Teaching

The Chair of Building Typologies represents the field of study of architecture and urban planning in design teaching within the framework of various design seminars and lecture series, in object design as well as in building theory design.

To make design processes comprehensible, to deepen the conceptual aspect of design, to make the conscious setting of an idea and its logic comprehensible as an indispensable prerequisite of every design and to show the typological context are the primary goals of teaching.

Thus, the conceptual aspect of designing is in the foreground of the training. It includes equally the demand for abstraction, for analytical thinking as well as for accuracy and discipline. It should determine the basis of the designs in terms of constructive clarity, precise proportion and, not least, in terms of the restrained semantics of the design.

By means of abstraction, disturbing and thus confusing details of a real appearance are "thought away," as Max Bill aptly put it in 1947, in order to bring out more clearly the essential connections of complicated processes. Accordingly, the more the conceivable diversity of technically and functionally conditioned forms is thinned out, the more clearly the moments of relationship between the individual elements emerge, opening up possibilities for the development of the architectural idea.

This applies to the conception of an architectural space as well as to the conception of a supporting structure, which is stripped back in its aesthetic expression and not exposed to the danger of losing itself in content-heavy, heroic gestures. Abstraction prevents the construction from taking on a life of its own, prevents the love of material and detail from becoming values in themselves, and prevents the original architectural idea from being glimpsed only dimly, as if through a filter.

Analytical thinking makes it possible to deal with clear, simple building types that are grounded in history. In this context, "simple" does not mean the simplicity of purely purposeful design, nor does it mean the restraint of a conscious, possibly fashionable lack of pretension. What is meant is that simplicity which excludes the unnecessary, but peels out the universal and reduces it to basic phenomena. Only the ability to recognize archetypes as archetypes of "being" enables the structuring of thoughts and thus an analysis of the design task. Consequently, it is not about the use of types in the receptive sense, but about the type as occasion, thus about developing the theme of a design from the exact knowledge of typological connections in the whole as well as in detail.

When we demand accuracy and discipline, we invoke the regularity of geometric orders. Nevertheless, we do not talk about geometric orders for their own sake, but always from the point of view of formulating and ordering aesthetic complexity, in order to avoid randomness and arbitrariness along the way. We teach tradition by resorting to aspects of arithmetic, scientific thinking in the methodological, that is, "craft" sense. We do not advocate the use of a geometric structure as a universal architectural language, not the monotonous anonymity of superficial geometry, but the subtle, multi-layered variety. Like Socrates, we would say, "What is more mysterious than clarity?" (Paul Valery)

We argue that the intensive study of architectural conceptions as well as the study of typologies, number and order are prerequisites for "learning to think" as an architect, that is: to approach the questions that arise rationally. The artist-architect can therefore not be the goal of our education. He will develop in the individual case, often without school assistance, solely on the basis of his biography. If, on the other hand, the result is student work that does not avoid the simple, the pauvre, and at the same time arrives at convincing architectural concepts out of a self-confidence, then the goal of our teaching has been achieved.