12 lectures every winter semester
For the first time held in the winter semester of 2013, Andreas’ lecture on “Design & Building Typologies” featured 12 typologies that were explored on 12 Mondays in the winter term. Continual research on this lecture was also central for my post-doctoral habilitation thesis within my tenure track.
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Calendar – Concept for 12 Lectures, 2012
I started researching for the lectures using this tentative calendar structure. Twelve typologies - theater, museum, library, state, second row with office, recreation, religion and retail, third row with production/industry, education, surveillance and hospital, with some 30 projects in each. In every lecture several architectural examples were discussed in detail, featuring plans and section prominently, highlighting characteristics, typical constellations, returning architectural types and compositions and (more or less innovative) usages of old or new building elements and techniques throughout centuries of (mainly Western) architecture. Housing and residential use is strictly excluded from these 12 civic typologes or more public buildings as there is (or was) an own institute and chair of housing at TU Graz. My mandatory lecture on public buildings in the architecture master was nominated by architecture students for the 2017 “Excellence in Teaching”-Award of TU Graz and became a finalist.
I was tenured in 2017 and published a revised version of my habilitation thesis (2016) with Zurich Park Books in German in 2018: “Entwurf einer architektonischen Gebäudelehre”. Featuring 12 projects in 12 typologies, this selection was published in a revised and extended second German version in 2021 together with a first English version entitled “Thinking Design – Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology.”
After being delivered online during the pandemic, this master lecture was held for the final time in the winter semester of 2021/22. Within the framework of the revised Master of Architecture curriculum at TU Graz, this format has since been replaced by a series of lectures offered each semester by various institutes. These are loosely thematically coordinated but distributed across multiple voices and disciplinary perspectives.
Each of the lecture’s 12 "functions"—institutional, cultural, economic, or social—can, in principle, be accommodated in almost any building structure, provided there is sufficient spatial latitude, generosity of form, or political and architectural will. Yet, as this uneven and heterogeneous field of typologies illustrates, the emergence of an architectural work of lasting value is never guaranteed. It remains contingent—dependent on context, programmatic pressure, and the imaginative leap that transforms necessity into form. Architecture, in this sense, is less the stable response to a brief than the occasional crystallization of a potential latent in the typological field.
1 THEATER
2 MUSEUM
3 LIBRARY
4 STATE
Calendar – Concept for 12 Lectures, 2012I started researching for the lectures using this tentative calendar structure. Twelve typologies - theater, museum, library, state, second row with office, recreation, religion and retail, third row with production/industry, education, surveillance and hospital, with some 30 projects in each. In every lecture several architectural examples were discussed in detail, featuring plans and section prominently, highlighting characteristics, typical constellations, returning architectural types and compositions and (more or less innovative) usages of old or new building elements and techniques throughout centuries of (mainly Western) architecture. Housing and residential use is strictly excluded from these 12 civic typologes or more public buildings as there is (or was) an own institute and chair of housing at TU Graz. My mandatory lecture on public buildings in the architecture master was nominated by architecture students for the 2017 “Excellence in Teaching”-Award of TU Graz and became a finalist.
I was tenured in 2017 and published a revised version of my habilitation thesis (2016) with Zurich Park Books in German in 2018: “Entwurf einer architektonischen Gebäudelehre”. Featuring 12 projects in 12 typologies, this selection was published in a revised and extended second German version in 2021 together with a first English version entitled “Thinking Design – Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology.”
After being delivered online during the pandemic, this master lecture was held for the final time in the winter semester of 2021/22. Within the framework of the revised Master of Architecture curriculum at TU Graz, this format has since been replaced by a series of lectures offered each semester by various institutes. These are loosely thematically coordinated but distributed across multiple voices and disciplinary perspectives.
Each of the lecture’s 12 "functions"—institutional, cultural, economic, or social—can, in principle, be accommodated in almost any building structure, provided there is sufficient spatial latitude, generosity of form, or political and architectural will. Yet, as this uneven and heterogeneous field of typologies illustrates, the emergence of an architectural work of lasting value is never guaranteed. It remains contingent—dependent on context, programmatic pressure, and the imaginative leap that transforms necessity into form. Architecture, in this sense, is less the stable response to a brief than the occasional crystallization of a potential latent in the typological field.
1 THEATER
2 MUSEUM
3 LIBRARY
4 STATE
5 OFFICE
6 RECREATION
7 RELIGION
8 RETAIL
9 FACTORY
10 EDUCATION
11 SURVEILLANCE
12 HOSPITAL
Attemsgasse 11
8010 Graz, AT
Staatlich befugter und beeideter Ziviltechniker
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︎︎︎Imprint & DSGVO
Unless otherwise stated, all materials on this website and the ideas incorporated herein, as an instrument of professional service, are protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights belonging to Andreas Lechner, its affiliates or its licensors and all such rights are hereby asserted and reserved. No part of this website may be copied, reproduced, republished, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for commercial purposes. Any modification or use of the information contained on this website for any purpose not explicitly permitted without prior written consent is a violation of the author’s intellectual property rights and is strictly prohibited.
︎︎︎Imprint & DSGVO