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| Hiroshima, 1945 |
Non-typological Architecture is a category that refers to a tendency
towards an absence of ideology, system, or science in architectural composition. Specific
examples of architecture which make visible a tendency towards the non-typological,
lack any obvious attempt to say (parlare), or do (as distributio)
anything. They tend towards simple containers of blank space. Examples of
architecture that manifest a tendency towards the Non-typological lay bare
the inessential fact: that Man is the animal who has no nature, and
will never be at home. Thus, Man is the animal who can ‘wilfully’ change its
own essence and produce History.
A house with no plan, and no interior subdivisions is the perceivable aspect and consequence of now hegemonic ‘colonising,’ ‘rationalising’ forces that enframe life as a ‘standing reserve’ and accordingly ‘challenge’ into being narrow, instrumentalising forms of life, and relationships with other beings. An endless and accelerating expansion of production has also accelerated a process of de- and reterritorialisation, which exposes us to the raw blankness of this inessential fact. Just as quickly though, that blankness is buried in a phantasmagoria of futures and pasts; of everything that ever existed but no longer lives. Examples of housing that tend towards the Non-typological are particularly striking because housing has, until recently, been perceived as the space of one’s own, or of the family’s intimacy, privacy, and autonomy; the sphere of singular or unique forms of representation, identity, social relationships, and 'world.' The space in which a specific form of life takes shape and unfolds.
Furthermore, Non-typological architecture points to the fact that a system which always reache deeper and deeper with the means by which it calls or ‘challenges forth’ life and relationships as a ‘standing reserve’ for extraction is at its core, non-ideological. Via its emanation of abstractions, its proliferation of unreality, we are suspended in a state of real nihilism. Architecture that tends towards the non-typological is therefore ambivalent. On one hand, it makes visible or manifests the absolute foundation of human freedom and possibility, it manifests a clearing in history and the potential for an absolute turning point. On the other hand, if prolonged indefinitely or prolonged in frozen suspension, it indicates a capture in no-actuality, no-difference, and no-world.
