ABSTRACT
The idea of chair, the archetype in other words, belongs to the realm of ideas. Because of its name, it also belongs in the realm of language. Even though archetypes in the lot and block scale are an important focus of the lot-type approach to form-based coding, the concept archetype is also useful to organize codes that address urban environments on larger scales. There are a wide variety of ways the concept can be used in reading the urban environments and identifying different urban contexts, which can be an important organizing principle for city-wide codes. The chapter reviews the background of the urban typology studies. First dictionaries and encyclopedias appeared in this era, so did the first building typologies. The chapter identifies the essential qualities of a building type, also idenifies what makes a node a strong node, and an edge a legible edge.
