Architectural Affordances. Typologies of Umbau

Architectural Affordances 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.