Tipi. Declino o metamorfosi?

The analysis of the concept of type in architecture and design characterises the first part of this paper by introducing the question of the use of this concept in modernity. The review of some definitions related to the typologies highlights the complex and problematic bond in the relationship with history and the natural and necessary inclusion of previous experiences in current design practices. Another aspect that is developed regards the interpretation of the typological theme according to the transformist view, with references to the nineteenth-century studies on the classification and comparison of evolutionary lines of architecture and of systems of objects. The second part of the paper investigates the reciprocal influences between types and the social body, with particular reference to the machine à habiter of Le Corbusier , intended as a synthesis of aesthetics and technology of the modern age and as the manifesto of the industrial and social context between the two world wars. A unique conception regarding certain types of products is that practised by Ludwig Wittgenstein for the Stonborough Palace, the house built in the late ‘20s in Vienna, where the philosopher designed all the lines and elements with which he had imagined the logical structure of the house. These include doors, windows and hardware whose variations of materials and dimensions deny the standardisation of the elements constituting a unique fact in the Austrian metallurgical production of the period. With post-modernism, from macro to micro, the type springs to new life freed from preconceptions with Appropriation Art, the High and Low contamination, the inversion of building/object. The changeover to the telematic era caused a significant decline of the typology, which was more the result of the attribution of a similar statute to architecture rather than the reciprocal artistic influences. And in the liquid world of design culture the hybrid has become the attribute that defines the products whose features increasingly resemble those of interconnected organisms/ transmitters. But the gradual decline of typology has recently been the subject of a turnaround in trend that has re-evaluated the importance of the historical references and the evolution of the typological fundamentals according to an evolutionary perspective. After the euphoria of the telematic innovation and the debasement of tradition, history becomes central again to the understanding of the design culture so as to show multiple dimensions in the mapping of future scenarios where the use of the past is an action aimed at enhancing what already exists as a sign of a metamorphic process made possible by the acquisition of previous knowledge.