TYPOLOGY OF HOUSING IN TEACHING ARCHITECTURE

Teaching architectural design requires, on the one hand, teaching skills in solving standard issues by means of standard models and procedures, on the other hand, it involves the development of creative thinking. Both these aspects of the didactics of architecture are connected with the typology of housing. Designing is based on the knowledge of the so-far solutions taking the advantage of the achievements of analytical typology. The teaching process involves transition from orderly resources of well-known solutions to the search for new resolutions, which is the domain of generative typology. The teaching process usually results in the creation of an architectural design. A unique design may become a subject of interest to analytical typology, leading thus in some cases to the definition of a new type of housing.

Teaching architectural design involves the necessity of defining a designing task, the solution of which will enable students to acquire certain skills and vocational competence. The way of formulating tasks is the key to keeping the balance between standard and innovative thinking while searching for optimum solutions. A helping hand can be given by directive typology which makes it possible to describe a type of housing being the subject of a task by determining its features and providing the required parameters. The scope and method of such a description cannot limit the students’ invention or hamper their creativity which should be enhanced, for instance by means of showing various directions of possible solutions, also from a typological point of view. Such an approach proved to be very useful in the preparation of the author’s university textbook of designing multi-family housing.