The Concept of Urbanism and Its Influence on Architecture
The term urbanism refers to the way of life. The concept of urbanism alludes to the dispersal of urban culture. Urbanism one the major concepts of architecture, through which architects design structure of an urban area. The term has been interpreted in many ways. According to some school of thought,urbanism refers to the planning of society based on some principles, which have been followed since past several centuries regarding building architecture, by which ways of interaction of the natives of urban areas can be studied. Urbanism includes the physical design of the building and structures along with its management. Sociology of urban areas is also a part of urbanism. Sociologist or architects study the factors related to population in urban are. For instance, they study that why people in a city, what are the facilities they get, why the city is densely populated and so on. Therefore, it can be said that urbanism is a continuous changing concept. It is the way of developing urban life pattern. It is to be noted that urbanism does not mean a city; rather it means the lifestyle of the people living in an area where population density is observed. Hence, there are certain characteristics of urbanism exist according to Louis Wirth: transiency, superficiality, anonymity, and individualism. Transiency has been marked Louis Writh as the first characteristics of urbanism. He opines that in an urban society, the relation between the residents long for a very short time. When an inhabitant shift to a new city, he generally does not remain attached with the old connection, soon he develops contacts with new people. As a result, when he leaves the city again, it has been observed that he does not hesitate leaving the old city. Superficiality is another characterizes of urbanism according to Writh. People of urban are mainly keep a formal relation with each other.
They remain very limited while building relations with others. The inhabitants meet each other and build relationship to satisfy their personal requirements. Anonymity is the other characteristic of urbanism, where urban people do not engage with each other intimately. Mutual understanding between each other that are often found in the rural people is not there in urban societies. Individualism is another characteristic as mentioned by Writh. He says people of urban area prioritize something if they think that their interest lies in it. City, urban society, urbanization are some of the words that indicated the physical definition of an urban society. As soon as people hear these terms, they get an idea of the social structure of the area. For instance, the lifestyle of the city dwellers is completely different from the villagers. Urbanism reflects the complex social structure, where inhabitants are interdependent on each other in order to fulfill the economic functions. Urbanism helps the architects to plan the structure of a new city or town. Keeping the modernization as well as past principles in mind designers set the strategies. With the advancement, new urbanism has become the priority in city or urban planning. It is the practice of designing urban areas through which architects make strategies to create environment friendly urban cities and towns. As per the global scenario, the idea of new urbanism has been largely adopted by most of the developed countries.
Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction in Architecture
The progression of the movement called structuralism influenced by the Ferdinand De Saussure, the Swiss linguist is known as post-structuralism. Structuralism refers to the process of the system to form their every independent component to signify a meaning. Both post structuralism and structuralism are two versatile movements, which refer to a complete different approach of architecture. It also proposes the connection between them. The perspective towards the world, which points the permanent structure and the connection among things, is defined as structuralism. Post structuralism suggests the approach that there is nothing but the structure exists. The approach of post structuralism enables the architect to think independently and without considering its relationship with other components in its sphere. A good instance of post structuralism in terms of architecture can be the Wexner Center of Eisenman on the campus of Ohio State. The architect Eisenman while designing the building went against the traditional practices of architecture and. He did not follow the obvious general guidelines of architecture. Therefore, it can be said that post structuralism generates individualistic ideas and it does not stick to the hard and fast rule of architecture or designing of structures. Post structuralism and deconstruction are frequently linked with Post-structuralism. The reason behind this is, all of these movements are respondent to structuralism. During the Modernism era, architecture was considered as communication that depicts American architect Louis Sullivan’s form and principle of ‘form, follows function’. However, the post modernism’s former movement and deconstruction were differed by Charles Jencks and Peter Eisenman respectively. Jencks discovered that the primary issue of modernism is the communication since the modern architects rejected traditional architecture. They started practicing to design buildings, which were ‘functional’. Post modernism is distinguished as the combination of traditional building with modern techniques, i.e., ‘double-coding’. Modern architecture tends to produce new ideas of architecture on one hand. On the other, post-modern architecture, merge the ideas of modern as well as traditional architecture. Meanwhile, deconstruction is the movement of architecture that began in the 1980s. Distinguished by fragmentation, it proposes a complete different view of the surface of the structure. Structuralism focuses on structural, binary, and hierarchical concept, but poststructuralism revolves around the concept of between things. It promotes the relation or connectivity between traditional and modern techniques of architecture. According to post structuralism concept, an object needs to be understood. To be very specific, study of the object and the knowledge system is essential.
The Phenomenology Approach to Architecture
The philosophical approach, phenomenology was introduced by German philosopher Edmund Husseri in the 1800s.In terms of philosophy; phenomenology alludes to the study of human awareness. Husseri describes in his ‘The EncyclopediaBritannica’, that architectural phenomenology is rather an approach of psychology that revolves around many aspects human experience. It can be interpreted as the study of both visual factors as well as human conscience regarding architecture. Architectural phenomenology refers to the reaction of human sensory to the built environment or space. In order to generate phenomena, different textures, colors and other materials are used by architectures. Many architects and scholars have interpreted phenomenology. Some theories and concepts influenced many architects later. Martin Heidegger is one of them, who deserve mention to have an impact on architects or designers. According to Martin Heidegger, phenomenology is the approach, in which building is described for the purpose to dwell. He defines that it is the art of creating or generating a feeling of quality space inside the building. To be very specific, the feeling of staying at home is the crucial part of phenomenal architecture. Later many architects were influenced by Heidegger’s philosophy of phenomenology. To be named, one of them was Christian Norberg-Schulz, who first attempted phenomenological concept in architecture. According to Schulz, perception is indivisible part of previous knowledge.
He says that previous experience of human is the result of what is perceived about things. As per his thought, perception of every single person is extremely subjective in terms of his or her experiences. Therefore, it creates a factor of limitation to the phenomenological approach of architecture. These days, architectures as well as individuals give importance to exterior of a building. As a result, architectures or designers neglect the reality of building experience. The Finnish architect, Juhani Pallasmaa said that the art of designing does not depend on the physical aspect of the building by it lies in the experience of human being and in theirconsciousness. His thought inspires the architecture to design in order to achieve the human experience without giving much attention to physical aspect of building.He criticized modern phenomenology in terms of architecture considers certain factors like space, form and light. The concept of architecture generally focuses on the human requirement. Phenomenological architecture therefore aims to design building considering human consciousness in order to produce a great architectural experience and have a memorable influence on the end users. Architecture is an art of creation, where architects experiments their creativity. They merge the modern aspect of architecture with the traditional theories of architecture. Phenomenology is such an approach where architects gives importance to the creation of rich atmosphere in which users can get engage with the environment of the building, can get the essence of ‘being at home’ and can cherish that experience over time. Among the scholars, Neil Leach said that phenomenology is associated with the work that engages the one’s four senses vision, touch, smell, and sound. He opines that phenomenology in architecture gives importance to the space. According to him, the space must be physically experienced and but it is not only about physical space but regarding mental space too. Through human experience, physical environment of a building is always related to mental environment. Therefore, the aim of the architecture should be creating such a structure where users get essence of mental feeling.
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