LOCAL ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

Abstract

Although the contradicted opinions, the term has acquired the attention of economists, sociologists, cultured, and politicians. They are interested in the rapid developments which affect all fields (economic, politics, sociology, ecology …) and passed the boundaries between the countries, nations and cultures. The media has a clear role in spreading this concept so that the globalization has been considered a historical determinism and with no alternative. The globalization involves the daily facts and concerning all nations and societies. The built environment is the context of globalization, and the necessity of utilize the epoch technology may contradict with the need to guard the locality of the architecture which make it an art belongs to its culture. So the challenge between the local architecture and global architecture is the main problem of this paper. The paper aims at studying the concept of local architecture in the age of globalization, and the influence of globalization on the local architectural thinking in contemporary era. The paper consists of three parts: First one is an exploration of the deferent meanings of the term GLOBALIZATION and its effects on the local concepts, while the second part studies the concept of local Architecture versus the international (or global) architecture, the third part presents a theoretical approach for the local architectural trends in the global era The paper conclude that: Because of the spreading of globalization concepts, the local architectural trends will go in one of two ways; One of them is: architectural trends will go against the global trends, and it will use the architecture as a defense tool to announce its particular identity through RE – PRODUCTION of local models, and it may use exaggerated details. The other one is: architectural trends will go with the global trends and the architecture will be one of the ways which will be used to announce the belonging of globalization through COPYING formal models from the leading countries of globalization. The second one is expected to be the strong trend in the weak parts of the globalization ring