Territory, Climate, Body and Architecture

Toward an Ecological Typology

Resumo

This essay explores the capacity of vernacular types to engage not only the climatic and ecological dimensions of a place, but also its social and cultural commonalities. Starting with the need for an experiential approach to architecture, an initial passage explores the multisensory dimension of the human body. This leads to the everyday life experience of the inhabitants of a given place. Every place reveals common behaviours that are shared among its inhabitants, and ecological types offer disciplinary tools for attuning these questions to architecture. This essay tentatively aspires to redefine the concept of typology, overlaying the formal and material questions considered by previous definitions with performative, behavioural, and phenomenological ones.