Sketch for an Archetypal Building

An archetypal form of building is proposed, to which the forms of actual buildings may be related by continuous deformation of parts and by suppression of some parts altogether. Parallels are drawn with pre-Darwinian ideas about archetypal forms in biology. The archetypal building serves to represent those overall properties of the envelope which are determined by the constraints of lighting and the close-packing of certain generic types of space—'cellular space’, ‘open-plan space’, and ‘halls’. Four worked examples are given showing the transformation of the archetype into real historical buildings. Potential applications are suggested in the classification of building types, in building science, in architectural history, and in design support systems.