morphology « ARCHISPEAKING

Simply put, morphology is the form and structure of anything.

Morphology is an “account of form,” an account that allows us a rational grasp of the morphe by making internal and external relations intelligible. It seeks to be a general theory of the formative powers of organic structure. The Pre-Darwinian project of rational morphology was to discover the “laws of form,” some inherent necessity in the laws which governed morphological process. It sought to construct what was typical in the varieties of form into a system which should not be merely historically determined, but which should be intelligible from a higher and more rational standpoint. (Hans Driesch, 1914, p. 149)

Borrowing from the disciplines of biology and philosophy, where it refers respectively with the study of form and structure of organisms and the science of the form of words, the term morphology is used in architectural discourse to describe the study of the changing structure of an architectural form and its formation in response to different conditions, such as time or function, or to the relationship of a form to existing typologies.