LECTURE 11

ARTICLE READING

Is context today more important, less importance, or of the same importance as it was a century ago? Compare one contemporary case study and one case study from roughly a century ago.

Architecture in context is a strong and eloquent visual relationship to the surrounding. Individual building is

always seen first as a part of the whole, creating places and spaces that enrich the lives of the people who use

them is the foundation of architects work. I think every building should be able to communicate in a dialog with

the history, beliefs and needs of a particular place and time. Identification of place lies as a generative core of

architecture. The importance of places to architecture is similar to the importance of language to human,

recognition, memory, choice, sharing and significance, all these contribute to the process of architecture.

Our physical environment is being increasingly designed without substantial content. I think today’s architecture

are mostly commercialized as they want to stand out from the surroundings, they want it to be striking and unique

in a bold way instead of fitting in to the context. Architecture, for me, is the physical language of context and

community. The context is a combination of unique culture of all living, past history, and a future in which new

buildings transform the living traditions into breathing a new culture. Architects need to work on thoughtfully

designing public places and spaces, to build on the unique local character and the best qualities of the forms

and sharing spaces inherent in that geographic region.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross built in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona is the epitome of what many architects try

to achieve when designing religious architecture. It's reliance on the symbolic rock as it's foundation and the

sprawling views of the surrounding environment create a humbling and spiritual experience within the walls of the church. Built directly over a butte, the valley stretches towards the horizon about 200 feet below. Besides it's

beautiful figurative ties to the Catholic faith through it's structure on the solid rock, the giant cross that supports the structure of the glass is one of the notable characteristics of this chapel.

The folk art museum stands in the campus of China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou. The site was formerly a tea field that formed a hillside. Their point was to design a museum from which the ground below can be felt, by continuingthe building’s floors that follow the ups and downs of the slope. Planning is based on geometric division in the unitsof parallelogram to deal with the intricate topography. Each unit has a small individual roof, so the outlook

became like a village that evokes a view of extending tiled roofs. The outer walls are covered with a screen of tileshung up by stainless wires, functional to control the amount of sunlight coming into the internal spaces. The old

tiles, used for the screen and the roof, comes from local homes and their size are all different, helping the

architecture to naturally blend into the ground. Kengo Kuma reusing the clay tiles and stones from Hangzhou's old house district so the body of the museum may appear as if the“soil of the tea gardens” were “transformed into

architecture”.

Both architecture, the chapel and the museum actually very well fit into the site and blend in with the surroundingThe space inside both building were following the context of the topography and apply it into the building to

enhance the experience of the users. As we can see, context and architecture is free from time restriction, and

the way an architecture breath the same space with the context is timeless. Fashion will change, wave will pass,

but the context will still remain the same. The context of climatic, cultural, economical, political, computational

and environmental cannot be denied is very important in determining the contemporary architectural design.

Responding to the surrounding contexts must always be considered because it determines the success of a

buildings design, these contexts will create communication channels between buildings and people around and capable of influencing the lives of individuals and communities. After all, the very nature of the art of architecture

is to serve humanity, it is an utilitarian art, even in its most spiritual form.