Title

Author(s)

Andreas Lechner

Affiliation

Graz University of Technology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.65686/XOTV2142

Keywords

Architectural Design, Affordances, Typology, Adaptive Reuse

PP

572-580

How to Cite

Lechner, Andreas. “Typological Affordances Drawing Adaptions Over Time.” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Adaptive Reuse. Volume 1, edited by Andrea Crudeli, Francesca Molle, and Emanuele Carrai, 572–580. Firenze: STH Press, 2026.

Abstract

This paper is about a recently co-authored book on architectural affordances and adaptive reuse. As a collection of drawings on transformation projects the book proposes typology-as-affordance as a conceptual and operative framework for adaptive reuse. Amid the climate emergency and the fiscal, legal, and cultural pressures reshaping architectural practice, adaptive reuse has moved from the margins of conservation to the center of design intelligence. Building on canonical debates (Quatremère, Argan, Rossi, Aymonino, Vidler) and ecological theories of perception (Gibson), we argue that architectural types are not fixed templates but enabling structures whose affordances—possibilities for action sustained by form, material, and spatial configuration—mediate longevity, resilience, and cultural meaning across time. Here, drawing is advanced as an epistemic instrument that makes these affordances legible and projective: through analytic mapping, comparative redrawing, and “yellow–red” overlays of subtraction and addition, designers can disclose a building’s latent capacities and design their transformation with precision. Synthesizing an atlas of cases organized along three life-cycle categories—1. long-duration typologies with minimal intervention, 2. nineteenth-century institutional and industrial buildings undergoing deeper programmatic shifts, and 3. mono-functional twentieth-century structures requiring typological reconfiguration—the thirty examples in the book Architectural Affordances – Typologies of Umbau demonstrate how typological clarity correlates with carbon-light transformation and future adaptability. Pedagogically, typology-as-affordance reframes studio and research as laboratories for Umbau (transformative reuse), especially in the peripheral and “low” typologies that constitute the bulk of contemporary building stock. Ultimately, typology is recast not as an instrument of normativity but as a designerly ethics of care: an economy of attention to what already exists, mobilizing form as shared civic memory while designing uncertainty into the future

Edited by
Andrea Crudeli
Francesca Molle
Emanuele Carrai

Publisher
STH Press, Firenze

ISBN Paperback – 9791281661141
ISBN Ebook – 9791281661158
DOI – https://doi.org/10.65686/SISY7263

Year
2026

Proceedings of
International Conference on Adaptive Reuse
hosted by The University of Pisa, Italy
15-19 September 2025, at the Gispoteca di Arte Antica dell’Università di Pisa.