Plowright, Philip. (2014). “Typology as Minimum Complexity”. Inhabiting Everyday Monuments: A Critical Practice Masterclass with Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss / NAO. Eds. Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss and Philip Plowright. Raleigh,Lulu Press. 393-406.

Typology as Minimal ComplexityPhilip D. Plowright

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss is dangerous. He believes in the future; in the ability to bring something new intothe world; in a post-ideological world; in the end of war; in the infusion of architecture with irrationality. Yet, he stresses pragmatics and approaches the future by returning to the past. And his visionary processis grounded in the oldest and most defensible methodological framework possessed by architectural design – the deployment of pattern through typology.

Pattern-based design processes can be found in the writing of Vitruvius and were rationally developed inthe 19th century by J-N-L Durand to meet the requirements of an industrial age (Plowright 2014, 135-8). There was a resurgence of interest in typology in the 1960s and 1970s by urban theorists and designers. And then it vanished from practice in architecture (although urban design still pursues typological research). It is difficult to find the term today in the intellectual culture of architecture, even more problematic to use it in public. Yet, typology is important as it uses past successful ways of engaging space as its source material through the development of formal rules. It presupposes relevance of the new design by allowing it to become a version of what already exists.

Jovanovic Weiss' design process is not that as written about by Vitruvius, de Quincy, Durand, and Moneo or rather it is in its essence but not in its practice. It contains the same underlying framework and structure of information deployment, but the actual method involves more complexity, the injection of artistic tactics and carefully conceived interventions to allow the improbable to become relevant. Jovanovic Weiss develops his own terminology to refer to classic typological processes, something important as it allows the abandonment of predetermined expectations. Still, he starts with objects of cultural mass – the monument, the parking structure, the bus stop – reduces them by finding their essential pattern, relations or priorities and redeploys a new version through fuzzy repetition (for a discussion of fuzzy repetition see Plowright 2014, 136–7). Past patterns are used for future occupation but without being nostalgic or historical.

How does typology work? The core factors in a typological approach is returning to existing objects or entities as a source for design, the reduction of those objects into core compositional relationships, and the redeployment of those relationships to propose a new iteration of the original objects or entities. When the relationships are based in a repeated series of objects which are known (school, hammer, library, chair, residential neighbourhood, fork, etc) then these are called types. When several factors are brought together to created something unknown but still using existing content, then these are called prototypes, or the beginning of a new series.

Every object or entity can have an aspect of themselves reduced to a fundamental pattern, or as

Jovanovic Weiss terms it – its essence. This necessary abandons the whole for a diagrammatic representation of that which defines the core aspect of the thing. The essence should represent a set of core values through formal relationships or be presented through model, image or diagram. It is not simply a conceptual idea and contains only itself. This means that the formal then holds the socio-cultural content, removing its visibility but maintaining its priorities. Mapping to an essence, an essential pattern, is a way to reduce something complex, something that is non-discrete with extended boundaries and entailment in the socio-cultural realm, into its minimal form. A form that can be packaged, transferred, replicated and redeployed.

The underlying framework for a typological approach is one that chooses a type to analyze and then reduces that type to formal composition (Figure 1, step 1 and 2). The socio-cultural content is abandoned and a set of rules developed for the various aspects of the reduction (Figure 1, step 3). Specific aspects of the reduction are chosen for association through how they support each other (what they add). These are then manifested as a fuzzy repetition of the type, meeting all the requirements of the rules but creating variations through adjusting any non-required variable based on context (Figure 1, step 4). The new manifestation meets the rule for the type by not breaking any core relationships but playing with everything not defined by those rules. A critical factor is that typological approaches always start with a pre-existing found object or entity – the past, so to speak. Jovanovic Weiss calls this a source.

Figure 1: Pattern-based framework used for typological design processes (from Plowright 2014)

A framework, however, is only a most skeletal structure from which a more robust and detailed method is developed. Jovanovic Weiss uses the same overarching structure which he describes as “finding essences”, “rebuilding by removing essences” or “pixelation”, “clouding”, and “rebuilding [in context]” (Jovanovic Weiss 2014b, Jovanovic Weiss 2014c). These map to the three sections of the underlying framework and involve standard exploratory and evaluative phases (divergent-convergent processes). The adaptation of the framework to an explicit method occurs in several ways. Jovanovic Weiss defines sources loosely as any object of cultural mass, including objects, buildings and people. He also doesn't limit the investigation in “situation/type” to a single source, but runs multiple reductive processes in parallel. Where a standard typological method would use a rational convergent technique of evaluative thinking such as clustering or SWOT analysis, he uses various and often artistic strategies to select and distort the outcomes. Jovanovic Weiss calls this merging (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Jovanovic Weiss' method based on using multiple typological pattern-based design frameworks

Each one of the lines of “source-identify essence-deploy essence” in the diagram above contain the entire typological framework within itself. This includes source selection, essence identification (reduction to pattern) and exploration of all variations that meet the rule of that particular type for redeployment. We can consider a pattern-based framework (Figure 1) to be found in each and every instance of the source-to-deploy essence sequence in Jovanovic Weiss' method (Figure 2). Each reduction of a source and following expansion of possibilities is encapsulated and isolated, left independent until the merging phase, a phase critical for the possible outcomes that Jovanovic Weiss imagines. The multiplicity of the framework within the method introduces complication rather than complexity into the work yet the overall method stresses reduction and simplification – a way of “starting dumb to become smart” (Jovanovic Weiss).

Finding essencesLooking at the starting point of the explicit method, Jovanovic Weiss starts were all typological methods start – the reduction to the pattern – or as he calls it, the creation of minimum complexity. He introducesa starting bias based on his own interests – including post-ideological monuments, everyday infrastructure, and artists working in architectural space. This doesn't stop all of these starting positions from being reduced to their essential patterns, their core information. And as the process requires, all other information is then abandoned except the essence. That other information is still present, only embedded now within the compositional and formal characteristics of the pattern.

How can formal composition hold socio-cultural information? Composition holds the possibility of social

interaction on a very basic level. If we take the example of two rooms with exactly the same formal dimensions, lets say 50'-0” by 50'-0” and populate it with the same objects – 4 benches, two doors, and a dais or stage (Figure 3). Depending on the placement of the objects in the space, different uses of the space are encouraged or made easier. Placement of circulation elements, such as doors, affect patterns of movement which then affect points of stasis or sedentariness. Arrangement and composition of seating areas encourage solitary or group engagement. The introduction of convex spaces associated with a dais create human gathering locations. So while the rooms have exactly the same elements, they have very different compositions and very different social possibilities.

Figure 3: Composition holding socio-cultural information of gathering and movement using the same objects and spaces in different arrangements

In the case of room example, it is not the objects but the relationship between objects which create the socio-cultural possibilities. The arrangement of the benches to each other, to the dais and to the circulation pattern is the essence. This is a reduction of complexity, a minimal set of information which describes the essential nature of the thing, ignoring – in this case – material choices, the length of the shag carpet (shag?!?!), the wall paneling, the reverberations of sound and so on. Those might be reduced in another essence but not this one. Another reduction could be done that just looked a sound and surface material, ignoring movement and gathering, or the sectional pattern of the rooms. A diagram which can then be reproduced for whatever bias is the designer's priority. All other variables can be adjusted to fit the purpose or whim of the designer as long as they do not break the core relationships. When the pattern is repeated, distorted, overlayed and stacked – the socio-cultural content is also maintained as long as the core relationships, the essence, is not broken. Yet it also allows the socio-cultural to be absent from the direct discourse by being present within the pattern. This process can use any position or idea that can be spatially diagrammed or visual represented and is not restricted to architectural spaces (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Essence extraction and typological variations of the letters E, F, H (left) and I, L, T (right) (Team Lead: Amy Swift, Team: Nick Cressman, Kirk Stefko, Christopher Stefani, Jonathan Selleck, Guanyi Wang, Sarah Saleh, Jerry Carter, Jon Krdu, Abhimanyu Lakhey)

For example, it is possible when considering a source as an object of cultural mass to reduce the work of individuals rather than formal compositions. The process is the same, a search to define their pattern, their essence. In these cases it is about finding the 'code' that makes the project work. Jovanovic Weiss' interests brings in the sources of Constant Nieuwenhuys, Yona Friedman, and Anne Tyng. Their work is reduced to patterns of the structural frame, strategies of stacking, occupational freedom, deconstructability/adjustability, inhospitable sites, priorities of geometry, objects within objects. The work of each of these sources was reduced to its minimum level of content which still held the essence of the ideas, ready for redeployment.

The source can be considered an almost random choice, something based on the whim or interest of thedesigner. They may not start with relevance but instead acquire relevance through the process. These are what Alexander D'Hooghe, another typologically based designer, calls crowbars. A crowbar simply something to use to open up possibilities. These, for Jovanovic Weiss, are aspects of his obsessions and interests – a case of Jovanovic Weiss acting as an artist. They include other designers and artists as well as post-ideological objects such as communist monuments abandoned by the passing of political regimes and drained of their former signification. Or the crowbar might be simply a starting point with formal properties and cultural content – alphabetical letters, bus stops, cottages and parking garages.

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss's strategies towards minimum complexity.It is strange that the first moves towards minimum complexity is to make more clutter, more confusion, and more mess by running three to five simultaneous, and unrelated, typological investigations simultaneously (Figure 5). Each of those investigations then involve divergent explorations of versioning, pixelation, and clouding as ways of iterating and distorting. It is a strategic move to do this. One of the key ideas that Jovanovic Weiss introduces into his typologically based design method is what he calls the irrationality of the artist. There is no attempt to streamline the process or the information at this point – the first moves are a divergent motion which requires decisions to be delayed. The idea is to stress what might be possible through the exploration within the layers and interaction between the layers in the divergence cloud.

Figure 5: Divergence clouds of three source investigations (Team Leads: Anirban Adhya & Alina Chelaidite, Team: Steven Mcmahon, Eleana Glava, Adam Wakulchik, Jeremy Adams, Gregory Wood, Jinhan Liu, Christopher Siminski, Jonathan Tull, Tra Page)

For Jovanovic Weiss, art enters the design process in several ways. First is the encouragement of complication rather than complexity. Complication allows for artistic moments – introduced by different aspects of the sources. For Jovanovic Weiss explicitly, the artistic is held by the monument – an object created by a collaboration between an artist and an architect and holding cultural and political values rather than usable purpose. When testing to whether content is artistic or architectural (and Jovanovic Weiss does not confuse one discipline for the other), he quotes Jacques Herzog saying “an artist wakes up with a panic, architects wake up with a reason.” The panic gives the unexpected, non-systematic decisions and the project then is a test.

In the end, the use of artistic tactices within an architectural process centers not on the object but on how decisions are made. Irrationality is introduced as both a technique for divergence as well as convergence. The artistic is a point of decision making, not of form. The irrational is then rationalized by “making it work” and giving it relevance. If there is no advantage to the choices, then it is a point to return to divergent content and make another selection.

Besides the complication of the source material layering and the introduction of artistic decision-making,Jovanovic Weiss does something very smart in the exploratory thinking phases found in each of the four steps. He stresses divergent techniques that engage the image as the core device of investigation rather than non-visual ideas or writing (Figure 6). Divergence in this format is still an inherently conceptual and expansive process but the opportunities come from something more native to formal design. Brainstorming, challenge, questioning are all processed through the found image (for a discussion of cognitive divergent techniques see Plowright 2014, 79-85). This is important – in a traditional typological

process, the formal properties of the investigated type would be reduced to diagrams. In this case, the diagram is replaced by an image, but an image that is then treated as a reduction and a discrete event. It is a key aspect of the implication of the source material to something usable in a process that encourages complication.

Figure 6: Divergent technique of exploratory thinking using image based content (Left – Team lead: Irsida Bejo, Team: Stephen Bohlen, Ryan Kronbetter, Amin Toghiani, Alexis Blackwell-Brown, Breck Crandell, Shuang Wu, Christina Jackson, Nicole Gerou, Christopher Bartholomew; Right – Team lead: Stewart Hicks & Allison Newmeyer, Team: Nahar Sonbol, Ghantous El-Tayar, Zahra Alatl, Xin Chen, Matt Seeley, Brendan Sprite, Miros Nava, Tyler Walker)

The steps of Jovanovic Weiss' method still conform to the familiar design structure of divergent and convergent techniques of thinking. They are used to either generate a series of options, or they are used to reduce the volume of options so decision-making can occur. The major structural operation in the method, one not found in the classic version, is the cluster of tactics around that is called the merge. Thisis located at the point in the underlying framework where a single typological investigation would start to assemble a new variation on a type's pattern. In Jovanovic Weiss' method, the merge operates in the same way, but instead of addressing a single type, it brings several types together using one or more tools from a set developed for the purpose. The merge is a meta-technique, a way of bring the various layers of typological investigation together into a cohesive project. The tools are stacking, superimposition, swapping, distortion and conflict.

The merge can only occur once the divergent techniques have created a critical mass of options (between step 3 and 4, Figure 2). It isn't a rational process, as in it doesn't need practical reasons for making decisions, but it is a pragmatic process. It affects things in the world by manifesting forms to be occupied. It is also a convergent technique. During the merge process, large aspects of the project are abandoned – just like all design methods which must leave behind 99% of the divergent content when making a decision. The goal is to move to simplicity from the complication.

The tools found in the merge stress the super direct and over simplified, a way of combating complication. These are the dumb moves and strategies to amalgamate irrationality into rationality. Dumb but as a way of being smart, as Jovanovic Weiss says. In all these strategies, the patterns of the

essences are maintained and will start to introduce conflict through collision and compression while reinforcing their independent, internal relationships. Superimposition will create new objects by collidingone essence into another. Both need to be maintained but a third thing will be formed by the imposition.An opposite approach is the tactic of distortion – where things imposed on each other but can not overlap or superimpose. This means that the introduction of an aspect of one onto another must distort the composition based on adjacency which priorities the preservation of all typological patterns. So a interior volume swells while maintaining its pattern. Plates or slabs have disruptions, penetrations and interruptions but maintain their independent core relationships. This gives logic to the repetition as well, using often non-related content in direct association with each other. Interior composition is maintained as an essence. Jovanovic Weiss calls this “eating” as in the volume eats the organization, the organization eats the skin, the skin eats the volume and all permutations of these relations (volume eats skin, and itself and so on). Another word for eating is erodes, and speaks of the relationship between theelements (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Merge convergent technique of distortion where three aspects of building – volume, organization and skin– are considered separate and allowed to erode or “eat” each other. Left: Jovanovic Weiss' notes in studio, Right: Process notes (Anirban Adhya, Alina Chelaidite et al)

An aspect of the merge stressed by distortion, but held in all the strategies, is treating processes as independent and parallel . Physical structures such as slab, enclosure, and occupation are self referential and discrete, as are objects formed from each of the essences developed by sources. Each process is purposefully suspended from having a relationship with each other and treated as separate factors of volume, organization and skin. This can be seen in the tactic of stacking, where one element is simply placed upon another maintaining both the logic and the identity of both. The stacking does not need to be massed vertical but can also be horizontal or sectional (Figure 8). In these cases, one form is simply interrupted by another without too much reasoning or purpose. However, once it occurs, the result is

analyzed for potential and opportunities. Each orientation of stacking has its own advantages and affects occupation.

Figure 8: Three versions of the merge convergent technique of stacking. Left: vertical intervention between two sources (Irsida Bejo et al), Center: horizontal stacking of versions into landscape (Team Leads: Aaron Jones & Wes Taylor; Team: Nathaniel Turner, Nawfaa Al-Bahrani, Ali Emgarreb, Charlie Harris, Khalid Hamoodh, Jonathan Reynolds, Brean Bush, Erin Lifton, Ibn Feisal Peerbaccus), Left: sectional stacking using collage (Stewart Hicks, Allison Newmeyer et al)

Where stacking purposefully avoids conflict between the essences, distortion engages it directly. Conflict can also be used as a strategy by itself. In this case, the designer would look for essences that hold conflicting typologies, and would cause each other disruption if placed in too close proximity. Then, they are placed as closely to each other as possible to exacerbate that disruption. In this case, the conflict is an engine for creating possible and rational distortions of form in order to address the conflict.

The final merge tactic is swapping (Figure 9). It is another way of imposing in the relationship between variations between sources or even within a line of investigation of one source. Merging by swapping takes one element and replaces it completely by another. It is a complete replacement without any consideration for nuances or smoothing the relationships – often causing disruptions in the proposal. Swapping maintains one parameter coming from the essence (pattern) but abandons responsibility for all the others. Another object is identified that meets that chosen parameter and the swap simply replaces new object with the former by mapping the selected parameter – be it angle, location, mass, rotation. The swap will be successful if the parameter has purpose but the advantages of the swap will come in the disruptions and the opportunities created by this point of unexpected difference.

Figure 7: Merge convergent technique of swap where one version of a divergent exploration (y) direclty replaces another form of the exploration (x) in the same situation. Left: original situation; Center: two terminations of divergent process, Right: New composition with swapped form (Amy Swift et al)

The merge tactices are all based on amalgamation but the end result isn't eclectic. While some parts are pragmatic stressing structure and occupational logic, others are artistic, points of panic. However, design relies on coherence to create a successful proposal - the parts having some form of common relationship and addressing a common goal. Coherence is set by the designer through their intentions. This is why the source selection isn't random although it might be conflictual. Sources are chosen for the potential of effect towards the goal of the designer. This is very different to eclectic approach which relates only the parts to their purpose or effect and abandons the responsibility to the whole.

Amalgamated typologiesJovanovic Weiss' method of design uses tactics to purposefully suspend disbelief and rationality in order to see what might also be possible. Yet engaging those tactics using a typological framework and primarymethod of information development as the source material means that the end result will always be responsible – as long as it meets the core pattern. It allows, however, the freedom to explore the irrational, symbolic and cultural without being irrelevant. The result will also be unexpected as using multiple lines of typological investigation and then creating a merge between layers allows the essence to be consumed and obscured – creating the new by using the old. The result stresses simplicity and adaptation without losing a playfulness which is sorely needed in our contemporary period.

In the end, Jovanovic Weiss hopes for memory without nostalgia, using the past to make a future while not be beholden to that past. It is a case of reoccupying what we have already but with a repetition of difference allowable through a typological process so it is no longer what it was but a distortion that reinforces a cultural purpose.

Notes:

classic terminology Jovanovic Weiss terminologytypology ----> minimal complexitypattern ----> essencetype ----> sourceconvergence ----> choicetype reduction ----> finding essencesresolving layers ----> merge, amalgamationdivergent technique ----> clouding, pixelation, versioningconvergent technique ----> conflict, distortion,, stacking, superimposition, swappingassembly/proposal ----> rebuilding by removing essences

References:

Philip Plowright (2014). Revealing Architectural Design: Methods, Frameworks & Tools. Oxon; New York: Routledge.

Jovanovic Weiss, Srdjan (2014a). “TripBusStop”. Critical Practice Studio project brief. Southfield: Lawrence Technological University.

Jovanovic Weiss, Srdjan (2014b). “Retreat Cloud”. Critical Practice Studio project brief. Southfield: Lawrence Technological University.

Jovanovic Weiss, Srdjan (2014c). “Social Garage”. Critical Practice Studio project brief. Southfield: Lawrence Technological University.