TYPOLOGY

// LIMITED SIGNED COPIES FOR EARLY BIRDS //

No matter how distinctive the style or ethos, underpinning architecture’s great variety lie a number of categorical typologies. In this meditation, Huat Lim presents his typological understanding in a series of interconnected essays that reflect on type as a fundamental tool to frame and articulate collective architectural knowledge.

He suggests that buildings have an evolutionary or genealogical significance as a system of forms that represents our diverse cultures, beyond their mere shape or morphology. Typology thus links architecture to history and particular cultural contexts. In his radical reading, Huat Lim grapples with the classification of buildings based on their function, form, construction and purpose, and argues that how we see buildings is a direct or indirect extension of ourselves, as we evolve the way we live by them and they by us.

The book draws on a large number of carefully selected examples of designs and buildings, ranging from antiquity to the present, and engages with some of the most important thinkers to focus on specific instances of typology in particular texts, cities and projects. In doing so, Huat Lim offers strategies, conceptual tools and critical knowledge to articulate ways of thinking and acting differently. A powerful example of the enormous potential for urban design, Typology offers a new perspective for the ongoing project of creating a transformative built environment and society.