Typology is the very embodiment of conceptual thinking: it isolates similarities from the flux of reality in order to make purified clusters of these similarities suitable for manipulation. The natural home of a type is the taxonomy...it is not obvious how to establish the criteria with regard to a ‘type’ for dwelling – according to individual ergonomics, to bed and table, to the middle-class flat or house, to ‘functions’ or decorum, to the market, to a building or urban block or city or region, to the primordial conditions of nature, to culture? Dwelling, properly understood, is more profound than the efficient or attractive accommodation of a life-style – it comprises orientation in reality.

Peter Carl. Type, Field, Culture Praxis

Introduction

We all, I think, instinctively feel, and rationally assume, that buildings last for generations. We build them of concrete; liquid stone set around steel. It is hard to imagine a more irreversible concoction. Into these concrete cages we set our most treasured stories. Stories about work, education, health, wealth and family. But stories are liquid, they move much more rapidly than these fixed frames can bear. We have forgotten, in how we build, that what is given now was almost unthinkable a century ago.

In previous eras, the façade of a building, its public gestures and spaces, where the lasting elements. From palaces to factories, simple frames were adorned in rich material compositions, allowed to become recognisable and enduring characters by having the flexibility to change inside.

Now a drastic turnaround has taken place in the approach to our cities. The façades have become novel and sacrificial surfaces and the interiors tightly packed with fixed ideas. The results of this inversion are all around us. Demolition is a daily occurrence in the city, with the average lifespan of an urban building now in the order of 30 years. Every layer of our buildings is infected with contradictions of obsolescence and permanence.

This is the very definition of an unsustainable practice. Extraction of raw materials from the earth has tripled since the 70’s and is responsible for 50% of carbon emissions and 80% of biodiversity loss. Concrete has become the most consumed substance on the planet second only to water.

The Project

This autumn we will develop positions in relation to urban buildings, their life, their death and their composition. We will consider the relationship between location and life span, façade and structure, between use and appearance, between construction, materials, resources and environment, and we will develop a critical perspective in relation to how, where and when one should build.

Urban Research

The site of our project will be Oslo, we will start at the urban scale working as a group to understand the development of the city historically and the successes and failures that are present for us to read and learn from. This historical research will be supported by city walks, seminars and discussions with urban planners and architects about new strategies being developed for the city. We will work with researchers from NMBU who are making urban planning projections through the lens of degrowth and green growth strategies, and we will meet with Assemble who are developing a cultural masterplan for Hovinbyen. Through drawing and photography, we will build a collection of observations about the city and its buildings that we will take through into our final building proposals.  

Typological Development

Building on the foundation of understanding that we develop through investigations at the urban scale we will then develop new taxonomies for the city that respond directly to the present challenges of density,  durability and flexibility.  A key touch stone for this work will be a 17th century publication by French architect Pierre Le Muet. His book, The Way of Building Fairly for All People (Manière de bastir, pour touttes sortes de personnes) was published as a pattern book for Paris and contributed to the rise of neoclassicism in Britain and France. Tracing the rise of neoclassicism northward, we will consider the influences of German neoclassicism on the city of Oslo by travelling to Berlin.

Building Project

The final project will be a detailed building proposal situated within the urban plan and taxonomy we have created. We will focus here on timber construction working to break free from aesthetic and performative assumptions about the material and developing compositional approaches that allow for the thickness, depth and weight we find in the neoclassical city to be transposed into our propositions for new city buildings.