It is the responsibility of architects to understand the multiple traditions that have preceded them, according to Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Curriculum and Professor Samir Younés said. Precedent is imperative.

“One of the first things you do is to study the written, designed, and built works of other architects and how they justify the forms they produced. Through this comparison, one encounters a variety of opinions and philosophical approaches leading to forming one's own opinion,” he explained.

Younés and former chair of the School of Architecture Carroll William Westfall, both motivated by their fervent commitment to increase the understanding the history of architectural practice, co-wrote Architectural Type and Character, a Practical Guide to a History of Architecture.

“Much of architectural history and artistic history have been written from the standpoint of a philosophy of history called historicism, which projects certain deterministic positions on the direction of history,” Younés said. “Many architectural surveys present this view of history based on stylistic categories corresponding to certain temporal categories.”

In their book, Younés and Westfall emphasize that it is possible for architectural design and historical knowledge to converge as a single project and not two separate pursuits, basically reforming how architectural history is written, and potentially reforming the teaching and practice of architecture. “A history that is written for architects who intend on using the durable and successful lessons of history in building cities and buildings, improving these lessons in practice, and passing along the lessons of their own experience to future generations.”

Architectural historians often write an architectural history of “stylistic ruptures where one architectural style inexorably replaces another.” That is a point of view in which comprehensive continuity is often overlooked. Sometimes the similarities become a search for difference, Younés said. “An honest look at architectural history is actually where one sees both the continuities and the ruptures,” Younés notes.

But what makes a good or bad continuity? And what should be properly ruptured? The book addresses these questions in two parts: Part I provides a critique of the prevalent writing of architectural history and offers an alternative approach to studying history and design; Part II discusses 100 building sites from around the world. Younés and Westfall fundamentally argue that there are other very important concepts that have been neglected: type and character.

The concept of type concerns the generative aspects of architecture, he said. The concept of character is expressive of the building's purpose, the regional or national character. “Architectural type is not architectural use,” Younés disclaims noting, “Type is a generative aspect; there are certain things about the type which are common to the mind, and you find them expressed differently, in a variety of ways.

In distinguishing this approach from those of their peers, Younés and Westfall note the difference between this study of architectural history as compared to, for instance, the stylistic classification approach. In the book, some guiding questions are ‘What elements are universal?’ Hence the idea of type. ‘What elements are particular in a place?’ Hence the idea of character.

                                            Piazza del Duomo, Pistoia, Samir Younés

While Younés delves into writing another book that explores what architectural character is in a variety of places in even greater detail, he notes, “We still need to talk, in great detail, about architectural character; which is the building, neighborhood, spirit, quarter in the city, our cities, the sense of place in a variety of contexts.” Younés is also studying the implication of artificial intelligence on the teaching and practice of architecture, noting how embracing AI tools has played a role in diminishing the use of freehand drawing in the teaching and practice of architecture. And most recently, together with professors Selena Anders and Jonathan Weatherill, Younés edited An Architectural Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century (2024) about the teaching at the Notre Dame School of Architecture, illustrated entirely with student work.

About the author: Charles Ghati, MSHP Candidate, Class of 2025. Charles is a registered architect in Kenya, where he practiced before joining the Notre Dame School of Architecture.

Originally published by Charles Ghati '25 MSHP at architecture.nd.edu on October 18, 2024.