Renewable Building Types and the City
Edited by Christopher Lee & Sam Jacoby

A collection of student projects from the AA's Diploma Unit 6, run by Christopher Lee and Sam Jacoby

This collection of student projects from the AA's Diploma Unit 6 encapsulates a generational shift. After the past decade of deep (and sometimes, it would appear, deeply self-satisfied) explorations into new digital and computational design tools, Typological Formations demarcates a return to the city as the overt site, not just for architecture but for architectural thinking. A quick glance through this book will confirm the obvious: sophisticated parametric tools are all over these projects, but they are no longer a topic or focus in and of themselves. Instead, such tools are merely brought to bear on the design agenda: the search for 'renewable' building types that are able to negotiate the rapidly changing circumstances of cities in an era of global capitalism. Already this search has yielded some incredible early results. With this book, the idea of an architectural 'type' seems more supple - that is, more differentiated and therefore more relevant and productive - than ever. Typological Formations is nothing less than a manifesto for a return to projects and project-based forms of architectural knowledge today.