Standardization

Definition

Standardization in architecture names the programme of deriving design from fixed, general standards — dimensional norms, building types, and above all human needs — so that building form can be deduced from them rather than invented. Broadbent's chapter on "Architecture and the Human Sciences" (1973) gives the concept its modernist core and its failure: the search for fundamental standards ran from Le Corbusier's "All men have the same needs" through Gropius's impersonal "norm" to Hannes Meyer's biological reduction, and collapsed precisely at the level of needs — because standards established for one cultural group at one moment do not hold, and because the "typical family" they imply "has no personal existence."

Key Claims

Le Corbusier's twin programme. Standards established "not capriciously but with the surety of something intentional and of a logic controlled by analysis and experiment. All men have the same organism, the same functions. All men have the same needs." Once laid down, "design itself should become a matter of deducing for a particular building the actual form which the general standards determine." He found the model in the motor-car industry, where simple function and complicated aims (comfort, resistance, appearance) had forced "the 'absolute necessity' of standardization."
Gropius's norm. "A standard may be defined as that simple practical exemplar of anything in general use which embodies a fusion of the best of its anterior forms — a fusion preceded by the elimination of the personal content of their designers and all otherwise ungeneric or non-essential features. Such an impersonal standard is called a 'norm', a word derived from a carpenter's square." His density/daylight-angle diagrams (ten-storey blocks: more flats, better angle) Broadbent calls "rather doubtful."
Meyer's reduction and its two refutations. His list of "the only requirements to be considered when building a house" omits reading, writing, conversation — living itself; his universal chemistry of life drew Mies's retort: "Life is oxygen + carbon + sugar + starch + protein … Try stirring that together, it stinks."
Standards are culture- and moment-bound. Meyer's cultural standardization list (the bowler hat, jazz, Harold Lloyd, DIN, Leibig's) survived only as "the cult objects of minority groups"; his standards "represented standards only for one cultural group (western Europe and America) at a particular moment in time (the mid-1920s)."
The statistical monster. Hitchcock and Johnson, on International Style housing: "implies preparation not for a given family but for a typical family. This statistical monster, the typical family, has no personal existence and cannot defend itself against the sociological theories of the architects"; the functionalists "provide what ought to be needed, even at the expense of what is actually needed."
Standardization fixes arrangements. Le Corbusier's built-in fittings "fix once and for all the arrangement of the room" — against the three-piece suite's "extraordinary number of permutations." The standard's cost is paid in movability (see flexible-interior).
Where standardization legitimately works. Physiological limits: exposure ranges outside which 90%, 80%… 10% of humans would die, and comfort ranges around them — but "it will never be possible to establish a simple temperature at which everyone… would feel comfortable." The proven zone of standardization is the body's tolerance, not its wishes (see ergonomics).

Key Thinkers

Le Corbusier — the standards programme in its most complete form: needs as statistically establishable, form as deduction; and its domotic extreme (the 'Manual of the dwelling', built-in furniture).
Geoffrey Broadbent — the documenter and auditor: the chapter reconstructs the modernist standards programme and shows its limits (Meyer's omissions, culture-bound standards, the typical family).
Walter Gropius (not yet paged — see log) — the "norm" definition and the density/daylight diagrams.
Hannes Meyer (not yet paged — see log) — the biological reduction of requirements; the Bauhaus invitation to the human scientists (1927–28).
Hitchcock and Johnson (not yet paged — see log) — "The statistical monster, the typical family."

Functionalist Myth — the mythic register the standards programme feeds: total functionality presumed from signs.
Typology — the type as the standard's design-theory cousin.
Ergonomics — the surviving, physiological form of standards-making.
User Participation — the counter-programme the standards failure prepared: find out what people want rather than assume it.
Flexible Interior — the movability the built-in standard forecloses.
Standardization vs. expression (Werkbund) — the founding 1914 quarrel of the same issue: see werkbund-debate.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

Design in Architecture, ch. 4 (Broadbent 1973) — the concept's founding audit: Le Corbusier's standards ("All men have the same needs"), Gropius's "norm", Meyer's requirements list and cultural standardization, the culture-boundness verdict ("only for one cultural group… at a particular moment in time"), and Hitchcock & Johnson's "statistical monster, the typical family."
A history of style and the modern interior (Deyong 2018) — the programme's 1914 founding quarrel: Muthesius's Typisierung ("a new style must emerge from standardization and the techniques of mass production") against van de Velde's expression ("It would be to destroy the embryo in the egg"). See werkbund-debate.
Tower Block (Glendinning & Muthesius 1994) — the standards programme at state scale: the 1919 mission's "'maximum output', 'standards' and, later on, 'Modernity' and 'community'" in British public housing.

Open Questions

Component standardization (fabrication, DIN sizes) and needs standardization (all men have the same needs) are distinct programmes the modernists ran together — is the first defensible while the second fails, and where does the wiki's industrialized-building material (package-deal, welfare-state-housing) fall?
Broadbent's own test: statistics legitimately fix the body's tolerance ranges but never "a simple temperature at which everyone… would feel comfortable." Is there any human need for which the proven case (physiology) extends to the desired case (comfort, delight)?
Is Hitchcock & Johnson's "typical family" the same figure the wiki's non-visible-user names from the other side — the user the standard cannot see?