Typology as Methode in Urban and Architectural Research

Typology (in urban planning and architecture) is the taxonomic classification of (usually physical) characteristics commonly found in buildings and urban places, according to their association with different categories, such as intensity of development (from natural or rural to highly urban), degrees of formality, and school of thought (for example, modernist or traditional). Individual characteristics form patterns. Patterns relate elements hierarchically across physical scales (from small details to large systems).

Book Review : Urban Design Typologies, Process and Products

“A good city is not a result of individual, independent and selfish decisions”

(Enrique Penalosa, Mayor of Bogota)

The city is a collage of overlapping precincts, places and linkages (Rowe and Koetter, 1978). How should these elements be designed and organized? Is the urban design a product or a process? This book is not only to provide a typology of procedures and products of the urban design field but also to present a number of case studies that illustrate the range of interpretations of urban design.
This book is written by Jon Lang, a master in urban development and design program of University of new South Wales Sydney, Australia. The book is consist of 4 (four) comprehensive parts. Part I is the nature of urban design and urban designing. In this first part, the author discusses the public realm of cities and urban design, urban design process and the evolving typology of urban design process.

Second part of the book provides a clear explanation about traditional urban design process and product. This part is completed with various case studies from around the world.
The core of the book is present in the third part of the book. There are four typologies of current work of urban design process and procedures which are total urban design, all-of-piece urban design, piece-by-piece urban design and plug in urban design. All of these typologies explanation come with number of case studies each.
The future of urban design is the last part of the book. In this part, a visionary thought about urban design is presented.

Definition of Architectural Research

Definition of Architectural Research is the search for new knowledge and new ideas about the built environment. Research can be conducted in a variety of sub disciplines, including building technology, environment-behavior studies, history of architecture and computing technology. (Ahrentzen, Betrabet, Dally Geboy, and Dearborn-Karan, 2001).

Groat and Wang (2002, pp.6-7) repeat this definition that encompasses systematic inquiry and new knowledge, and rightly acknowledge that the development of architecture from earliest times has involved forms of research activity.

Building as physical products of function in a number of independent but interactive ways- they are structural entities, they act as environmental modifiers, they function socially, culturally and economically. Each of these types of function can be analyzed separately but the built form itself unifies and brings them together in such a way that they interact.  Architectural research thus has to be conscious of these interactions across traditionally separate intellectual fields.

Based on these interactions, the scope of architectural research can be divided into three stages:

-          Architectural Processes

-          Architectural Products

-          Architectural Performances