Culture Architecture And Design

The three basic questions of EBS are (1) What bio-social, psychological, and cultural characteristics of human beings influence which characteristics of the built environment?; (2) What effects do which aspects of which environments have on which groups of people, under what circumstances, and when, why, and how?; and (3) Given this two-way interaction between people and environments, there must be mechanisms that link them. What are these mechanisms?Focusing on answers to these and other questions, "Culture, Architecture, and Design" discusses the relationship between culture, the built environment, and design by showing that the purpose of design is to create environments that suit users and is, therefore, user-oriented. Design must also be based on knowledge of how people and environments interact. Thus, design needs to respond to culture. In discussing (1) the nature and role of Environment-Behavior Studies (EBS); (2) the types of environments; (3) the importance of culture; (4) preference, choice, and design; (5) the nature of culture; (6) the scale of culture; and (7) how to make culture usable, Amos Rapoport states that there needs to be a ?change from designing for one?s own culture to understanding and designing for users? cultures and basing design on research in EBS, anthropology, and other relevant fields. Such changes should transform architecture and design so that it, in fact, does what it claims to do and is supposed to do ? create better (i.e., more supportive) environments.?

Gathering his most compelling essays and addresses from the last fifty years in one accessible volume, this book looks at the pioneering ideas that underpin Sim Van der Ryn’s ecological design philosophy. It offers a unique decade-by-decade retrospective of the key issues in environmental design, beginning with the most recent years and looking back to the 1960s. With an introductory chapter and further recommended reading for each decade, this book is key reading for any architect or designer practising today, and students will find a wealth of knowledge with which to support their studies. The author’s beautiful illustrations, painted in a corresponding timescale to the chapters, offer further insight into the way he understands the challenges of humanity’s stewardship of our planet.

This book presents the radical architectural strategies and poetic cultural projects developed by OPEN Architecture, and the opportunities and challenges that arise from redefining built forms. Drawing on a series of conversations and site visits to six recent groundbreaking projects, architecture writer Catherine Shaw describes how Beijing-based OPEN Architecture is reinventing and responding to China’s complex and fast-changing cultural landscape with projects that mark a new era for contemporary Chinese cultural architecture. OPEN Architecture was founded in New York in 2003 by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, while their Beijing office opened in 2008. From a contemporary art gallery buried beneath a sand dune to a sculptural open-air theatre in a remote mountain valley near the Great Wall, co-founders Li Hu and Huang Wenjing re-evaluate conventional Western assumptions about culture and design as they base each pioneering project on the needs and plea-sures of humanity within the context of diverse terrains and climates. In doing so, they not only consider how cultural architecture looks, but how it works. Projects are presented with commentary and contextual information as well as new analyses and archival material, including outstanding color photography, plans and drawings, and exploratory sketches. This book provides a fresh perspective on contemporary cultural architecture and place making, hig-lighting the architects’ sources of inspiration, their challenges, and their construction methods, showing how each impactful project responds to China’s distinctive context.

Canadian Architecture: Evolving a Cultural Identity surveys the country's most accomplished architectural firms, whose work enhances cities and landscapes across Canada's geographically varied expanse. Author Leslie Jen explores a number of significant projects in urban and rural environments--private residences, cultural and institutional facilities, and democratic public spaces--that profoundly influence our interactions with each other and the communities in which we live. Accompanied by stunning photography, Canadian Architecture is a testament to a thriving, diverse and innovative design culture that continues to play an integral role in shaping our national identity.

Today’s explosive developments in digital technology have also affected architecture and the urban landscape. The new possibilities opened up by digital simulation have led to an increasingly strategic approach to planning, an approach based on generating scenarios, which thus represents a radical departure from traditional planning. From the preliminary sketch all the way to the production of individual building components, digital tools offer new possibilities that were still inconceivable just a few years ago. This volume provides a profound introduction to the important role of digital technologies in design and execution. In four chapters, the author systematically examines the influence of digital culture on architecture but also on the urban landscape as well as product design. The relationship of digital architecture to the city is also an important focus.

Gathering his most compelling essays and addresses from the last fifty years in one accessible volume, this book looks at the pioneering ideas that underpin Sim Van der Ryn’s ecological design philosophy. It offers a unique decade-by-decade retrospective of the key issues in environmental design, beginning with the most recent years and looking back to the 1960s. With an introductory chapter and further recommended reading for each decade, this book is key reading for any architect or designer practising today, and students will find a wealth of knowledge with which to support their studies. The author’s beautiful illustrations, painted in a corresponding timescale to the chapters, offer further insight into the way he understands the challenges of humanity’s stewardship of our planet.

Harry Francis Mallgrave combines a history of ideas about architectural experience with the latest insights from the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science and evolutionary biology to make a powerful argument about the nature and future of architectural design. Today, the sciences have granted us the tools to help us understand better than ever before the precise ways in which the built environment can affect the building user's individual experience. Through an understanding of these tools, architects should be able to become better designers, prioritizing the experience of space - the emotional and aesthetic responses, and the sense of homeostatic well-being, of those who will occupy any designed environment. In From Object to Experience, Mallgrave goes further, arguing that it should also be possible to build an effective new cultural ethos for architectural practice. Drawing upon a range of humanistic and biological sources, and emphasizing the far-reaching implications of new neuroscientific discoveries and models, this book brings up-to-date insights and theoretical clarity to a position that was once considered revolutionary but is fast becoming accepted in architecture.

Reconnecting Cultures considers Rocco Design Architects' approach to the different contexts in which the practice works, by showcasing projects developed both in mainland China and Hong Kong, where different aesthetic and architectural strategies are employed to respond to disparate cultural and physical landscapes. As a Chinese architectural practice based in Hong Kong, where oriental and Western, modern and traditional cultures are merging, Rocco Design's work is grounded in the belief that architecture is the embodiment of culture--embracing and reinterpreting the past, heritage and tradition, as well as addressing modernity--and the requirements of contemporary living, spatial relationships, materials, and the balance between the public and private realms. As such, Rocco Design is sensitive to the cultural context in which the practice works--their architecture is both an expression of form, and an interpretation of the culture at its heart. This beautifully illustrated volume documents major projects such as the Distorted Courtyard House, which responds sensitively to its surrounding topography while remaining striking and provocative in terms of its contemporary architectural devices, the Jiu Jian Tang, Shanghai, and the Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou. At One Peking Road, Rocco Design's use of photovoltaic panels seamlessly integrates sustainability within iconic architecture. Other projects, such as the HKSAR Government Headquarters, Hong Kong, exemplify the practice's creation of significant and recognisable buildings that contribute to the development of 'place' and history. Reconnecting Cultures offers the most substantial exploration of Rocco Design's work to date. Interviews with Rocco as well as contributions from eminent architectural commentators take the reader through the underlying theoretical and aesthetic preoccupations that shape the practice's work and make it resonate within both a Chinese and an increasingly global context.