.
4. United Nations. Department of Economic Social Affairs. Population Division. 2019. World Urbanization Prospects : the 2018 Revision. New York: United Nations.
The United Nations regularly conducts research and projections on world population trends. The latest projections released by the UN suggest that the world’s population will continue to grow, but at a slower rate than in previous decades. It’s important to note that these projections are not set in stone, and demographic trends can be affected by factors such as migration, changes in fertility rates, and improvements in healthcare and technology.
According to the research, The world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, and 10.9 billion by 2100. More inportantly, fifty-five percent of the population now lives in an urban setting. Also, sixty percent of world’s population is expected to live in a megalopolis by 2050. Therefore, the housing crisis is still inherent in density and limited land, even though many architeects and theorists have been conducting research about urban desity in the past. However, in an urban area, the question is what is exactly a minimal living space without losing the beautiful quality of American homes.
5. Koolhaas, Rem, Office for Metropolitan Architecture. AMO sponsoring body, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum host institution. 2020. Countryside : a Report. Köln: Taschen.
In the book “Countryside: A Report”, Rem Koolhaas highlights the increasing urbanization of the world and the neglect of the rural areas. He also explains the transformation of the countryside in the 21st century and the impact of globalization, climate change, and technology on rural life.
While examing the social, economic, and cultural changes taking place in rural areas, he argues that the countryside is becoming increasingly important as a site of innovation and experimentation. He also discusses the potential of rural areas as a solution to the problems of urbanization, such as housing affordability and sustainability.
