Architectural Type and Character: A Practical Guide to a History of Architecture

Architectural Type and Character provides an alternative perspective to the current role given to history in architecture, reunifying architectural history and architectural design to reform architectural discourse and practice. Historians provide important material for appreciating buildings and guiding those who produce them. In current histories, a building is the product of a time, its form follows its function, irresistible influences produce it, and style, preferably novel, is its most important attribute. This book argues for an alternative.

Through a two-part structure, the book first develops the theoretical foundations for this alternative history of architecture. The second part then provides drawings and interpretations of over one hundred sites from different times and places.

Architectural Type and Character: A Practical Guide to a History of Architecture is an excellent desk reference and studio guide for students and architectures alike to understand, analyze, and create buildings.

Samir Younés is Professor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame where he was Director of Rome Studies and Director of Graduate Studies. He teaches architectural design and theory. His books include: The Imperfect City: On Architectural Judgement; Architects and Mimetic Rivalry; The Intellectual Life of the Architect; and Quatremère de Quincy’s Historical Dictionary of Architecture: The True, The Fictive, and The Real.

Carroll William Westfall’s PhD in the history of architecture from Columbia University was followed by five decades of teaching before retiring from the University of Notre Dame. His scholarly and general articles run from studies of Pompeii to critiques of current practice. His books are In This Most Perfect Paradise, a study of Rome in the 15th c.; Architectural Principles in the Age of Historicism, a dialectic exchange with Robert Jan van Pelt, and a review of architectural theory, Architecture, Liberty, and Civic Order: Architectural Theories from Vitruvius to Jefferson and Beyond.