Building Types and Built Forms

Philip Steadman has spent the last ten years developing a new theory of how the forms of buildings are constrained by some of the basic functions of architecture. “My inspiration came from the rigorous and novel insights provided by my colleagues, whose work I have tried to bring together and build on,” he explains. “The book makes use, at many points, of biological analogy, and uses several conceptual tools from biological theory.”

Building Types and Built Forms combines for the first time the history and geometry of building types in one book. It follows the history of some common buildings such as houses, hospitals, schools, offices and prisons, drawing examples from the 19th and early 20th centuries in France, America and Britain.

The book then explores how the forms of these buildings are limited by the basic functions that are required of them, for example providing daylight and ventilation, access to all rooms and to allow occupants to see from one part of a building to another. A new way of thinking about these ‘worlds of geometrical possibility’ is introduced, in which the forms of many buildings can be catalogued and laid out systematically in ‘morphospaces’, or theoretical spaces of forms. As building types change over time, they come to occupy different positions within the worlds of possible forms.

Building Types and Built Forms is filled with over 400 illustrations, many drawn especially for the book. It offers a new theoretical approach, combined with a series of historical accounts of building types, some that are well known, and some less familiar.