Cultures, Communities and Design

Abstract

Architecture design, roughly defined as the creation of form-for-dwelling (dwelling understood in an existentialist sense) entails two extremes for how form-for-dwelling is generated: one extreme is an extrinsically generated form that engenders an architecture as an instrument of culture; the other extreme is an intrinsically generated form that engenders an architecture as an autonomous form. As an instrument of culture, it responds to its physical and social context creating a contextualized architecture. As an autonomous form, it is self-referential and creates a de-contextualized architecture. Between these two extremes scholars have argued for a differentiated relation between architecture and culture. Among them are those that advocate for a critical architecture, an architecture that is acontextual while also repudiating formalism, others argue for a context-embedded architecture that seems to offer a middle ground between the two extremes of total integration and total discontinuity or difference. Modern and contemporary architecture could be readily placed along the spectrum of these extremes with the promise of occupying a reasonable middle ground. However, modern and contemporary architecture have generally been unsuccessful in defining the proper link between architecture and culture. The paper aims to understand what is meant by a context-embedded architecture and calls for an approach that is morpho-topical, one that responds to place (topos) in an immediate as well as mediate sense. Architecture is foremost the insertion of a form-for-dwelling in a place, a nested and networked place situated in relation to other places and networks. The contextual problematic of architecture needs to be supplanted by an understanding of place. Form can thus be reconceptualized as part of a wider understanding of being a constituent of place. This may avail architecture from being framed as a commodified object while setting a foundation for an architecture of embodiment.