Papers by Marina Lathouri
The concept of ‘type’ in architecture has a function inherently related to the one of language wh... more The concept of ‘type’ in architecture has a function inherently related to the one of language wherein type enables a manner in which to name and describe the artefact, primarily as part of a group of objects. Therefore, as Moneo succinctly points out, ‘the question of typology’ – ‘typology’ being a discourse (logos) on ‘type’ – becomes ‘a question on the architectural work itself ’, a question of what kind of object is a work of architecture. This article will begin by pointing to two characteristics of the question that could help to explain the specifi c functions of the concept of type in architecture. The fi rst is that accounts of type are informed by the different ways of seeing, thinking and producing the work of architecture. The second characteristic, following on from the fi rst, is that the notion of type, in its various meanings, has played an effective critical role in the confrontations between architecture and the city. Typological debates seek to delineate the ways ...
The subject of this dissertation concerns the reorganisation of the knowledge of the modern city ... more The subject of this dissertation concerns the reorganisation of the knowledge of the modern city that occurred in the mid-twentieth century. The emergence of the urban as an expanded field of architectural intervention as well as the increasing interest in the multiple relations between social patterns, territory and history, threw open a discussion on the heritage of the modern movement, and settled the grounds, upon which the rethinking of the city developed after World War II. The work is concerned to identify not a succession of concepts but the ways, in which earlier ideas and forms of spatial organisation were transformed and absorbed into approaches shaped by the specific circumstances of the post-war reconstruction and the theoretical debates of the time. Sections through the CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d\u27Architeture Moderne ), and in particular the congresses that took place between 1947 and 1959, are used as an analytic device rather than evidence. Themes, visual strategies and projects discussed in the post-war congresses convene a range of issues, which are contingently appropriate to describe conceptual reconfigurations of the modern city and their spatial, formal and historical implications. The hypothesis is that a different understanding of architecture and the city began to emerge, one that absorbed or transformed previous suppositions and methods on at least two fronts. Firstly, the sense of a building, or a city, embodied in its three-dimensional geometry was gradually combined with the idea of an order that followed the dictates of social and environmental needs. Secondly, this manner of thinking that sought to inquire into and materialize the relations between the different parts of a broader system, underpinned the move from an absolute identity to a contextual identity. Thus the intention of the thesis has been twofold. It seeks to delineate a process directly involved in shifting perspectives on the city, and consequently, acknowledge a continuing discourse on the urban as well as its intersection with architecture and spatial organisation. Ultimately, the aim is to address questions of architectural historiography, only to the extent that they enable us to understand mechanisms also engaged in contemporary interpretive and design strategies
Architectural Design, 2013
If the city is as much about culture as nature, then a cultural understanding of the shaping of t... more If the city is as much about culture as nature, then a cultural understanding of the shaping of the urban is as essential as a scientific one. Here, architect and critic Marina Lathouri, who directs the graduate programme in History and Critical Thinking at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London, describes how the concept of planning in the 19th century became intrinsically linked to notions of territory, borders and spatial organisation. She questions whether this might now be tested, and new design technologies used, to expose underlying emerging patterns of disruptive flows beckoning the possibility of the logic of a new social disposition.
Architectural Design, 2011
Marina Lathouri provides a critical overview of the historiography of typology, tracing the word ... more Marina Lathouri provides a critical overview of the historiography of typology, tracing the word ‘type’ back to its 18th‐century origins and through to its re‐emergence as a standardised objet‐type in the Modernist era. She closes by questioning the pertinence of type and typology today.
Architectural Theory Review, 2020
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Papers by Marina Lathouri