vidler_the idea of type_1977

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Production of Types

T h e iM U of type, dormant in8Tt;hitectuTalheory since the thirties,M S , il~the last decade, beenrtinvokedby the new rationalists,F o l l m o i n g the essays of ATgan andR o s s i in the sixties, an increasingf t umber of archi tec ts have seentypologyas the agent of architectural.regenerationin an em of dispiritedjIInctionalism and willfule c l e c t i c i s m . The new theories of type. n i t e around a critique ofprogrammatic determinism. inarchitectureand radiant city imagesi n urbanism. Thus, a new sensibilitytowardormal pr-ecedent is joined toal l iffmt to reconstitute a cityd e m ( J l i s h e d by the disurbanistp r o j e c t s of the Modern Movement. Int h i s way, scal'cely twenty years afterS ir John Summerson proposed thatth e source of unity in modernarchitectureresided in the pr-ogram,a 1 1 E W SOUTceof unity has beenpresentedin the guise of the type.T M idea of type has, since the lateeighteenthcentury, unformed theproductionof architecture in twodifferentways. First, by rootingarchitecturein a notion of firstprinciples, either in nature orindustrial production, it has providedanontology, so to speak, for thelegitimacyo f design in an age whichh a s largely discarded the ancientt h e o r y of imitation and absolutebeauty.Second, when assimilated toth e emerging theories of typology inI k e natuml sciences it has promded areadybasis for the generation ofentirelynew species of buildingdelnanded so insistently by the rising

consumption and production society.Thus, the elements of architecture,their rules of combination, and thecharacteristic form of the resultingbuilding type were, in some way,seen as similar to the generation oftypes in nature.Type theory, however, wasideologically split between an older,neo-platonic theory of original idealtypes that stressed the existence apriori of suitable forms in natureand in architecture either inqeometrical or constructionalperfection, and this newerunderstanding of the production oftypes. The leading exponent of theciassicai view, Quatremere deQuincy, succeeded in infusing theneo-platonic theory into the tmditionof neo-classicism by the 1830's; forhim the eternal type of architecturewas the primitive hut, and its perfectachievement the Greek temple. Thetype theOt'Y of Durand, on the otherhand, stressed the productivecapacity of rules and elementsaccordinq to programs inductivelydefined. By the middle of the centuryboth theories of type had in some waymerged within the rational vision ofstructure and program held byclassicists and gothicists alike(Labrousie, Viollet-le-Duc), while bythe last decades of the centuryorganic metaphors and machineimages were indiscriminately erectedto support all kinds of functionalism.From there, this ambiguous heritagewas taken wholesale, or else in paris,by the polemicists of the Modern

Movement, who grafted evolutionarytheory onto production technology,thereby developing a theory of theperfectibility of mass-producedobjects. To this was added a notion ofthe classical residing in the verynature of standardization andregulanzation, which enabledHermann Muthesiusf01' theDeutscher Werkbund and LeCorbusier for the architects of thetwenties to range the Parthenon andthe Bugatti side by side (see fig. 2).The classical ideal type was thus, by1927, fit-mly wedded to the cause andprocesses of mass production. Thetype theories of the Constructivists inRussia and the socialists in Germanyin the twenties were similarly builton nineteenth century precedent,going back to the social typologies ofthe utopian socialists for theirinspiration. All finally came toqetherin the artifact, idea and buildingtype, in the Unite d'Habitation of LeCorbusier.I is with such a mixed pedigree thatthe idea of type has been resurrected.It is perhaps paradoxical, or at besta critical response to technologicalpositivism, that the idea of type nowacts as a counter to the ModernMovement. Thus type is now seenmore in the old eighteenth centurysense; Quatremere de Quincy, farfrom. seeming like the old reactionaryhe was, is lauded for resisting amechanistic theory of type whichultimately resulted in theconsumption of architecture itselfwithin the process of production.AV

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1Paris seen as a collection of itstypicalmonuments and inhabitants.A.Texier, engraver and architect,1 8 4 9 .

The Idea of Type:The Transformation of the Academic Ideal, 1750-1830Anthony Vidler

Type and Origins 439"We must return to the source, to the principles, and to thetype." 1

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The search for the origins of architecture was for the En-lightenment architect tantamount to the discovery of thetrue principles of his art. Like Newton in science, likeLocke in philosophy, like Rousseau in anthropology, thearchitect-philosophe looked at the beginnings of shelter asthe first mark or type of habitation, the root and therebythe simple natural principle of all architecture. The AbbeLaugier established this principle in his model of the hut,and in clearly stating that his "model" of shelter was in facta "principle" he made equally clear the metaphoric,paradigmatic qualities of his artificial construct. From it hederived the essential elements of architecture and theirrules of combination, in the same way that Rousseau twoyears before had set up a model of "natural" man by meansof which to criticize contemporary civilization (see fig. 8).2Neither Laugier nor Rousseau used the word "type"; to themid-century materialist it had an air of archaism, of reli-gious mysticism removed from the scientific. In Boyer'sdictionary (1727)it was defined as "figure," "shadow," "rep-resentation": it was most used to describe the symbolic actsand emblems ofChristianity-"the types and shadows" thatrepresented the Divinity throughout the Old and New Tes-taments. Thus, "type" had the connotations of law (thesigns disclosed toMosesand Solomon [fig.3]) and prophecy(the Ark of Noah, type of the deluge [fig. 4]). In this sense,though, it still carried a neoplatonic aura inherited from theRenaissance: "according to the neoplatonists," stated thedictionary ofthe Academia Francaise, "the ideas ofGodarethe types of all created things." Here the sense of origin wascloselyjoined to universal law or principle, and it was in thissense that the word was gradually adopted into architec-ture, though not without first being given a degree of scien-tific credibility in astronomy (1773).4At all events, the dual connotations of received law andnatural law still made for an ambiguity not necessarilyeschewed by those who desired to invest their paradigmswith moral authority. Out of this ambiguity there arose a


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2 The evolution of the ideal type:from Paestum to the Parthenon,from the Humber to the Delage. LeCorbusier, 1923.

3 Solomon's Temple. AnonymousFreemasonic pamphlet, c.1740.

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I correspondingconfusion of original models: was the type ofarchitecture the Divinely designed and given Temple ofI Solomonfig. 5), or was it a naturally constructed primitiveshelter?Between God's House and Adam's House the latereighteenth century eventually divided. The model of theI temple,whose every measure and every element was a typeofsymbolic significance, was fervently espoused by those(more often than not members of the burgeoningI Freemasonic society) who were unwilling to relinquishsomedegree of symbolic connotation in the forms of ar-I chitecture (fig. 7). For the Freemasonic architects in par-ticular, the reconstruction of the temple model further im-pliedby analogy the reconstruction of society itself. 5 Thus,I the Freemasonic "type" helped perpetuate the archaicmeaningof a word freely used in the Freemasonic "his-tories"of architecture since at least the sixteenth century,I forcingthe materialists to define their own usages carefully.

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Themodel of the hut, on the other hand, as described by thematerialist Laugier (fig. 8), was held up as the true andscientificorigin of shelter while at the same time it con-formedto the description of the birth of architecture de-rivedfrom the Vitruvian-humanist tradition. To turn this 5explanationof origins into a principle of form seemed logicaltothose who desired to purify the excesses of Rococo, andessentially rational in terms of the elements of structure.Beyond this, the literal imitation of this primitive typegainedconsiderable vogue in the newly developing fashionforEnglish landscape gardens and their attendantfabriques( f ig. 6).

Ribardde Chamoust, as late as 1783, attempted to sustainboththe symbolic and the materialist in a single type formfora new "French Order." Adopting the Freemasonic tri-angleas the basis for his proposed tripled columns, and aspeciesof temple as his type model, he nevertheless sub-scribedto the "natural" origin of these forms, claiming tohavefound trees growing on his estate in just such a precisecombination:"I mean by this word type, the first attemptsofman to master nature, render it propitious to his needs,suitable to his uses, and favorable to his pleasures. Theperceptible objects that the Artist chooses with justnessandreasoning from Nature in order to light and fix at the

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6 Rustic temple fabrique,Mauperthuis. A. T. Brongniart,c.1783.7 The Symbolic Model: Freemasonictemple, c.1774.8 The Natural Model: Laugier'sprimitive hut, 1753.

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sametime the fires of his imagination, I call archetypes."Thats,trees were archetypes and wooden columns types ofthefundamental elements of architecture. Ribard, followingLaugier,thereby established the primitive hut as the typeofallsucceeding architecture. 6It is clear that in using such a specific notion of type,eighteenthcentury theorists, symbolists and materialistsalike,were referring not simply to a designation, a staticclassificatoryerm, but rather to an active principle, a modeofdesigninitself, the understanding of which might in somewaypurify architecture of abuse and restore in the presentthegerm of future order. The word already held within itsdoubleallusion the nostalgic gaze into the future charac-teristicof the progressive ideal of enlightenment.T y p e and CharacterType,of course, in its literal, original meaning from theGreek,meant "impression" or "figure," from the verb "tobeat";it was applied to the impressions of coins and afterGutenbergand Plantin to the pieces of wood or metal usedinprinting-the characters of the alphabet. The referencetocharacter, reinforced by the already symbolic connota-tion of type, was readily assimilated by architecturaltheorists concerned to distinguish between kinds of build-ing.To talk of a building type, then, implied not only itssearchfor original validation, its ultimate restoration to thetempleor hut, but also its specific aspect, the form thatenabledit to be read as to its purpose at first glance: "all thedifferentkinds of production which belong to architectureshouldcarry the imprint of the particular intention of eachbuilding,each should possess a character which determinesthegeneral form and which declares the building for what itis,"wrote Jacques Francois Blondel in 1749.7 He used thewordgenre (species) rather than type, but the implicationswereclear: any specific kind of building should be formed,and thereby express itself, according to the laws of ar-chitectural sensation. Blondel, in his Cours d'architecture of1771,listed the various kinds of building in the architect'srepertory and qualified their general characters. These in-cludedtheaters, halls for dancing and festivities, vauxhalls,cemeteries, colleges, hospitals, charnel-houses, hotels, ex-changes, libraries, academies, factories, fountains, baths,

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9 Physiognomies of monkeys. J. K.Lavater, 1775. 11 Palace of Justice. E. L. Boullee,c.1785.10 "Gothic" prison. Houssin, 1795. 12 Physiognomy of the Tuscan Order.J. F. Blondel, 1771.

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markets, fairs, slaughter-houses, barracks, town-halls,prisons,arsenals, and light houses. All the major types thatinthe new quarter century would be fixed in the practice ofthe academic architect were described-their programselaborated-and their respective characters (e.g. publicmarkets, fairs, hospitals, and military buildings should bemasculine;garden structures, rustic; prisons, terrible) de-lineated. Each, Blondel maintained, should attain its "ownmannerof being, suitable for it alone, or those of its kind."Blondel the encyclopedist was evidently transferring ideasdevelopedin the natural sciences to the theory. of architec-ture. IfLinnaeus was able to establish a classification of thezoologicaluniverse in Classes, Orders, and Genera (withtheir attendant species and varieties), why should not thearchitectsimilarly regard the range of his own production,in a practice that had ever attempted to relate to (imitate)naturalorder? Buffon, proposing in 1753 the existence of "ageneralprototype for each species on which each individualismodeled" seems to have provided an exact parallel forBlonde!.Atthis stage, in the theories of naturalists and of architects,theidea of character was still founded on outward signs: the"language" of animals like that of buildings was readthrough their "physiognomies" (fig.12). The study of suchsignswas engaged in with fervor by adepts of facial expres-sionlike Lavater (fig. 9), while at the same time architectslikeDelafosse explored the combinations of iconography,symbolism,allegories, and attributes of architecture to ex-press feelings on facades." Prisons were a favorite subject.Theiriconography included the scales of Justice, their at-tributes were chains, they had heavy threatening rustica-tion,and their allegorical content made use of the story ofOrpheus in the Underworld. Piranesi had outlined all thepossiblethemes in his Careeri, Burke had entered the Sub-lime into the repertory of feelings and demonstrated itstechniques, and architects like Neufforge, Cuvilllesjus, andRoussin (fig. 10) exploited the entire gamut.Themethod of this expression was, in this era of linguisticresearch, that of language; in the same way as the firstwordswere expressed in signs (hieroglyphs) that were seen

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13 Drain house for the riversurveyor. C.-N. Ledoux, c.1785.

14 "Keyhole" Temple of Divination.J.-J. Lequeu, c.1795.

146 to present the image of physical objects, a language which,in Court de Gebelin's words "speaks to the eyes," so thefirst forms of buildings-symbolic as the first gestures ofmankind-presented a universe of known messages.10Court de Gebelin's friend and fellow freemason VieldeSaint Maux explored this world, proposing yet again a s y m -bolic origin for the elements of architecture. Thus, the f i r s taltar was a rounded stone-the base of the first column.Inthis first world, all was unified through the immediacy ofthespeaking stones: "their language being symbolic, their r e c -ords, temples, and images participate in this language, expressing the causes of nature and the attributes of theCreator ... the sight of ancient monuments, their sublimeharmony, the immensity of the types which cover them,announce that the ancients sought to transmit objectsworthy of reflection and analysis" (see fig. 7).11

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In the circle of Viel de Saint Maux, which included Boullee,Charles de Wailly, and the young Antoine Vaudoyer, wenote at the very end of the eighteenth century an attempttorestore the symbolic mode of expression, and thereby theancient, received type of architecture-the Temple of S o l -omon; columns were far from finding their origin in trees-they were the original altars; pediments were triangularexpressions of the Trinity, or at least masonic trowels. Amonument like the altar of Good Fortune, erected byGoethe in his garden in Weimar (1774); and explained byHerder as the type of Hercules, was paradigmatic.Thus, while the idea of architecture as language was onthesurface equally reducible to the cool structures of PortRoyal and the rational theory of tropes, metaphors, andallegories, a vain but powerful movement to reconstitute asymbolic universe reminiscent of the Golden Age founditsprotagonists in the pupils of Blondel: Boullee, Ledoux, andVaudoyer. In their work, the amalgam of type as origins,type as characteristic form of a classified species, and typeas symbolic mark was held together, however tenuously;perhaps for the last time.Boullee, the painter-architect, was the character artist parexcellence. Itwas his mission to introduce the themesofhigh poetry into architecture to reduce the fine arts to the----


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singlepoetic principle enunciated by the Abbe Batteux,whotranslated Horace's Ars Poetica. To the painter's di-dacticaphorism, "ut pictura poesis," Boullee the architectadded,"ed io anche son pittore." He searched in the designsofhisgrand public compositions to give to each monument"thecharacter which is suitable to it." This formulation wasdevelopedwith regard to his Palace of Justice: "I havepresumedthat in order to introduce the Poetry of architec-tureinto this production it would be good, to dispose theentryto the prisons beneath the Palace. Itseemed to methatin presenting this august palace raised on the shadowycaveof Crime, I could not only give value to the nobility ofarchitecture by the resulting oppositions, but further, pre-sent i n a metaphoric way the imposing picture of Vicecrushedunder the feet of Justice" (fig. 11).12Here,Boullee stated the theory of typical character in awaythat stressed not so much the symbolic nature of theform,but the metaphoric, or allegorical mode, in the serviceofmaking the buildings speak to the society. For Boulleeandmany of his peers, "speaking monuments" were anessentialcomponent of a well ordered republican society;the economist Jean Baptiste Say, one of the earliestideologistsof the Napoleonic Empire, wrote a utopia calledO l b i e in 1800 that lauded the fact that the "language of themonumentswas clear to everyone."Ledouxtried even harder to develop a symbolic mode thatrespondedto the emergent forms of social and industrialproduction:as is well known, he designed giant drains forhousingriver surveyors (fig. 13), giant barrels for housingthe work and recreation of barrel makers, and cosmicspheresfor the humble shepherds of human flocks. Suchexpressions-cvyou are what you work at and express this(orare expressed) by the form of what you live in"-wereonlysaved from the cartoonist's genre by virtue of thehermetic and purist geometry of Ledoux; when, twentyyears later, architecture parlante was half satirized byLequeu,and the cow-shed had literally turned into the formofa cow, the ultimate futility of this symbolic project wasrevealed(fig. 14). In an age of consumption, no symbol couldachieve more than momentary, personal significance.Graduallyallegory, which demanded a written text for the

elucidation of any designed form, was to supplant the lastremnants of a symbolic, rhetorical culture already under-mined by the didactic programs of the Counter Reforma-tion.In the work of Boullee and Ledoux, however, there was aninherent conflict between the idea of type (or general model)and the idea of character, a conflict which was centered onthe problem of individuality. Taken to its extreme, as theoverriding quality of expression and effect, character couldserve to isolate every building from every other, distinguishso firmly, even between buildings of the same kind, that anygeneral typology was destroyed. Even as Buffon had recog-nized that each individual of the species, while following its"primitive general design," was nevertheless "altered orperfected by circumstances," the generation of Blondel'sstudents, caught up in the relativistic excitement ofromantic-classicism, were more inclined to accentuate thesealterations and modifications according to "circumstances"than to posit a strict typology. Boullee and Ledoux inelevating character to a primary formative role and in pos-tulating the endless play of abstract geometrical permuta-tion as its instrument were undermining a truly rationalsystem of types. To each individual in the social orderbelonged a dwelling expressive of his state and his metier;to every public monument there belonged a "symbolic sys-tem" that would engender a specific impression in the ob-server. "I call character," wrote Boullee, "the effect whichresults from an object and causes in us an impression of anykind," thus plainly defining the idea as a result more than acause of design. 13 Such an urge toward individuation, asColin Rowe has recently shown.:" was closer to the emerg-ing currents of the picturesque than to any positive scienceof classification, or to any classic ideal typology.Type and ModelUnder the heading abuse, the young theorist Quatremerede Quincy sternly warned against such individualist ex-cesses: "as with languages there are many ways [in ar-chitecture] to speak against the rules of grammar." A firmneo-classicist in the face of a rampant, pre-Romantic sym-bolism, he brought to task those who, like Boullee, Ledoux,and VieIde Saint Maux, had abused their art: "No longer do

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448they see in a pediment the representation of a roof, butbecause of the fortuitous relation of the form of necessitywith a geometrical figure, the roof is to their eyes only amysterious triangle, emblem of the divinity." 15 Writing in1788, Quatrernere had, in Paris, immediate examples of theabuse he castigated-the toll-gates of Ledoux.In the place of those bizarre forms, the product of an ar-chitect who was about to "decompose architecture entirely,"Quatremere suggested a more coherent and conservativetheory of character. True to his neo-classical standpoint hedistinguished and classified different kinds and differentlevels of character. 16 He first proposed the existence of a"general" character: that force of expression that was inde-pendent of the maker and exhibited by the great nationalgenres under the influence of climate, mores and levels ofcivilization; then he described that essential character ex-pressive of moral or physical greatness common to all greatepochs and countries. Finally, in relation to each kind ofbuilding he acknowledged the necessity for a specific or"relative" character. In his pedantic and academic way hesummarized the theory of the entire eighteenth century:"the art of characterizing, that is to say, of rendering sensi-ble by material forms the intellectual qualities and moralideas which can be expressed in buildings; or of makingknown by means of the accord and suitability of all theconstituent parts of a building, its nature, propriety, use,destination; this art, I say, is perhaps, of all the secrets ofarchitecture, the finest and most difficult to develop and tounderstand; this happy talent of feeling and making felt thephysiognomy proper to each monument, this sure and deli-cate refinement which makes perceptible the differentnuances of buildings that seem at first unsusceptible to anycharacteristic distinctions; this wise and discreet use ofdifferent manners of expression, which are like the "tones"of architecture; the adroit mixture of the signs that this artis able to employ to speak to the eyes and the mind; thisprecise and fine touch. . . ."

Quatremere listed the ways in which this relative-or whathe called "imitative character"-might be evoked in a build-ing of one type or another. Imitative character was evi-dently the "expression of use," and turning from the overtly

symbolic or picturesque solutions of Ledoux, he describedwhat, for the next century at least, would remain the meansfor characterization: first the gradation of richness and size,according to the nature of the building and its station insociety; then the indication ofthe moral qualities inherent toeach building, by the employment of analogical forms; theuse of the general and elemental forms of architecture (pre-sumably geometrically defined) to express the nature oftheuse; the type of construction employed according to proprioety; the type of decoration applied to the building; andfinally, of course, the choice of attributes.Quatremere de Quincy finally wrote his article "Type" forthe third volume of his Dictionary, published in 1825,buthewas evidently simply restating a position already firmlydeveloped by the time of the Revolution. 17 A fervent ad-mirer of the Greek and its highest form of expression, thetemple, he attempted to re-establish the original and puremeaning of type: "the root of." The architectural "type" w a sat once "pre-existent germ," origin, and primitive cause.Thus the type of the temple, and thereby of all architecture,was the primitive hut, and he quoted Laugier freely inhisanalysis of this type. IS The adherence of architecture toitstypes, however, did not imply the slavish imitation ofhutsor cabins, as evinced by the plethora of romantic "rustic"fabriques now scattered through the fashionable landscapegardens of Europe. Rather, the idea of type, in a severe andclassical sense, was truly metaphorical. Quatremere at-tacked those who would mechanistically imitate the type,thereby turning it into a literal "model" - those who "byconfounding the idea of type as imaginative model, withthematerial idea of a positive model (which deprives it ofallitsvalue) are united in denaturing the whole of architecture."In constraining themselves to the "servile imitation" ofwhat they considered true principles of construction (exem-plified in the hut) they ruled out "the sentiment and thespirit of imitation."Other architects, he argued, were guilty of the reverse faultand, accepting neither types nor models, denied every ruleand any constraint, reducing design to "a play, where eachindividual is the master and rule-hence the most completeanarchy in the whole and in the details of every composi-


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tion."Quatremere was, of course, referring to those who,likeLedouxin the barrieres, had broken all rules of compo-sitionin the search for new "characters."Betweenthese two extremes, therefore, Quatremere pos-itedthe notion of the ideal type, never realized, nevertangiblyvisible, and never to be slavishly copied, butnevertheless the representative form of the principle orideaofthe building: "this elementary principle, which is likeasortofnucleus about which are gathered, and to which areco-ordinated,in time, the developments and forms to whichtheobject is susceptible."Suchan ideal was, however persuasive in the aestheticcanonsof the neo-classicists, hardly a working principle ofdesignfor those faced with the task of building for modernsociety. Quatremere understood the difficulties of hisabstraction, and tried to bring it in line with the alreadydominant use of the word type as applying to types ofbuilding,or designed objects. Here he returned to the ideaofcharacter: "each of the principal [kinds of] buildingsshouldfind its fundamental purpose in the uses to which it isattached, a type which is its own; to which the architectshouldtry to conform as closely as possible if he wishes togiveto each building an individual physiognomy."Thiswas type based on need, on use and custom. Quatre-merewould have called it "relative" as opposed to essential;he compared it, presciently enough in the light of laterdevelopments,to the design of furniture, seats, clothes, andsoon, which have "their necessary types in the uses towhichthey are put and the natural customs for which theyare intended." In this wayan idealist typological theory,erectedto serve a purist neo-classical revival, was positedinterms that the functionalists of the later nineteenth cen-turyand the modern "purists" of Le Corbusier's generationwouldfind extraordinarily evocative.T y p e and Organization"Classification,as a fundamental and constituent problem ofnatural history, took up its position historically, and in anecessary fashion, between a theory of the mark and atheoryof the organism." 19

15 Museum of comparative anatomy,Paris, founded by Georges Cuvier.

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16 The forms of crystals built up outof geometrical units. R. J. Hauy,1784.

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vidler_the idea of type_1977

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