Architectural Affordances
Edited by Andreas Lechner / Gennaro Postiglione / Maike Gold / Francesca Serazanetti
Book (peer-reviewed)
Naples: Thymos Books 2025 first / 2026 second Edition
312 pages, English, ISBN 978-88-32072-56-3
www.thymosbooks.com
Architectural Affordances - Typologies of Umbau is a collection of drawings that trace transformations in thirty buildings over time. Organized into three categories based on time-periods and life cycles – centuries, over one hundred years, and less than a hundred years –, the atlas gathers consistent floor plans, sections, and elevations that facilitate the study of Umbau as major and minor transformations of buildings alongside yellow-red plans. These transformation, extension and redevelopment projects were compiled through a call for papers and drawn and assembled by international architects from both practice and academia. The resulting atlas not only depicts changes in the material composition but also presents the mediation of forms and functions as a temporally and socially conditioned appropriation of affordances offered by built spatial arrangements.
The book also includes several contributions that explore architectural typology, transformation and theoretical concepts. Andreas Lechner and Gennaro Postiglione discuss the "affordances of architectural typology", while Francesca Serrazanetti and Maike Gold examine "temporality through drawing". Victoria Easton explores "typology as an emotional rationalisation of the existing" and Eva Kuss analyses "Hermann Czech's 'Umbau' as an architectural-theoretical concept". Angelo Lunati looks at "assemblages, accumulations and contextual adaptations", while Hermann Czech contributes his famous work on "transformation" in architecture, thus opening the theoretical dialogue.
Scientific Committee
Matthias Ballestrem / Dortmund University (DEU)
Marco Bovati / Politecnico di Milano (ITA)
Antonio Carvalho / Politecnico di Milano (ITA)
Lorenzo De Chiffre / TU Wien (AUT)
Victoria Easton / ETH Zürich (CHE)
Angelo Lunati / Politecnico di Milano (ITA)
Paola Scala / Università di Napoli “Federico II” (ITA)
Coordination
Maike Gold / University of Technology (AT)
Francesca Serrazanetti / Politecnico di Milano (ITA)