Everything in the Existing Context is Valuable - Is That So?
For a little more than a year now that I have been trying to define the definitions of “places” and “non-places” for myself. This week topic on critical regionalism makes me go back and analyze these definitions once again. I feel that the six points for an architecture of resistance that Kenneth Frampton outlines still have something missing. It is the PEOPLE or more to say the variety of different people.
What do I mean by this?
At the time of Frampton’s writing, there was not as much diversity at a location as today’s society. I agree with all he said. But I would like to add an ingredient of different personal cultures in the mix. I’ll give myself as an example. I was born in Vietnam to a Chinese family who migrated from Cambodia. And now I’m here living in the United States. I have been living here for about 14 years. You could say that much of my culture now is heavily influenced by the American culture and of the people I’m surrounding myself with. So let’s see … I have a mix of four cultures merely based on where I’ve lived. Not to mention the effect of globalization that brought other cultures into my mix of influences - as you all might already have guessed by now - yes … Japanese culture. There are so many people with similar circumstances to mine who live all around the world. We could say that this was made happen, thanks to the globalization of our society.
Where am I going with this pertaining architecture?
As Professor Franco mentioned in this week's lecture, anything that you find in the existing site and everything related to it is valuable in defining the critical regionalism of a design. I agree with that. Now let’s add a sprinkle of my cultural mix into the design as I am a part of the location in which I reside. Would a design with inspiration from all my background fit into the critical regionalism of an American context?
I feel that because of globalization and how much we are relying on it, there is no longer an argument for what exactly can be defined under the critical regionalism umbrella. Because a place has transformed into something that is getting similar to one another as people move around and cultures get shared between one another.
I definitely am seeing the world has become flatter by the second, but I think what is great about a being a designer is that one can always add a little bit of themselves when facing a design project with the respect of the local nature and culture traditions.
ReplyDeleteTuyen, I enjoyed reading your posts, because as someone who has basically lived in the same place surrounded by very similar people my whole life, I forget that some designers have a lot more knowledge coming from different countries and cultures. I feel like people, like yourself, have a lot to offer our design community and will hopefully help us all evolve into like Zach said, the flatter world that we are becoming. I know that we design for local, but I think that having a background in different cultures and countries can really help add like small piece of something else to help bring a new way of doing things.
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