Description

Morphological Types

Urban Block Types

Block Edge

The block-edge development is a building form that closes one side of an existing urban block or defines formerly undeveloped block edges. The plan is thus free and “unfree” at the same time: “unfree” with regard to the specified block, its street layout, orientation, height, building depth and the size of the courtyard, yet free with regard to the decision whether the line of the street front should be preserved or structured with a set back, broken up by staggered volumes or whether the block interior should be opened through a gap. The building in the urban block has essentially two orientations: to the street and to the courtyard, whereby orientation, view and exposure to noise can come into conflict.

Due to the lack of light and insufficient separation from the street, the ground floor is reserved for commercial uses whenever possible; alternatively it is laid out as a maisonette and combined with a private green space. In several situations, block-edge developments deviate from the existing urban dimensions, for example, when they occupy entire streets in a context of individually developed parcels. However, they do offer the opportunity of experimenting with contemporary housing development within existing urban plans. Since they are greater in scale than infill developments, they make it possible for the layout to develop patterns of its own and to work with more complex access systems. This building type allows for all types of floor plans and makes it possible to play with a broad range of floor plan typologies in one project. This building form was reserved for a long time for social housing development as part of municipal development initiatives aimed at concentration of town centers. This is rapidly changing as urban living is becoming increasingly attractive.

Morphological Type – Block edge

Urban Infill

In recent years urban infill developments, like urban block-edge developments, benefit from a trend of moving back to the city centers and once again valuing living in the city. The building scale and complexity of floor plans of these developments can vary greatly. Urban infill is a building task with numerous stipulations, which calls for an intensive examination of the built environment and its characteristics. Yet precisely these narrow specifications sometimes inspire experimental floor plan solutions since they are singular anyway: for example, unconventional floor plans that solve the contradiction between view and orientation, loft apartments with sliding walls, intricately connected maisonettes and split-levels with unusual options for room linkages. There are also great, and often radical, differences in how the building task is approached: examples include complete coverage of the infill lot combined with an atrium; offsetting the infill volume on one side and creating an opening to the courtyard; complete isolation of the volume from all surrounding fire walls; or dissolving the new development into many small volumes, which adapt smoothly into the existing configuration and every possible gap within it. Given their manageable scale, urban infill projects create opportunities for innovation not only in floor plan design, but also in construction, energy concepts or financing methods. Thus, many urban dwellers discover the idea of a joint building venture: they assume the role of property developer with the advantage of being able to participate in the design of the building and their own apartment from the ground up as future tenants.

Morphological Type – Urban Infill

Corner Building

Corner buildings are just as informed by the characteristics of the specific block as urban-infill and block-edge developments. However, a corner building also occupies a special position in the urban plan. Given the shape of the lot – with the disadvantage of the poorly lit inside corner of the block and the advantage of a larger facade area turned toward the city and its resulting urban presence – the layout of a corner building goes beyond the patterns of the floor plans within the classic urban block. Corner lots allow different design strategies: possible strategies include building over the entire corner with the access placed like a hinge between the two sides with no natural light, creating two building wings each with their own stairwell or an open corner development with two building parts, each oriented toward three sides thus providing more natural light and an opening into the interior of the block. However, the corner building can also be completely separated from the block and treated as an autonomous urban building block. The apartments inside either share the corner – perhaps with a bay window for each unit for a more generous view – or else only one of the apartments is laid out around the corner, thus benefitting from a view into both streets as well as the intersection.

Morphological Type – Corner Building

Firewall Building

Building lots between firewalls are often the result of wounds and breaks within the historic pattern of a city; they are not intended as part of an ideal urban plan. Firewalls are created, for example, when new traffic arteries create residual plots. In this case, the expectation of their development is to mediate aesthetically between enclosed city blocks and the open modern city. Firewall developments always have the opportunity to make a virtue out of necessity and to turn the disadvantage of the necessarily one-sided orientation into developing a unique housing type: the structure can take on an additional dimension through folds and undulations in the facade or by dissolving the whole into individual sections, offering variety in views and lighting possibilities. Special attention in the design can be given to the interface between firewall and new development: thus the new building can be set apart providing the building sections adjacent to the firewall with more air and light.

Morphological Type – Firewall Building

Modernist Types

Slabs/Super-blocks

This chapter combines the two typologies slab block and super-block, which are similar in appearance. As an urban planning leitmotif of modernism, which promoted less dense developments with light, air, and sun, slabs were the antithesis to the tenement city and their enclosed block-edge developments of the Gründerzeit in the late 19th century. For a long time, slab developments were the ideal solution for societies that had a pressing need for inexpensive housing on a large scale. Owing to their serial construction method, //Slabs// linear blocks are characterized by systematic floor plans, which nevertheless allow for some variation within the rhythm of the dividing walls and the changes from floor to floor (one-level apartment, duplex, triplex or split-level type). A variety of access systems, such as landings, galleries, or internal streets, are possible. Ideally with an east-west orientation, they occupy tailor-made urban spaces with dedicated traffic areas and green spaces and are often accompanied by functional segregation: the occupant works, shops, and spends his or her leisure time in different locations; the estate becomes effectively a “dormitory town”. Slabs blocks were the dominant building type in large estates for a long time, arranged in serial rows facing one another and forming open, often monotonous urban spaces.

The super-block is larger in scale, more complex than the slab and nearly always a solitary structure; it is a massive, large volume, whose dominant, often sculptural presence can structure an entire urban situation. Multilayered variations characterize the interior of the complex fabric: different apartment sizes and types for different housing requirements complement one another, accompanied by interlinked vertical and horizontal access spaces. Common areas and services not only structurally shape the residential community inside the building, but also the exterior of the super-block. This is a case of unity in diversity: the super-block is thus a quintessentially urban building form. Introduced in the 1950s – at the time usually as a series of always identical apartments arranged along a corridor or internal access street – it has continually evolved up to the present time, and has now been rediscovered as an urban building block appreciated for its unlimited variety. In the meantime, slab block and super-block are no longer employed solely for municipality-owned social housing; they are now being constructed – sometimes in single and shorter form – for all social strata and utilized for urban densification and agglomerations.

Morphological Type – Slab/Super Block

Space-enclosing structure

Space-enclosing structures adapt the type of the freestanding slab and develop it into sinuous, meandering, and clustered patterns or into ring-shaped developments – all with the goal of formulating fluid open spaces within clear outer edges. They create courtyards of urban dimensions and urban patterns that are not dependent on a street grid. In the 1960s and 1970s, space-enclosing structures as a taller and meandering variant of row development were often employed for large housing developments, accentuated by individual high-rises here and there. The idea was to create urban landscapes in which the generous open spaces were to surround the buildings without being disturbed by traffic – “megasculptures” for a society of the future. The clusters that emerged are usually composed of identical or similar segments, which are lined up in various ways, stacked and oriented towards light and view. Clusters may contain complex systems of paths, stairs, terraces, and courtyards. In this manner, they try to dissolve even very large-scale projects into manageable, communicative units. The variety in home types available within this type of structure is virtually unlimited because each branching off or rotation creates a new floor plan in theory. Each individual floor plan is often very sophisticated and ideal, especially for conventional family situations. By contrast, the design of the semipublic spaces was often sorely neglected, which led to a high degree of anonymity. Space-enclosing structures often fail to form open spaces between the buildings that are spatially clearly defined and inviting to the occupants. Large housing developments of the past were criticized as monofunctional and inhospitable dormitory towns, the buildings themselves derided as “housing silos” and “concrete castles.” However, the typology of this building task does not necessarily predetermine these problems. Given the general drop in population and the return of more affluent social classes to city centers, which have once again become attractive, they often turn into urban concentrations of social problems. What is needed is a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of these developments by means of a two-way scenario of deconstruction and conversion. On other continents, however, large housing developments and their building forms are still being employed as an adequate response to housing shortages in expanding megacities.

Housing Typology – Space-Enclosing Structure

Apartment High-rise

The term apartment high-rise encompasses both urban high-rises and multi-story residential buildings. In building codes, a high-rise is defined as having occupied floors located above the height reachable by fire department vehicles; from this height onward, special fire protection measures and double fire escape routes must be considered in the design. The apartment high-rise follows the “law of series,” stacking the highest possible number of identical or similar floor plans one above the other. In most cases, the apartments are grouped around a central core with several stairwells and elevators; due to the size of the core, they are often oriented toward one side only, sometimes around a corner. At times an undulating external skin is employed to provide the apartments with orientation in more than one direction. Apartment high-rises originated in 19th-century American cities, where real estate markets called for a building type that allowed for a significantly higher ratio of area utilization; this was only made possible through several technological advancements such as skeleton construction and increased safety features for passenger elevators. Apartment high-rise are thus a fundamentally urban building form, often furnished with luxurious lobbies reminiscent of those found in hotels because of the great number of occupants. The buildings combine a wide variety of highly different uses: retail, offices and apartments, parking and communal services are often incorporated in a single building for the comfort of the residents. The interiors of the apartment high-rise tend to be anonymous. With access areas that are often quite small and many residents per floor, there is little to inspire neighbourly encounters. Usually, the occupant’s principal connection with his city is established by the stunning views afforded by apartments of this kind. From a certain height onward, high-rises become uneconomical and increasingly less sustainable due to the technical, structural, and energy requirements. Due to wind flow, the greater the height of the tower, the higher the cost and effort required to provide exterior spaces. Yet precisely these issues – the creation of communal and private outdoor spaces for the residents and an improvement of the energy balance – pose the challenges for the high-rises of the future.

Morphological Type – Apartment Highrise

Solitary

Solitary buildings indicate something singular, sometimes unique. They are fully detached and receive natural light from all sides; exterior form, orientation, and height can be determined with great freedom. All these factors offer ideal conditions for creating and exploring exemplary housing models. Solitary buildings differ primarily from one another with regard to scale: the small, suburban multifamily house or the urban villa in an open city block are distinguished for their clarity, their relationship to public and private green, the occupants’ identification with their home and with their neighbours. The advantages of the single-family house can be realized here within the more economical multifamily house. Large urban solitary buildings – the courtyard house, the atrium house, or the small urban block – are configurations with more complex access systems and internal hierarchies, shared internal and external spaces, and a great variety of apartment types. A decisive factor for the interpretation as a solitary building is its urban presence: in other words, whether the building appears as an autonomous object. Naturally, in doing so it can be integrated into an urban planning concept, which allocates an entire urban block with a more or less stringent canon of regulations to a series of solitary buildings.

Morphological Type – Solitary Building

Stepped Building

The stepped building, also called terraced complex, is tantamount to a built utopia because it appears to interweave landscape and architecture, natural and built space, and aims to multiply the number of open, often verdant spaces. This typology is characterized by the design of the threshold between interior and exterior, by terraces as open spaces and topography. The occupants benefit from the direct relationship with the generous exterior spaces.The stepped building is located either on a natural slope with orientation into one direction having a building and access configuration that follows the topography of the site. Alternatively, it can itself create an artificial topography with special functions located in the core areas, where natural light cannot penetrate: these functions may include access zones, storage areas, garage – and even a highway. Owing to their horizontality and their complex staggering, stepped building are sometimes barely discernible as clearly circum­scribable, sculptural building volumes; rather, they have the appearance of a structure that could occupy entire landscapes. However, this building type is economically and technically very demanding.

Morphological Type – Stepped Building

Residential Complex / Housing Estate

This category is very heterogeneous: it comprises all high-density types that are not urban: patchwork developments with courtyard houses, row developments with single-family terraced housing, multistory conglomerates with interlaced and stacked apartment components, and finally the self-sufficient urban development, the housing estate. Residential complexes and estates are structurally self-contained islands within the urban configuration and sufficient unto themselves. Despite the density, they aim to fulfill the desire for a place of one’s own: hence, efforts are undertaken to provide each occupant with their own access space, be it at ground level or on one of the upper floors. Similarly, the transition from public to private areas, and from public to private green is usually designed in a highly differentiated and varied manner. The character of an identity that is shared by all occupants is established through a clear boundary toward the environment, through the often compact and homogeneous construction, through common open spaces and the deliberate restriction to a limited number of floor plan and house typologies, albeit often with subtle differences. In extreme cases, estates can become gated communities, which define themselves as communities for members of a uniform social class, usually affluent, and distance themselves from the outside world through security guards and barrier installations. By virtue of their scale, estates and residential complexes can contribute to stabilizing urban agglomerations and transition areas, giving them an identity and stimulus for further densification.

Morphological Type – Residential Complex/Housing Estate

Suburban Types

Row House

This house type is more economical in terms of construction and energy consumption than the detached house due to the large percentage of shared firewalls and the relatively small facade area. It is thus affordable to more people and corresponds to the desire for owning a house with a private garden. Row houses allow for a better degree of densification than residential developments with detached houses and are thus an appropriate building form for the urbanization of industrial wastelands close to the city center or for urban agglomerations. The classic row-house type is long and narrow, oriented toward the front and rear, and laid out between two closed walls. Most row houses are two stories high; the floor plan is divided into three sections with rooms and kitchen located at the facades and access and sanitary rooms in the middle. In principle, however, this type is highly flexible with regard to width, depth, and height. Innovative examples offer entirely new layouts: they achieve exciting floor plan configurations with patios, rotation, offset of levels, or change in orientation, thus relieving the potential monotony of long row-house developments.

Morphological Type – Row House

Detached Building

The building task of the detached house, from the classic single-family house to its extreme expression, that spacious villa, allows for a multitude of radical and innovative approaches to habitation, since each concept need only function for one, usually known, group of occupants. Thus the private home can always serve as an opportunity for experimentation in residential architecture, often generating exciting spatial concepts, which are inspirational even though they are rarely applicable to multifamily or multistory dwellings without adaptation.

Noticeably generous amounts of space per occupant, orientation in all directions, a private garden and, above all, the high degree of co-determination in concept and design afforded to the occupants, make detached houses a highly privileged form of building. A car is an indispensable requirement for this housing type, because it makes the dream of a house in a green setting and the separation of living from all other life factors possible in the first place. Nearly inevit­able consequences of this building form therefore include urban sprawl, soil sealing of natural environments, and increased traffic.

Morphological Type – Detached House

Duplex House

In many instances, duplex houses are created due to the desire of two parties to build and live jointly. The members of this type of coop seek to achieve a balance between separation and connectedness, which can become a model for a special form of cohabitation. Other duplex houses are not planned according to the wishes of the occupants, but are designed in series like a row house, frequently in the context of a planned housing scheme. The goal of the design is to protect the privacy of each neighbour, allowing every­one to fulfil their dream of a house of their own despite the close proximity. Unless the plan consists simply of two houses placed side-by-side and sharing a firewall, examples of duplex houses can often be spatially complex: in order to ensure that both units benefit from all orientations – instead of competing with one another –, they are partially intertwined. Occupants enjoy advantages similar to dwellers in single-family homes: they have their own lot, their own driveway, and a green space on several sides. However, the disadvantages are equally comparable: although this building type is somewhat less uneconomical, urban sprawl, soil sealing and traffic are increased.

Morphological Type – Duplex House

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Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fourth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2011.