008 Typical Plan

Typical plan is known to be "a plan without qualities". 

A plan that repeats itself. A plan with depth and closure. A plan that can be seen "bad". Its only purpose is to populate and to office, i.e business. This program is the most circusmscribed program, it is formless. It takes no demands. Its only function is to let its occupants exist. This program supports the intention of repetition throughout the sectional design of the building.

Typical plan is minimalist for the masses. By the sixties it was refined as a seusous science of co-ordination - Column grids, facade modules, cealing tiles, lighting fixtures, partitions - which emerge in a domain of pure objectivity.  

The main rapresentation of the spaces that are created in a typical plan are mainly in a retangular form. Any other forms, i.e. square would be known as atypical.

Typical plan implies repetition: 

TP x Nth plan = building. 

The plan itself is formed up of four different components... floors, cores, the perimeter and a minimum amount of columns.

The positioning of the cores on the plan has a suprematist tension, which is equivilant to concrete poetry. 

Morgan Bank - Amsterdam - OMA

This building is known to be configured as a typical/atypical. Its set up along axis and co-ordination given as essence of typical plan. The roof if summed as atypical due to the extra program intended to re-create the environment as not "bad behaviour". Typical plan has severe constrains to its proposed rules. Creating this name of 'bad' which can be diluted as a visual of a storage space of men in suits. Its only purpose is to populate and to office. European potential under goes this dilemma and re-creates this monstrophic box like closure, to a more open-accomodating vibrance, known as 'Not-office' program. 

Universal Headquarters - Los Angeles - OMA

This building is seen as a notion of "attacking the typical plan"

The building was to illustrate a basis of a typical plan for offices that are revitalized by the insertion of urban like elements, such as platforms, places and towers, in persuit of an "experimental identity", i.e. "office life style"

The concept conceived of a typical plan, i.e. multiple floors stacked on one another, which were then subdivided into 4 characteristic towers. The only connection between these towers were the rectangular slabs (typical plan), which were seen as the floor slabs throughout the building. 

1. Collective Tower: container space for meeting rooms

2. Executive Tower: container space for management teams.

3. Circulation Tower: same as a lobby of American Skyscraper.

4. Virtual Tower: labs, research and experimentation center. 

The towers in the building have properties of an Unique identity. The circulation, high level correspondence (social encounters)and services are mainly designed and configured within the tower elements. This gives a rational uptake in the design by constructing these rules to maintain strict order. However, the repeatative creation of floor slabs that connect these towers as a whole (typical plan), are labeled as a Generic pattern. This has no form or creativity to its existance. Its a general element to this composition. By having these dignified towers, it breaks up this deep plan into a more elegant and a much more open type of environment. 

The office floors provide the necessary flexibility while the tower elements guarantee that a single entity is maintained.

The whole idea of towers begins to comply with the bigness of it. It starts to become urban. No longer soloists. Urbanistically, the entire building becomes an urban quarter.

Could this mean that the urban grain could be superimposed on the building section or plan?