Peripheries – Peripherocene
︎︎︎The Urban Peripheries in the Era of the Anthropocene
Peripheries – Peripherocene is a collaborative research initiative led by Cameron McEwan (Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne) and Andreas Lechner (TU Graz), which investigates the dynamic intersections between Anthropocenic conditions and the spatial, social, and conceptual production of urban peripheries. Launched with a symposium in Newcastle in 2023 and further explored in the thematic session “Peripheries” at the AHRA 2023 Conference: Situated Ecologies of Care (University of Portsmouth), the project is currently preparing a Special Issue of The Journal of Architecture (RIBA), to be published in 2026.
︎︎︎The Urban Peripheries in the Era of the Anthropocene
Photo: © Andreas Lechner – Aldo Rossi’s extension of the Cemetery Ponte Sesto in Rozzano with G. Da Pozzo and F.S. Fera (1989–1995), Southern Periphery of Milan, 2023.
Core Group 2023
- Cameron McEwan (Northumbria University + AE Foundation)
- Andreas Lechner (TU Graz + Studio Andreas Lechner)
- Elisa Iturbe (Harvard GSD + Outside Development)
- Joe Wojewoda (Northumbria University)
- Lee Ann McIlroy (Northumbria University + University of Dundee)
- Lorens Holm (University of Dundee)
- Neil Gillespie (Reiach & Hall + Scott Sutherland School of Architecture)
- Sandra Bartoli (Büros für Konstruktivismus + Munich University of Applied Sciences)
- Silvan Linden (Büros für Konstruktivismus)
- Yamina Saheb (OpenExp)
Context and Conceptual Framework
In The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi proposed the city as a locus of collective memory, with urban artifacts, typologies, and structures expressing an “urban imaginary” (Rossi, 1982). While his analysis emphasized the historical city centre, the twenty-first century presents a different urban paradigm. The rigid dichotomies of centre and periphery have dissolved into sprawling, discontinuous, and hybridized landscapes shaped by processes of extended urbanisation (Brenner & Schmid, 2015).
The periphery, long seen as residual or secondary, increasingly defines the dominant condition of contemporary urban life. Georges Perec’s attention to the everyday, the banal, and the habitual (Perec, 1997) compels us to reconsider peripheral territories as primary expressions of collective life, containing their own monuments, memories, and spatial logics.
From Centre to Periphery: A Reframing
Today’s peripheries are plural and planetary: encompassing suburbs, exurbs, favelas, informal settlements, logistics zones, old villages, and new towns. They form what Ignasi de Solà-Morales called terrain vague—ambiguous spaces full of latent potential (Solà-Morales, 1995). These geographies are shaped by contradictory forces of capital, migration, ecology, infrastructure, and state control. As such, the periphery is not a homogeneous condition but a multifaceted and dynamic terrain. .
Processes of peripherization—defined by uneven development, environmental degradation, and spatial marginalization—are exacerbated by crises of capitalism, climate, and care (Kühn, 2014). These processes increasingly shape rural and remote territories far beyond metropolitan cores, creating hybrid zones of agriculture, extractivism, and speculative development.
Key Research Questions
Our research poses urgent and generative questions:
1. What is the Peripheral Imaginary?
If Rossi employed categories such as type, locus, permanence, and monument to understand the city, what interpretive tools can help us theorize the periphery? What are the typologies, symbols, and spatial figures that shape peripheral imaginaries?
2. What Constitutes Peripheral Memory and Identity?
Peripheries, too, are carriers of memory and history. How do built forms and urban patterns reflect the lived experience of peripheral life? Who remembers the periphery, and how?
3. How Are Peripheries Reconfigured in the Anthropocene?
The Anthropocene—a term marking the deep entanglement of natural and human systems (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Haraway, 2016)—challenges traditional urban categories. How are peripheries transformed by infrastructural intensification, resource extraction, environmental displacement, and new forms of political governance?
The Anthropocenic Periphery
In The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi proposed the city as a locus of collective memory, with urban artifacts, typologies, and structures expressing an “urban imaginary” (Rossi, 1982). While his analysis emphasized the historical city centre, the twenty-first century presents a different urban paradigm. The rigid dichotomies of centre and periphery have dissolved into sprawling, discontinuous, and hybridized landscapes shaped by processes of extended urbanisation (Brenner & Schmid, 2015).
The periphery, long seen as residual or secondary, increasingly defines the dominant condition of contemporary urban life. Georges Perec’s attention to the everyday, the banal, and the habitual (Perec, 1997) compels us to reconsider peripheral territories as primary expressions of collective life, containing their own monuments, memories, and spatial logics.
From Centre to Periphery: A Reframing
Today’s peripheries are plural and planetary: encompassing suburbs, exurbs, favelas, informal settlements, logistics zones, old villages, and new towns. They form what Ignasi de Solà-Morales called terrain vague—ambiguous spaces full of latent potential (Solà-Morales, 1995). These geographies are shaped by contradictory forces of capital, migration, ecology, infrastructure, and state control. As such, the periphery is not a homogeneous condition but a multifaceted and dynamic terrain. .
Processes of peripherization—defined by uneven development, environmental degradation, and spatial marginalization—are exacerbated by crises of capitalism, climate, and care (Kühn, 2014). These processes increasingly shape rural and remote territories far beyond metropolitan cores, creating hybrid zones of agriculture, extractivism, and speculative development.
Key Research Questions
Our research poses urgent and generative questions:
1. What is the Peripheral Imaginary?
If Rossi employed categories such as type, locus, permanence, and monument to understand the city, what interpretive tools can help us theorize the periphery? What are the typologies, symbols, and spatial figures that shape peripheral imaginaries?
2. What Constitutes Peripheral Memory and Identity?
Peripheries, too, are carriers of memory and history. How do built forms and urban patterns reflect the lived experience of peripheral life? Who remembers the periphery, and how?
3. How Are Peripheries Reconfigured in the Anthropocene?
The Anthropocene—a term marking the deep entanglement of natural and human systems (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Haraway, 2016)—challenges traditional urban categories. How are peripheries transformed by infrastructural intensification, resource extraction, environmental displacement, and new forms of political governance?
Theoretical Contributions and Methods
We seek to build a spatial, representational, and theoretical lexicon on peripheries that integrates insights from architecture, urban theory, political ecology, and environmental humanities. Key contributions will explore:- Extended Urbanisation: Following Brenner and Schmid (2015), we conceptualize the periphery as integral to global urban restructuring, including hinterlands, supply chains, and sites of dispossession.
- Planetary Urbanism: Urbanization is no longer confined to cities; it is a planetary process (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020).
- Peripheral Monuments: New typologies and icons emerge not from central institutions but from infrastructural, vernacular, or marginal architectures.
- Critical Representation: From cartography to photography, we explore visual and conceptual strategies to render the invisible geographies of the periphery visible and legible (Corner, 1999).
Emerging Themes and Calls for Contribution
Voices from the Periphery- Who inhabits, governs, and narrates the periphery?
- How do political and economic systems create peripheral conditions?
- What affective registers—love, loathing, longing—emerge in the lived experiences of peripheral life?
- What are the visual, formal, and typological manifestations of the periphery?
- How can peripheries be drawn, photographed, mapped, or modelled to capture their complexity?
- What are the representational tools required for a “critical cartography” of peripheral space?
The Anthropocenic Periphery
- How do infrastructures, ecologies, and institutions produce peripheries under Anthropocenic pressures?
- What new models of settlement, adaptation, and resistance emerge in these zones?
- How do notions of care, resilience, and spatial justice inform our understanding of peripheries?
References
- Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2020). Why does everyone think cities can save the planet? Urban Studies, 57(11), 2201–2221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020919081
- Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). Towards a new epistemology of the urban? City, 19(2–3), 151–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712
- Corner, J. (1999). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings(pp. 213–252). Reaktion Books.
- Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The “Anthropocene”. IGBP Newsletter, 41, 17–18.
- Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
- Kühn, M. (2014). Peripheralization: Theoretical Concepts Explaining Socio-Spatial Inequalities. European Planning Studies, 23(2), 367–378. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2013.862518
- Perec, G. (1997). Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Penguin Books.
- Pope, A. (2024). Inverse Utopia: Urbanism and the Great Acceleration, Birkhäuser.
- Rossi, A. (1982). The Architecture of the City. MIT Press.
- Solà-Morales, I. de (1995). Terrain vague. In C. Davidson (Ed.), Anyplace (pp. 118–123). MIT Press.
Counterintuitive Typologies
“The architect who would accept his role as combiner of significant old clichés—valid banalities—in new contexts as his condition within a society that directs its best efforts, its big money, and its elegant technologies elsewhere, can ironically express in this indirect way a true concern for society’s inverted scale of values.”
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction (1966)
︎︎︎ Conceptual Framework
Fig. Robert Venturi, “Recommendation for a monument” (1972).
Fig. 1 Robert Venturi’s “Recommendation for a monument” (1972) next to Madrid PKMN Architecture’s greenish update from 2014.
Fig. 2 Posters for Andreas’ 2022 Lecture on “Counterintuitve Typologies“ with thumbnails of 12 master’s theses on counterintuitive “monuments”, continual building and adaptive reuse.
Fig. 3 Appended brochure “Counterintuitve Typologies“ with 12 master’s theses on counterintuitive “monuments”, continual building and adaptive reuse in Andreas Lechner’s Thinking Design - Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology, Zurich: Park Books 2021.
Fig. 4 Page spreads from the appended brochure “Counterintuitive Typologies” in Andreas Lechner, Thinking Design - Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology, Zurich: Park Books 2021.
Fig. 6 Poster with all 2021-22 guests of the Architectural Research Lecture Series at TU Graz where Andreas talked about “Counterintuitive Typologies” as a professional and academic interest for the first time.
Fig. 7 “Counterintuitive Typologies” design studios at TU Graz from 2020 to 2023.
Toward a Typological Counter-Culture
Counterintuitive Typologies is the title and conceptual nucleus of Andreas Lechner’s research group, encompassing design studios, supervised theses, international collaborations, and funded research projects. It proposes a redefinition of typology not as static form but as cultural critique, positioning the architectural type as a historically embedded yet continuously mutable structure—capable of both poetic resonance and ecological engagement.
By engaging in what Lechner calls continual building—that is, adaptive reuse of existing structures within the constraints and opportunities of the urban periphery—Counterintuitive Typologies responds to architecture's contemporary crisis: aesthetic commodification, planetary precarity, and institutional inertia. The work reclaims neglected or banal building forms—such as strip malls, infrastructural leftovers, and suburban sprawl—as sites of critical innovation and material resistance.
Theoretical Lineage and Philosophical Anchors
Lechner’s work is rooted in architectural historiography and critique, drawing on:
With History in architecture (Venturi) – precedent as aesthetic resource, History for architecture (Rowe) – analysis as methodology and History of architecture (Tafuri) – critique as political act, an interpretive framework undergirds the Counterintuitive Typologies approach—seeking to embed critique, care, and repair within typological research.
Central Tenets of Counterintuitive Typologies
Research Initiatives and Outputs
Pedagogy and Philosophical Practice
In both teaching and practice, Lechner emphasizes bricolage—an architectural method that merges theory, history, and material engagement. His studios at TU Graz and seminars at Politecnico di Milano treat design as philosophical inquiry, resisting disciplinary compartmentalization. Students explore low-status spaces not for their novelty but for their transformative potential—developing critical spatial literacy and ecological sensitivity.
Counterintuitive Typologies is the title and conceptual nucleus of Andreas Lechner’s research group, encompassing design studios, supervised theses, international collaborations, and funded research projects. It proposes a redefinition of typology not as static form but as cultural critique, positioning the architectural type as a historically embedded yet continuously mutable structure—capable of both poetic resonance and ecological engagement.
By engaging in what Lechner calls continual building—that is, adaptive reuse of existing structures within the constraints and opportunities of the urban periphery—Counterintuitive Typologies responds to architecture's contemporary crisis: aesthetic commodification, planetary precarity, and institutional inertia. The work reclaims neglected or banal building forms—such as strip malls, infrastructural leftovers, and suburban sprawl—as sites of critical innovation and material resistance.
Theoretical Lineage and Philosophical Anchors
Lechner’s work is rooted in architectural historiography and critique, drawing on:
- Robert Venturi's embrace of contradiction and ambiguity (Venturi, 1966)
- Aldo Rossi's urban memory and typological permanence (Rossi, 1982)
- Colin Rowe's analytical translation of classical proportion to modernist form (Rowe, 1976)
- Manfredo Tafuri’s ideological critique of architecture’s entanglement with power and capitalism (Tafuri, 1976)
With History in architecture (Venturi) – precedent as aesthetic resource, History for architecture (Rowe) – analysis as methodology and History of architecture (Tafuri) – critique as political act, an interpretive framework undergirds the Counterintuitive Typologies approach—seeking to embed critique, care, and repair within typological research.
Central Tenets of Counterintuitive Typologies
- Typological Reinterpretation
- Types are not neutral; they evolve through cultural, ecological, and economic pressures.
- Counterintuitive approaches misplace, repurpose, or reframe standard typologies—redefining their social meaning and spatial logic.
- Peripheries as Critical Grounds
- Peripheral zones—Rem Koolhaas’ junkspace—are reframed as latent sites of opportunity and reactivation.
- These geographies are approached not as margins but as repositories of embodied energy and new monumentality.
- Continual Building and Umbau
- Continual building favors transformation over demolition, aligning architectural practice with ecological ethics.
- Building types like empty malls, warehouses, or vacant offices are studied for their affordances—their potential to be re-scripted as social infrastructure.
- Epistemological Resistance
- Challenging architecture’s complicity in aesthetic and economic spectacle by emphasizing historical reflexivity and typological ambiguity.
- Design becomes a method of resistance—materially precise, theoretically grounded, and ecologically attuned.
Research Initiatives and Outputs
- CBT – Counterintuitive Building Types (2022–2025)
Funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)
Adaptive reuse of underutilized commercial typologies (e.g., strip malls) to explore new cultural and civic potentials. - Architectural Affordances – Typologies of Umbau (2022-2025)
With DAStU at Politecnico di Milano, co-led by Gennaro Postiglione
Investigates the inherent possibilities of existing structures for spatial and social transformation. - Peripheries – Peripherocene (2023-2026)
With Northumbria University, UK
Explores the ecological and architectural significance of peripheral landscapes in the Anthropocene. Forthcoming as a special issue of The Journal of Architecture (2025). - Thinking Design – Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology
Zurich: Park Books, 2021
A visual taxonomy of 144 case studies presented across 12 typologies, from antiquity to the present. Avoids abstract classification in favor of analogical clarity.
- Appended Booklet: Counterintuitive Typologies
Features 12 master’s theses (2015–2021) exploring peripheral and commercial vernaculars through precise drawings and conceptual revaluation.
Example topics: city edges, infrastructural voids, continuous building, future monuments.
Pedagogy and Philosophical Practice
In both teaching and practice, Lechner emphasizes bricolage—an architectural method that merges theory, history, and material engagement. His studios at TU Graz and seminars at Politecnico di Milano treat design as philosophical inquiry, resisting disciplinary compartmentalization. Students explore low-status spaces not for their novelty but for their transformative potential—developing critical spatial literacy and ecological sensitivity.
Selected References
- Venturi, R. (1966). Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
- Rossi, A. (1982). The Architecture of the City (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Rowe, C. (1976). The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Tafuri, M. (1976). Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Lechner, A. (2021). Thinking Design: Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology. Zurich: Park Books.
Fig. 5 Posters for design studios on “Counterintuitive Typologies” at TU Graz from 2020 to 2023.
"Counterintuitive Typologies" is both the title and guiding principle for Andreas' diverse research group and teaching focus, encompassing his work in practice, design studios, supervised master's theses, and a three-year research project funded by the Austrian Science Promotion Agency (FFG).
This initiative is distinguished by its international collaborations and research engagements. Its overarching goal is to tackle contemporary urban challenges—such as the critical need for urban infill and city densification—by integrating upcycling and adaptive reuse of existing structures, while re-evaluating the architectural concept of "type" (Fig. 1). By reinterpreting "type," the project seeks to bridge and critically advance the epistemology of architecture, particularly when juxtaposing cultural significance with the tangible themes of circularity (Fig. 2).
Currently, "Counterintuitive Typologies" comprises design studios at TU Graz, PhD seminars at Milan Polytechnic and a number of master’s theses at TU Graz. The cooperative R+D project CBT - Counterintuitive Building Types on the adaptive reuse of strip malls is a central project for the group as is the cooperative research project Architectural Affordances - Typologies of Umbau with Milan’s Politecnico Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU); the research collaboration "Peripheries - Peripherocene" with Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK extends the group significantly and was formed during 2023.
Counterintuitive Typologies emerged in parallel with the development of the second German and first English edition of Andreas' book, Thinking Design – Blueprint for an Architecture of Typologies (Park Books, 2021). The book leverages Aldo Rossi's analytical and typological framework, viewing cities as a fusion of monuments, enduring imprints, and collective memories. It showcases 144 significant buildings from antiquity to the present, with a focus on civic typologies, illustrated through meticulous line drawings. These drawings include 12 typologies, each represented by 12 case studies, depicted in plan, section, and axonometric views, with key elevations highlighted.
Fig. 144 projects in “Thinking Design”, floor plans drawn at same scale Accompanying the book is a booklet featuring 12 master's theses, all supervised by Andreas Lechner between 2015 and 2021 (Fig. 3). These theses explore concepts such as city edges, commercial vernaculars, and urban peripheries through the lens of "counterintuitive typologies." By investigating the potential future "monuments" of the periphery, these theses offer a counter-perspective that contrasts with the more traditional typologies and civic buildings presented in the book. They are depicted in the same precise drawing style and format as the book’s 144 projects.
Counterintuitive Typologies aims to cultivate a culturally responsive architecture that deeply engages with the material realities of our world, while rethinking the epistemologies and policies that shape the discipline in an imperfect context. By employing the concept of "type" and analogical thinking, the project seeks to reframe our understanding of cultural production and challenge the notion of art as an isolated, autonomous entity.
Continual Building on Buildings, the City, and the Discontinuous Peripheries
(Andreas Lechner, 2/2025)As an architect, I consider myself a hybrid practitioner, one who navigates fluidly—and at times deliberately blurs—the boundaries between theory, practice, and pedagogy. My work is grounded in bricolage, synthesizing diverse influences, historical insights, and field observations into conceptual frameworks that merge intellectual rigor with tangible, real-world engagement. Rather than adhering to a singular architectural formula, I see design as a discipline that flourishes through unexpected juxtapositions. Architecture, in this sense, is both an art and a science—a philosophical act of building shaped by multiple perspectives, evolving typologies, and the dynamism of everyday life.
At its core, architectural engagement is an unconditional historical enterprise, inextricably tied to collective memory—both societal and disciplinary. Each intervention contributes to a larger architectural continuum, reinforcing the necessity of historical reflection. Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture exemplifies history in architecture, showing how historical precedent can inspire novel expressions. Colin Rowe’s The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa represents history for architecture, forging analytical frameworks that reinterpret classical compositions for contemporary use. Meanwhile, Manfredo Tafuri’s Theories and History of Architecture interrogates the history of architecture as an ideological construct, revealing architecture’s inescapable entanglement with power structures. Tafuri’s critique underscores the limitations of formalist and self-referential innovation—reminding us that even radical departures often reinforce, rather than subvert, prevailing economic and political systems.
I see the role of the architect not merely as a cynical fashionista or a passive historical agent but as a careful artist—one who engages philosophy to reveal the deeper truths of spatial production. Architecture needs philosophy to articulate its truth, but philosophy equally depends on architecture, as its rational structures cannot fully grasp reality or counteract the ideological illusions imposed by capitalist culture. Architecture, beyond its technical and aesthetic dimensions, holds the potential for critique, care, and repair, even within a techno-cultural industry saturated with commodified images and reductive ideologies precisely through the resistance of its material organization. To counteract the devaluation of aesthetic achievement under mass production and commercial pressures, architects must insist on what architecture does best—rethinking materials, forms, and spatial relationships. This commitment is not just an act of resistance but one of transformation, demanding a persistent engagement with innovation and social responsibility, ie. foregrounding the capacity for thoughtful evolution, ensuring that the built environment remains a site of both careful experimentation and meaningful change.
Peripheries, Typologies, and Ecological Continuity
In my teaching at TU Graz, my visiting professorship at Politecnico di Milano, and other professional collaborations, I advocate for this dual conception of architecture as both critical and poetic. Design studios serve as crucibles of experimentation, where students interrogate typological frameworks, cultural assumptions, and morphological norms. This becomes particularly urgent when applied to peripheral landscapes—those spaces Rem Koolhaas labeled junkspace—suburban sprawl, post-industrial wastelands, or infrastructural remnants often dismissed as lacking architectural value. Yet, these neglected zones are repositories of grey energy—latent material, infrastructural, and social potential waiting to be reactivated. Investigating these low typologies requires rethinking how we define and communicate these leftover spaces, framing them through repair rather than erasure—an approach where artistic and philosophical inquiry intersects to uncover hidden opportunities.
Beyond conventional densification, infill, and urban renewal, the ecological imperative is paramount. Continual building—both materially and urbanistically—leverages existing infrastructures and harnesses the embodied energy embedded within the built environment. Rather than defaulting to demolition and new construction, we extend and transform what already exists, reimagining underutilized structures as vital cultural and functional assets rather than discarded relics. This approach mitigates environmental impact, conserves resources, and fosters new architectural expressions. By embedding sustainability within the design process, we uphold a broader ethical imperative—ensuring that architecture engages holistically with social, ecological, and planetary concerns.
This shifting status of the periphery under the pressures of the Anthropocene is a key theme in Peripheries – Peripherocene, a forthcoming special issue of The Journal of Architecture that I am co-editing with Cameron McEwan. Our research interrogates the evolving relationship between architecture, peripherality, and planetary conditions, proposing new frameworks that move beyond conventional center-periphery dichotomies toward more fluid, adaptive responses to contemporary spatial, ecological, and socio-political realities.
Thinking Design, Counterintuitive Typologies, and Architectural Affordances
This historical, ecological, and critical perspective shaped my book Thinking Design – Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology (2021), which posits that typologies are not static classifications but dynamic instruments that bridge conceptual abstraction with pragmatic design strategies. However, the book resists typology’s conventional classification; rather than an index of types, it presents 144 projects through drawing—one plan, one section, and either an axonometric or key elevation—offering a typological model for understanding architectural intent through form. Organized into Tectonics, Type, and Topos, the book examines twelve essential typologies—theater, museum, library, state, office, recreation, religion, retail, factory, education, surveillance, and hospital—each represented by twelve case studies spanning from antiquity to the present. By stripping away local, historical, or technical details, the book intentionally highlights architecture’s iterative patterns, reinforcing how typological thinking is essential for design’s transformative power.
Alongside this book, I initiated the Counterintuitive Typologies research group, initially published as a booklet featuring twelve master’s theses that explored city edges, commercial vernaculars, and urban peripheries as sites of architectural experimentation. These projects, framed as “potential future monuments of the periphery”, contrast with the civic typologies examined in Thinking Design. They question how architectural typologies evolve when removed from their conventional contexts—asking whether the peripheral, the overlooked, or the seemingly mundane can give rise to new forms of monumentality.
This research has expanded into the book Architectural Affordances – Typologies of Umbau, resulting from a collaborative research project with Politecnico di Milano’s Gennaro Postiglione and into the three-year “Counterintuitive Building Types” (CBT) project funded by Austrian Research Promotion Agency. In CBT we focus on adaptive reuse, particularly of underutilized commercial structures—empty malls, vacant office parks, or disused warehouses—exploring how their affordances can be unlocked to reintegrate them into contemporary cultural and social frameworks. This is not merely an exercise in preservation; it is a means of engaging with ecological and economic realities, reducing demolition waste, conserving energy, and challenging speculative real-estate practices while fostering environments that encourage reinvention and communal engagement.
Counterintuitive Typologies and the Future of Architectural Engagement
With counterintuitive typologies as a framework for rethinking architecture’s potential, my interest lies in reconfiguring standardized products differently or unexpectedly and might hybridize programs, embrace seemingly mismatched volumes, and repurposing mundane structures to respond to contemporary cultural, social, and environmental demands. This is especially relevant in peripheral zones, where architectural junkspace accumulates. Here, architecture’s poetic radicality challenges the commodification of design, reinforces community engagement, and demonstrates its power to reshape collective thought. More fundamentally, this approach bridges historical continuity with ecological necessity, revealing how the new always emerges through a nuanced dialogue with the old.
Conclusion: Architecture as Cultural Critique and Ecological Strategy
Architecture is inherently a tension between critical reflection and poetic invention. By interrogating rigid building codes and functionalist dogmas, we expose the illusions sustained by the techno-capitalist culture industry—much as art destabilizes entrenched perceptions. Yet, architecture’s poetic capacity must also provoke empathy and curiosity—reminding us that we build not just to enclose space, but to foster discourse, provoke thought, and maintain cultural memory. Ultimately, my contribution to architecture and education stems from the belief that the discipline’s transformative potential lies in its ability to navigate the continuum between theory, practice, and artistic experimentation. By reconceptualizing typology as a generative force and embracing peripheries, so-called junk spaces, and the memory-laden fabric of existing buildings, architectural thinking remains adaptable and resilient. This approach ensures that architecture continues to question, repair, and evolve—operating simultaneously as cultural critique, ecological strategy, and aesthetic intensification. In doing so, I aim to cultivate practitioners who move beyond the limitations of a hyper-commercialized culture industry, engaging architecture as a medium through which to address planetary urgencies and historical continuities alike.
Architectural Affordances – Typologies of Umbau
The book 'Architectural Affordances – Typologies of Umbau' is the result of perennial research and teaching by Andreas Lechner and Gennaro Postiglione at Politecnico di Milano.
︎︎︎ Cooperative Research
The book 'Architectural Affordances – Typologies of Umbau' is the result of perennial research and teaching by Andreas Lechner and Gennaro Postiglione at Politecnico di Milano. Edited in collaboration with Francesca Serrazanetti and Maike Gold, it investigates 30 international Umbau projects—architectural transformations—through three temporal scales: those spanning centuries, those exceeding a hundred years, and those occurring within a single century. Each project's material and functional transformation history is illustrated with one plan, section, and elevation, alongside yellow-red diagrams that trace the stages of change.
The projects featured in the book were selected through an international call for papers, with a scientific committee curating the most thought-provoking and exemplary submissions. Central to the book is the exploration of the dynamic interplay between enduring structural elements and temporary components, illustrating architecture's ability to adapt to shifting societal and temporal demands. Traditional buildings demonstrate their versatility through established typologies, enabling diverse and enduring uses over time. In contrast, contemporary construction—often characterized by the separation of structural frameworks and building envelopes—introduces new complexities that call for inventive, autonomous, and adaptive design strategies.
At the core of the book are architectural drawings, which function not only as records of transformation but also as essential generative tools within the discipline, bridging historical precedents with future architectural paradigms. By uncovering the affordances embedded within built forms, the book develops a contemporary, "drawn" theory of transformation, offering nuanced perspectives on some of the most pressing issues in architectural practice today. Supplemented with essays and Hermann Czech’s seminal 1997 text 'Umbau', this book is an essential resource for architects, scholars, and students. It encourages rethinking adaptation and reuse as vital strategies within contemporary architectural practice.
Scientific Committee
Matthias Ballestrem (Bauhaus Earth)
Marco Bovati (Politecnico di Milano)
Antonio Carvalho (Politecnico di Milano)
Lorenzo De Chiffre (TU Wien)
Victoria Easton (ETH Zürich)
Andreas Lechner (TU Graz)
Angelo Lunati (Politecnico di Milano)
Gennaro Postiglione (Politecnico di Milano)
Paola Scala (Università di Napoli, Federico II)
Coordination
Maike Gold (TU Graz)
Francesca Serrazanetti (Politecnico di Milano)
“Lechner's work is compelling and stimulating. He draws on the analytical and typological processes associated with Aldo Rossi's (1966, 1982) reading of cities as a composition of monuments - permanent traces, and collective memory - but Lechner applies those approaches to interpret city edges, commercial vernacular, and the urban periphery. There is an identifiable allegiance to Rossi mixed with Venturi and Scott Brown (1972, 1991), and John Hejduk (1985) as reference points. What seems significant and admirable in Lechner's writing, projects, and teaching is that intellectual culture and creative intuitive approaches are kept in close proximity to the critical rational tradition.”
Cameron McEwan, The Journal of Architecture and Urbanism (2022)
︎︎︎ Monograph
Review by Cameron McEwan: Peripheral Monuments: Book Review of Thinking Design - Blueprint for an architecture of typology by Andreas Lechner”, in: Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, Volume 46/1 (2022), 83-88.
"Thinking Design provides an important critical overview for theories and projects of typology and will offer a useful compendium for the student and teacher of architecture as well as the critical practitioner. Yet Thinking Design also offers an original theoretical reflection on the status of the urban periphery and opens questions about architecture and architectural design research as a practice of critical inquiry. In the face of the capitalist debris and the uneven space that is the hallmark of urban peripheries as a global condition, we might return to some of the 144 typologies that Lechner presents as inspiring examples; or study the striking suite of projects by students under Lechner’s supervision, which are compiled in the appended booklet. Lechner offers inspiring reflections, strong examples, and useful models for what may become the peripheral monuments of tomorrow."
McEwan, C. (2022). Peripheral monuments: book review of Thinking Design: Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology by Andreas Lechner. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 46(1), 83-88. https://doi.org/10.3846/jau.2022.16904
Review in French / en français: Guillemette Morel-Journel, in: DA – D’Architectures, 303 (Nov. 2022):
︎︎︎https://www.darchitectures.com/thinking-design-blueprint-an-architecture-of-typology-a6149.html
"Thinking Design: Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology" by Andreas Lechner explores the essence of architectural design, emphasizing the primacy of form and its role as a backdrop for human coexistence. The book is divided into two parts: three essays and drawings of 144 architectural projects with brief descriptions. These sections, although loosely related, overlap in their search for terminology and an ordering system to distinguish generic from particular aspects.
The author developed the book based on lectures at the Graz University of Technology, evolving the content over the years. The selection of projects reflects a continuous presence of the past in architecture, making it tangible for design teaching. The book acknowledges the complex nature of architectural production, influenced by practical, theoretical, artistic, and technological factors, without attempting to resolve the tension between the objective and the subjective. The book argues that architectural designs, seemingly pre-linguistic, serve as literal reflections of prevailing social circumstances. The book delves into three chapters: "Tectonics," "Type," and "Topos," examining architecture's attempt to establish its identity as a social and cultural force. It explores the tension between the general and the particular in building design, emphasizing the importance of this dichotomy. The concepts of "tectonics," "type," and "topos" are introduced as autoreferential rather than rigid design standards. Lechner intentionally avoids focusing on technical, historical, or local details in the representation of projects, highlighting the generic aspect of architectural bodies and their relationship with repetition. The book argues that design derives its creative power from the interplay between originality and repetition.
The chapters "Tectonics," "Type," and "Topos" address the tension between form and function, examining architecture's role as a cultural and social construct. Lechner introduces the notions of "state," "recreation," and "surveillance" to underscore the sociopolitical dimension of spatial-structural contexts. He argues that the inherent relation between form and function is not arbitrary but ambiguous. Lechner discusses the critique of Late-Modernist architecture, tracing the development of architectural typology through different eras. The book highlights the importance of theory in architecture, emphasizing a broad and open approach to design education.
The first chapter, "Tectonics," provides an overview of the book's structure, literature, and project selection process. It emphasizes the practical design approach, serving as a source of ideas and reference works. The second chapter, "Type," explores the distinction between "first" and "second typology" and introduces the postfunctionalist and urbanistic-atmospheric typology in the third chapter, "Topos." The book discusses the broader concept of type in architecture, emphasizing its relevance as “professional memory” despite changing demands. Lechner acknowledges the productive dimension of vagueness and polemics in the architectural design process, presenting the 144 projects as a selection that illustrates a design aspect based on typological understanding. "Thinking Design" thus offers a comprehensive exploration of architectural design, addressing the complex interplay between form, function, and societal context. The book provides a nuanced perspective on typology and emphasizes the negotiation of architectural knowledge through composition and transformative design processes.
However disparate the style or ethos, beneath architecture's pluralism lies a number of categorical typologies. In Thinking Design, Austrian architect Andreas Lechner has condensed his profound typological understanding into a single book. Divided into three chapters - Tectonics, Type, and Topos - Lechner's book reflects upon twelve fundamental typologies: theater, museum, library, state, office, recreation, religion, retail, factory, education, surveillance, and hospital. Encompassing a total of 144 carefully selected examples of classic designs and buildings, ranging across an epic sweep from antiquity to the present, the book not only explains the fundamentals of collective architectural knowledge but traces the interconnected reiterations that lie at the heart of architecture’s transformative power. As such, Thinking Design outlines a new building theory rooted in the act of composition as an aesthetic determinant of architectural form. This emphasis on composition in the design process over the more commonplace aspects of function, purpose, or atmosphere makes it more than a mere planning manual. It reveals also the cultural dimension of architecture that gives it the ability to transcend not only use cycles but entire epochs. Each example is meticulously illustrated with a newly drawn elevation or axonometric projection, floor plan, and section, not only invigorating the underlying ideas but also making the book an ideal comparative compendium.
An enclosed booklet (32 pages, 19.5 x 28 cm, 58 b-w illustrations) features theses by twelve students of Graz University of Technology that further illustrate Andreas Lechner's approach in teaching and design.
1st edition, Park Books: Zurich 2021,
Hardback, 460 pages, 444 b-w illustrations and plans
23 x 31 cm
ISBN 978-3-03860-246-0
The author developed the book based on lectures at the Graz University of Technology, evolving the content over the years. The selection of projects reflects a continuous presence of the past in architecture, making it tangible for design teaching. The book acknowledges the complex nature of architectural production, influenced by practical, theoretical, artistic, and technological factors, without attempting to resolve the tension between the objective and the subjective. The book argues that architectural designs, seemingly pre-linguistic, serve as literal reflections of prevailing social circumstances. The book delves into three chapters: "Tectonics," "Type," and "Topos," examining architecture's attempt to establish its identity as a social and cultural force. It explores the tension between the general and the particular in building design, emphasizing the importance of this dichotomy. The concepts of "tectonics," "type," and "topos" are introduced as autoreferential rather than rigid design standards. Lechner intentionally avoids focusing on technical, historical, or local details in the representation of projects, highlighting the generic aspect of architectural bodies and their relationship with repetition. The book argues that design derives its creative power from the interplay between originality and repetition.
The chapters "Tectonics," "Type," and "Topos" address the tension between form and function, examining architecture's role as a cultural and social construct. Lechner introduces the notions of "state," "recreation," and "surveillance" to underscore the sociopolitical dimension of spatial-structural contexts. He argues that the inherent relation between form and function is not arbitrary but ambiguous. Lechner discusses the critique of Late-Modernist architecture, tracing the development of architectural typology through different eras. The book highlights the importance of theory in architecture, emphasizing a broad and open approach to design education.
The first chapter, "Tectonics," provides an overview of the book's structure, literature, and project selection process. It emphasizes the practical design approach, serving as a source of ideas and reference works. The second chapter, "Type," explores the distinction between "first" and "second typology" and introduces the postfunctionalist and urbanistic-atmospheric typology in the third chapter, "Topos." The book discusses the broader concept of type in architecture, emphasizing its relevance as “professional memory” despite changing demands. Lechner acknowledges the productive dimension of vagueness and polemics in the architectural design process, presenting the 144 projects as a selection that illustrates a design aspect based on typological understanding. "Thinking Design" thus offers a comprehensive exploration of architectural design, addressing the complex interplay between form, function, and societal context. The book provides a nuanced perspective on typology and emphasizes the negotiation of architectural knowledge through composition and transformative design processes.
However disparate the style or ethos, beneath architecture's pluralism lies a number of categorical typologies. In Thinking Design, Austrian architect Andreas Lechner has condensed his profound typological understanding into a single book. Divided into three chapters - Tectonics, Type, and Topos - Lechner's book reflects upon twelve fundamental typologies: theater, museum, library, state, office, recreation, religion, retail, factory, education, surveillance, and hospital. Encompassing a total of 144 carefully selected examples of classic designs and buildings, ranging across an epic sweep from antiquity to the present, the book not only explains the fundamentals of collective architectural knowledge but traces the interconnected reiterations that lie at the heart of architecture’s transformative power. As such, Thinking Design outlines a new building theory rooted in the act of composition as an aesthetic determinant of architectural form. This emphasis on composition in the design process over the more commonplace aspects of function, purpose, or atmosphere makes it more than a mere planning manual. It reveals also the cultural dimension of architecture that gives it the ability to transcend not only use cycles but entire epochs. Each example is meticulously illustrated with a newly drawn elevation or axonometric projection, floor plan, and section, not only invigorating the underlying ideas but also making the book an ideal comparative compendium.
An enclosed booklet (32 pages, 19.5 x 28 cm, 58 b-w illustrations) features theses by twelve students of Graz University of Technology that further illustrate Andreas Lechner's approach in teaching and design.
1st edition, Park Books: Zurich 2021,
Hardback, 460 pages, 444 b-w illustrations and plans
23 x 31 cm
ISBN 978-3-03860-246-0
GAM – Graz Architecture Magazine
︎︎︎Co-Editor / Book Review editor
Founded by the Faculty of Architecture of Graz University of Technology in 2004, GAM – Graz Architecture Magazine publishes essays, interviews, illustrations, book reviews and projects related to the fields of architecture and urbanism. It is conceived as an engaging interdisciplinary forum for scholars, architects, and critics in which architectural developments and controversial phenomena are discussed. Since 2017 Andreas is co-editor and responsible for the book review section.
︎︎︎Co-Editor / Book Review editor
Adding to current architectural discourse, the contributions of each issue are devoted to a specific theme that is chosen by a guest editor. All submissions to GAM undergo a blind peer review process by members of the editorial board as well as external reviewers specializing in a certain field relevant to the theme of the issue. GAM is published bilingually (German/English) and is distributed by JOVIS Verlag. The editors of GAM are comprised of members of the Faculty of Architecture of Graz University of Technology: Daniel Gethmann (Executive Editor), Petra Eckhard (Managing Editor), Urs Hirschberg (Editor), Andreas Lechner (Book Reviews), Petra Petersson (Faculty News) and Annalena Arminger (Coordinator Faculty News).
Editorial Board
The editorial board includes Michelle Addington (Texas), Anita Berrizbeitia (Cambridge, MA), Pierre-Alain Croset (Milan), Susanne Hauser (Berlin), Andrej Hrausky (Ljubljana), Bart Lootsma (Karlsruhe), Gerhard Schmitt (Zurich) und Georg Schöllhammer (Vienna).
Co-Editor / Book review editor
GAM 21. (2025), GAM 20. (2024)
GAM 19. Professionalism (2023) doi.org/10.1515/9783986120078
GAM 18. Beyond the Institution (2022) ISBN 978-3-86859-858-2
GAM 17 Wood. Rethinking Material (2021) ISBN 978-3-86859-663-2 GAM 21. (2025), GAM 20. (2024)
GAM 19. Professionalism (2023) doi.org/10.1515/9783986120078
GAM 18. Beyond the Institution (2022) ISBN 978-3-86859-858-2
GAM 16 gewohnt: un/common (2020)
GAM 15 Territorial Justice (2019) ISBN 978-3-86859-855-1
GAM 14 Exhibiting Matters (2018) ISBN 978-3-86859-854-4
GAM.08 Dense Cities (2012) ISBN 978-3-7091-1058-4
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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.
︎︎︎Site Map, Imprint & DSGVO