Row Houses: A Housing Typology

by Günter Pfeifer, Per Brauneck

To continue developing existing building types in an intelligent way is a crucial task in the field of residential building. A deeper understanding of the underlying types is indispensable for the success of the individual design, as well as for ensuring that tried and tested structures can be utilized, repeated, and varied in a wide variety of situations.
For this typology of residential buildings, the authors have developed systematic new presentations of the most innovative types. Each individual volume lays out the possibilities for using and transforming a particular form of residential structure.
The first volume deals with the various types of the courtyard house, which utilizes the courtyard as an intimate outdoor living space. A presentation of the courtyard as a building block of the city is followed by coverage of the complete spectrum of types - cluster, network, carpet, terraces, etc.
The second volume is devoted to the various types of row house, a particularly widespread form of residential structure. A general discussion of the row as organizing principle - the row as urban building block, linear space, ways of handling corners - is followed by the systematic presentation of the different types.
Within each type, variants are distinguished according to how they organize space, their number of floors, etc. The range of possible solutions is presented in uniform ground plans newly drawn to scale.

Genres: Architecture

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 2003

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a nutshell, this is a rigorous guidebook of row house types primarily ordered by stair and courtyard configurations as only a German University research team could provide. I would be convinced with this as an objective, comprehensive collation, but it seems incomplete. The restriction of examples from a select zone around Germany and the Netherlands (with a couple exceptions) and from a limited 1990s time period (again, with the odd Herman Hertzberger exception from 1971) limits this to the degree that once they get into the more adventurous types, they resort to using Darmstadt student projects. Therefore, this demands the question of whether these can really be considered “typologies” in the same sense as types backed up by real precedents. Either it’s a design studio publication consisting of blank check, complexly layered row house proposals, or it’s a guide about “real” built types (which would be greatly enriched by stepping beyond such a limited geographical/chronological boundary).

If I accept this catalogue for what it is, then I have to wonder how in Hell does the opening essay, “Cybernetics: Integration of Type and Topos” relate to the Excel™ spread sheet-like matrix of projects that follow. No way can the author(s) criticize the contemporary lack of revolutionary, optimistic fervor that defined the milieu around Archigram and Bucky Fuller proposals and then follow up with the subsequent 90 pages of mostly spiritless, existenzminimum housing. Yes, they include the MVDRV houses from Borneo Sporenburg and the aforementioned Hertzberger, but most of the remaining examples lack the ardor of say, Stanley Saitowitz’s housing oeuvre; work that, itself, is pretty damn minimalist compared to other Cali practitioners! They even dig up a straight-laced Neutelings Riedijk project! I suppose they would argue that the scientific/logistical approach to this somehow correlates to Fuller’s rigorous inquiries, but I’m not feeling it.

[Ciuras Adrian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was even worse to read then the Freestanding Houses volume even if I am an architecture student and there are a lot of photos in it. But I think this comes from my biases. I can never unlink this kind of houses made for workers in England or the cows living in industrial complexes from this typology of homes. It feel like you have to have no personality to live here. So maybe this is why it took me two times as much to read it.
If u want to do this kind of building it might be a good inspiration with at best 5 projects. I don't even know why our teachers recommended it.