From Prototyping to Allotyping. The invention of change of use and the crisis of building types

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Guggenheim, Michael. 2014. From Prototyping to Allotyping. The invention of change of use and the crisis of building types. Journal of Cultural Economy, 7(4), pp. 411-433. ISSN 1753-0350 [Article]

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2013.858060

Abstract or Description

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.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2013.858060