Urban Housing Typologies 

The ‘Urban Housing Typologies’ course discusses the essential conditions and design strategies for urban habitation and introduces aspects of typologies at the various scales of the urban territory, the neighbourhood, the building, the domain of the unit and the individual’s realm within.  

Both lectures and seminars span across the multi-layered and cross-scalar aspects of housing – the social, cultural, historical, morphological and system-based ones. It focuses on cities and their specific narratives, morphologies, scales and densities, but also discusses the relevance of housing for urban development as such.  

The plural ‘Typolog-ies’ illustrates that typology is – next to discussing the established ideologies and concepts of typology in theory and practice – proposed to essentially be an individual procedural expertise emerging architects develop. Likewise, the course intentionally goes beyond taking typology as a mere reproduction of existing, systemized catalogues of architectural strategies but aims to build up procedural expertise to continuously acquire a holistic understanding of techniques, strategies, attitudes and ideas that are embodied within architectural projects.

 

Case Study by Goh Jia Hui Jan: Odham’s Walk, London1981, Architect: GLC

Case Study by Joshua Tan Seh Kiat: Habitat67, Montreal 1967, Architect: Moshe Safdie

Case Study by Ng Wen Qi: Amanora Future Towers, Pune (India) 2018, Architect: MVRDV

Case Study Ong Jia Ying: Skyville, Singapore 2015, Architect: WOHA

Case Study by Tan Chu Er Joey: Silodam, Amsterdam 2003, Architect: MVRDV