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Figure 4.5
Birkdale Village, Huntersville, NC, Shook
Kelly, 2002. The more relaxed spatial enclosure of this
‘urban village’ accommodates the car while
providing generous spaces for pedestrians (see also
Plates 4–7).
(Photo courtesy of Crosland Inc., and
Shook Kelly)
Figure 4.6
Rosedale Commons, Huntersville, NC,
2000. The low scale of the buildings around the
square defeats any intention of creating an inviting
enclosed space for pedestrians. This weak element
mars an otherwise attractive development with an
integrated mixture of uses and a good pedestrian
structure (see also Figure 6.37).
Figure 4.7
Latta Park, Dilworth, Charlotte, NC. The
social space of this neighborhood park is defined by
the homes (behind the trees) lining the public streets
around the perimeter. Activities are supervised
informally by the resident who look over the space
and by pedestrians on the streets.
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that is, using established norms to design new projects.
It’s a very powerful tool, especially when it combines
building mass and urban space at the same time.
Clearly, the formality of the American courthouse
square typology (of civic building and public space)
that underlies the original layout of Neshoba County
Fairgrounds reinforces the civic attributes of a space
in a direct and potent manner. The lineage of this
particular typology can also be seen in an important
series of Renaissance paintings of the ‘Ideal City’ (see
Plate 3).
This makes clear what we mean when we use the
term typology: consistent patterns for buildings and
urban spaces that are derived from historical exam-
ples and which can be used and reused in different
contemporary conditions. In some ways it’s the
opposite of modernist belief that ‘form follows func-
tion,’ or that each function has its own special form.
Functionalism is derived from a biological analogy,
where each species in the natural world demonstrates
its own particular characteristics, but in urban terms
this correspondence quickly breaks down.
We understand that the same building form can
accommodate several different functions during its
lifetime through a process of conversion and adaptive
reuse. The form of a building can be far more perma-
nent than its use, and this enables us to think of cer-
tain building plan types that might suit a variety of
different uses. Even a cursory analysis of cities reveals
the existence of some consistent patterns of buildings
and urban spaces that have been utilized in different
locations, conditions and times for their own merit,
without a primary recourse to function. For example,
the perimeter block – where buildings ring the edges
of a site like a rectangular doughnut – appears in
cities all over Europe and America across several cen-
turies. The uses in the buildings may vary within the
space of the block and during the life of the build-
ings; the basic form, however, remains the same (see
Figure 4.10).
This appreciation of the longevity of form over the
transience of function, the reliance on time-tested
models of urbanism, and the belief in the universal (or
at least wide ranging) applicability of these concepts
in many different contexts, relates typological design
to principles of Rationalist philosophy dating from
the European Enlightenment in the seventeenth
century. At that time, great thinkers like Frenchman
René Descartes (1596–1650) sought universal laws
and principles by which to comprehend the world, an
intellectual position that was not limited by the
vagaries of human experience. Typology has become a
common term in architectural discourse, but not in
the allied disciplines, and it’s not always clearly
defined. It’s often confusing to nonarchitects, as it is
to many architects and students of architecture raised
in the Fountainhead tradition of the architect as the
creator of unique and original forms.
DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES