CONTEXT & BUILDING
“Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all.”-Gregory Bateson
In today’s lecture, we look into the 3 articles which wrote by Le Corbusier, Jane Jacob and Tom Schumacher. Each of them show a picture to us on how a city should be like. But to me they are all the same, in the way they actually point out the issue of their era and speak to us on how architecture can contribute in creating a better society. In my opinion, this is what meant by the word “context” in architecture, a solution made through the combination of all events and circumstances which contribute to the evolution of world society and progress of world civilization, same as case which we always heard people arguing that architecture is not art, perhaps it’s the word “context” is the keyword we used to differentiate them, which the work space of former is the city that responsible to people and its context while latter is canvas that absolutely no responsibility to anyone or anything.
Context became significant in the relation between the architecture building within the urban fabric and its proximal surroundings. It is the element that influence the contemporary architecture design. But the term of CONTEXT are much more complex in architecture term. If I were to ask you, “How do you feel about context?” you’d likely respond with, “Context of what?” See, you’d need some context from which to understand the question about context. Elements that made up CONTEXT are physical and non-physical. Physical meaning to those nature & existing feature such as roads, surrounding buildings and land contour while non-physical means social, cultural, as well as political and economic constraints. A good architecture must reflect the surrounding context locally and globally.
“Creating places and spaces that enrich the lives of the people who use them is the foundation of architects’ work. Every building can and should engage in a dialog with the history, beliefs, and needs of a particular place and time.” -Simon Unwin.
This phrase convey the idea of context as a physical, social and cultural issue for contemporary architecture. The natural climate, we need to understand the site ecological history because it gives the clues as what design strategies we need to apply future .The culture and historical part,it play role as a host of emotion and by the adaptation of this can shape the characteristic of building and show the identity of building to place it belongs to, but unfortunately most contemporary architects stripped them off, leaving the building nothing but geometry in the sky. The social part, for me is how the building design addresses its surroundings – from its relationship with the street, with the neighbourhood, with the society around it within the general context of the city.
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However these factors may made up the important piece of context puzzle, but there are by no means to the entire puzzle. A building does not stand alone—particularly in an urban environment. Buildings are one element of the collage; however, they are a crucial element to establishing social and cultural mores. Other context such as economic, and therefore even racial, stratification can easily be affected, altered, and changed—for better or worse—by architecture. How architecture related to the economic context? Throughout the recent years, recession has given a huge impact to slow down the building construction and global development and the mantra ringing through architect’s mind is very probably “FORM FOLLOW FINANCE”. The economic crisis had out the paid to the trophy building projects. But this economic context become the time for architects to rethink the game and overturn the situation thus regroup the next boom for contemporary architecture practice.
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In addition, the political context play a great role in defining and determining the direction of contemporary architecture. There are a strong connection felt between the politics and architecture. Because architecture is always at the service of politics and economics, its styles can be understood as corresponding to specific models of society and socio-economic epochs. Therefore, the collaboration of government and architects on city-planning is to create a city or habitat which fulfil the needs of society or individuals for places to work and live. “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” ―Jane Jacob
“Architecture is a political act, by nature. It has to do with the relationships between people and how they decide to change their conditions of living.”-Lebbeus Woods
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Elbphilharmonie by Herzog & de Meuron
The Elbphilharmonie is a concert hall in the HafenCity quarter of Hamburg, Germany, on the Grasbrook peninsula of the Elbe River. The new glassy construction resembles a hoisted sail, water wave or quartz crystal; it sits on top of an old warehouse building -Kaispeicher A which was originally used as a warehouse for cocoa beans until the end of the last century. The new building Elbhphilharmonie has been extruded from the shape of the Kaispeicher A and is perfectly congruent with the brick block of the older building on top of which it has been placed. Adaptation to the context is always the best solution in creating contemporary architecture. In contrast to the stoic brick facade of the Kaispeicher A, the new building above has a glass facade, consisting in part of curved panels, some of them cut open. The glass facade transforms the new building into a gigantic, iridescent crystal whose textured appearance changes as it catches the reflections of the sky, the water and the city and transforms them into an intricate puzzle on its facade. Between the top of the Kaispeicher A and beneath the new building at the joint between old and new - is a new public space that offers unique panoramic views. Along its edges, vault-shaped openings create spectacular, theatrical views of both the River Elbe and the City of Hamburg. Further inside, a deep vertical opening creates constant spectacular glimpses of the foyer areas of the Grand Hall above. This showcases how the architects actually take advantages of site context and further developed into new structure which can merge into surrounding. The principle design idea of the Grand Hall as a space where orchestra and conductor are located in the centre of the audience, is a well-known typology. This space, rising vertically almost like a tent, is not determined by the architecture alone but by the 2.100 listeners and musicians who gather in order to make and listen to music. This is what we said as the social context that may influence the building. The society needs shape how the space should be, not only fulfil the designer desires. However, the project was criticized because of its cost overruns but in a comparative analysis suggested that the overrun was relatively "modest" compared to some other international mega-projects around the world.
Before ending, while it would be nice to say we can evaluate architecture based strictly on the standards of form, function, and aesthetics, it is very thoughtless to do so. Architecture is a deeply complex field with deeply complex consequences. There are nonetheless standards I believe should always be at play as we evaluate architecture. And with that, I’ll say: context is everything. We may make our habit to be critical of context in architecture and hopefully push us towards better architecture. As the wrap up of this essay, I would like to quote Eliel Saarinen as saying “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, and an environment in a city plan.”
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After all, what is left of architecture without context? Perhaps the quotes of Gregory can answer this. Without context, architecture have no meaning at all.