HYBRIDITY - When Unlikely Typologies Collide

By Jim Thompson

Over the past few decades design has mainstreamed. Children today grow up with design in the form of devices so intuitive that they can determine how to work them without an instruction manual. It’s no surprise people are beginning to create spaces that combine elements in ways that suit their wants and needs.

The idea of hybridity is an association of ideas, concepts and themes that reinforce and contradict each other at once, creating an interesting result in the built environment because of the different types of experiences that they can bring to the users of the spaces, and novel ways of overlapping unanticipated uses in the same space.

When these unlikely typologies and ideas collide in the making of new spaces, an extraordinary intersection is created. These unorthodox combinations and ideas related to “place” and the unique associations that are generated because of them become fertile ground for innovation. The power in a hybrid is more than the sum of its parts; it’s the resulting unexpected innovation from the combination.

Hybrid buildings are intended to disrupt the social norms of public and private life. What we are seeing with hybridity – through ideas, social and cultural settings, advanced through technology and the intersection of diverse ideas – is making what was once something “out there” and “on the edge” very real and attainable, soon to be expected and the new norm.

Hybrid buildings take this a step further. In essence they create places that become catalytic incubators for new and experiential architectural types that are inspiring, active and most often, urban. The best examples of hybrid architecture create stronger physical and programmatic links between an urban center’s retailers, educational institutions, businesses, people and vibrant destinations.

We are seeing an early progression to hybridity though mixed-use/shared typologies in places that combine uses, such as retail with work, STEM labs that combine science and technologies, and schools that have community spaces. These types of facilities are pushing the idea of typology in a “linear” fashion; as most simply put, they are combining functions and changing the future of work itself.

Jim Thompson, AIA, IIDA, LEED AP BD+C, is a Partner and Design Principal in the Workplace Practice at Little and can be reached at Jim.Thompson@littleonline.com