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From Prototyping to Allotyping.
- Source :
- Journal of Cultural Economy; 2014, Vol. 7 Issue 4, p411-433, 23p
- Publication Year :
- 2014
-
Abstract
- The chapter analyses the invention and the form of the discourse on building conversion as one particular instance of redefining what a technology is and how it operates. I describe a shift from expert defined closure to lay based openness and tinkering as a shift from prototyping to allotyping: Since the early 1970s, change of use and building conversion have become a central and fashionable discourse among architects and architectural theorists. Before the 1970s, buildings were understood as technologies, as ‘society made durable’. The notion of building type was central to link a building to a given use. A bank was a bank because architects applied existing templates, prototypes, to turn a building into a bank. In the 1970s, suddenly buildings became flexible – discursively, since building conversion always existed: ‘Building type’ no longer was a meaningful link between a building and its use. A bank should not stay a bank, but become a hotel, a theatre or a flat, in short: an allotype. The chapter elucidate this central shift in thinking about buildings and reflects on the special case of allotyping buildings and how it continues to vex thinking about buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- ARCHITECTURAL philosophy
ARCHITECTS
TECHNOLOGY
RAPID prototyping
BANKING industry
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17530350
- Volume :
- 7
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Cultural Economy
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 99928303
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2013.858060