scholarly journals Architecture of excess: navigating beyond the superficial

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tsang

Contemporary architecture has become increasingly superficial as it relies on capricious visual excitement for appeal in the 21st Century. Architectural semiotics have been appropriated to become massively branded images in the urban landscape that aim for instant gratification, lacking experiential depth and qualities beyond visual delight. The aim for iconic and instant appeal in any building typology limits our understanding of architecture’s relationship to use, users, and context. Working both within and beyond the same culture of consumption and excess in the experience economy, this thesis posits that characteristics and values of entertainment architecture provide engaging experiential qualities for architectural design beyond superficial appeal. Entertaining values of educational leisure, themed environments, and consumption can in fact generate a more integrated and authentic relationship between architecture, people, and place in our society of the spectacle.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tsang

Contemporary architecture has become increasingly superficial as it relies on capricious visual excitement for appeal in the 21st Century. Architectural semiotics have been appropriated to become massively branded images in the urban landscape that aim for instant gratification, lacking experiential depth and qualities beyond visual delight. The aim for iconic and instant appeal in any building typology limits our understanding of architecture’s relationship to use, users, and context. Working both within and beyond the same culture of consumption and excess in the experience economy, this thesis posits that characteristics and values of entertainment architecture provide engaging experiential qualities for architectural design beyond superficial appeal. Entertaining values of educational leisure, themed environments, and consumption can in fact generate a more integrated and authentic relationship between architecture, people, and place in our society of the spectacle.


Author(s):  
Marina MIHĂILĂ ◽  
Mihaela CIOLACHE ◽  
Raluca PEȘTIȘANU ◽  
Andra GIUGLEA ◽  
Mara VASILE ◽  
...  

Main ideas on which the project proposal is based are : 1. producing a peer production collaborative open access data base for contemporary architecture; 2. proposing a structural visualization method and several modes of mapping and linking information and relevant images; 3. founding and defining a young generation of architectural projects-buildings; 4. gathering an advanced discussion for future architectural design; 5. fabricating new ideas, finding meaning and tendencies through short writings and discussions. Proposed method is to structure the ideas in a singular concept together with revisiting, reediting and rewriting the team’s manifesto Restarting Avant-garde for specific declaration of ideas, making from the specific proposed project an active instrument for a future cultural Bucharest. In few words, the team members declaration is to connect and reconnect with the School of Architecture / Faculty of Architecture UAUIM Bucharest, to contribute together and on common principles, militate for, activate and enrolling 21st century architecture to European new setups. The project proposal includes also the architects enrolling and contributing through their own projects to mapping a guide of 21st century Bucharest. keywords: contemporary architecture, Bucharest, cultural capital, 21st century architecture guide.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Grant

The Indigenous peoples of north east Arnhem Land in Australia (Yolngu) overlay their culture with the customs and social behaviour of other societies to achieve positive outcomes and autonomy. Passing down cultural knowledge is intrinsic to the cultural identity of Yolngu. The paper discusses the recently completed Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre and examines the cultural knowledge conveyed through the medium of contemporary architecture design. The paper finds that the Garma Cultural Knowledge Centre combined aspects of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal cultures to form a coherent whole with multi-facetted meanings. © 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies, Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: People and environments; cultural knowledge; architecture; indigenous architecture


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Ibbotson

<p>It can be argued that modern architecture has expelled the building’s relationship to the ground. Raised on pilotis, modern buildings constructed the platform as an artificial ground plane. Ultimately, the platform was a two-dimensional plane, flattened to aid our transition across the built environment. This horizontal plane merely tolerated inhabitation. Unfortunately the language synonymous with this plane has been extended into contemporary architecture. It is proposed that the rigidity and stability expressed by the surface of the horizontal plane has failed to reflect the body, stimulate interaction, or challenge the inhabitant of architecture. To free the horizontal plane from its rigid axis this thesis aims to break away from the conventional building typology inflicted by modern architecture. As the force of gravity restricts our inhabitation of the built environment to the horizontal plane we directly engage with this surface of architecture. It provokes the question, how can the design of the horizontal plane engage the body and challenge the inhabitant to intensify the experience of architecture? An exploration of the skin-to-skin relationship between the surface of the body and the surface of architecture directs this thesis toward a provocative design exploration and evokes an expressive horizontal plane. To challenge the restrictive conception of architecture’s horizontal plane the program of inhabitation for this design project explores the practice of yoga. Now conceived as a dynamic force, the body can be activated by architecture’s horizontal plane. This surface provides an expressive canvas with the capacity to embody the dynamic movements of yoga. It aids, activates and challenges the participant’s body and amplifies the experience of yoga. An expressive horizontal plane, central to the inhabitation of a yoga centre, generates a dynamic space that provokes a dialogue of interaction between the inhabitant and the surface of architecture. A dynamic plane has emerged.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sertaç Ilter ◽  
S.Müjdem Vural

The double-skin façade (DSF) is one of the most crucial paradigms of building envelope design in last decades. DSF prospects a unified architectural phenomenon based on comfort rank of building driven by the dogmas of aesthetic-glass façade and practical-natural ventilation aspirations. Therefore, the utilization of DSF has been the most prevalent catalyst for architectural design. The study discusses to structure a valid evaluation method focusing on DSF elements in order to fragment human comfort standards within asserting an accurate system in the preliminary design stage. The study significantly examines the tools/ways of integrating DSFs' human comfort parameters in contemporary architecture though a convincing design system. Apparently, the study aims to provide a proposed guideline within a established analyzing system for architects in order to better formation of DSF elements; which refers and promote the human comfort standards. The results demonstrate a modest insight on understanding the potentials of DSF elements in the early design stage significantly following defined architectural conceptions; cooling, lighting, thermal, acoustic and visual comfort intensity. Based on obtained data; study aims to enclose a diminutive knowledge or demonstration of how the concept might work for future development of contemporary architecture within DSF area.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-23
Author(s):  
O. V MATVEEVA

The article presents the projects of contemporary architects who use in their works aged materials in the context of reconstruction, and as an independent aesthetic aspect of modern architectural design. Also considered the relevance of the aged-material trends in contemporary architecture.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 274-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martynas Mankus

The article analyses expression of symbolism in Lithuanian postmodern architecture. It discusses the concept of symbolism and transformations of its meaning in comparison to the period of modernism as well as examines its most significant aspects in semantic understanding of postmodernist architecture. The article seeks to disclose the forms of symbolism represented in Lithuanian architecture by the end of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century. It searches for the most expressive examples of Lithuanian architecture of the given period by clarifying the character of postmodernist use of symbols. Attempts have been made to trace the expression trajectories of symbolism in contemporary architecture that have been influenced by postmodernism.


Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 702-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Bulkeley ◽  
Andrés Luque-Ayala ◽  
Colin McFarlane ◽  
Gordon MacLeod

As the 21st Century world assumes an increasingly urban landscape, the question of how definitive urban spaces are to be governed intensifies. At the heart of this debate lies a question about the degree and type of autonomy that towns and cities might have in shaping their economic, environmental, social and cultural geography. This paper aims to examine this question. Starting with the premise that the degree of autonomy any particular town or city has is inherently an empirical question – one which can only be conceptualised in relational terms vis-à-vis the distributed, networked and territorialised responsibilities and powers of the city and the nation-state and other zones of connection – we examine four different contexts where debates over autonomy have intensified in recent history (Brazil, UK, India and South Africa). Drawing on recent respective histories, we identify key elements and enablers in the making of urban autonomy: a characteristic that exists in a variety of guises and forms and creates a patchwork landscape of differentially powerful fragments. We reveal how, beyond its characteristic as a political ideal, autonomy surfaces as a practice that emerges from within specific sectors of particular societies and through their relationship with national and regional politics. Four alternative forms of urban autonomy are delineated: fragmented, coerced (or enclave), distributed and networked. We contend that the spatial templates for autonomy are not predetermined but can be enhanced in multiple different sites and forms of political space within the city. This enhancement appears essential for the integration and strengthening of capacities for sustainable and just forms of development throughout the urban.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Emilia Malec-Zięba

In the 21st century, a distinct technological progress has taken place with regard to ceramic tiles production. Both technological possibilities and the scope of application of the said material have improved. Full body ceramic tiles have started to appear in architecture not solely as a surface covering materials for concrete but also in applications that had not been earlier associated with ceramic tiles. This article focuses on approaching this subject in the context of the usage of large format porcelain stoneware tiles in the shaping of architecture. In this contemporary era, we are experiencing an exceptional evolution, on both technological and aesthetic aspects, when it comes to the production of ceramic materials, specifically porcelain stoneware tiles. Modern ceramic products, especially large format ceramic tiles, also referred to as siliceous sinter, offer nonconventional possibilities in design and an extended scope of applications of this material in architectural realizations.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document