Contemporary Architectural Discourse Research Articles

The Integration of Troglodyte Architecture into Contemporary Architecture, A Fusion of Tradition and Modernity: The Case of Dar Hi in Nefta

Troglodyte architecture, characterized by the utilization of natural caves or structures carved into rock, stands as amesmerizing testament to humanity's adaptability to its surroundings. This study explores the integration of troglodytearchitecture into contemporary design, with a specific focus on Dar Hi in Nefta, Tunisia. It investigates the historicalfoundations, core principles, and the application of troglodyte architecture in modern architectural practices. Theanalysis begins with a historical overview, tracing the evolution of troglodyte structures and their adaptability todiverse environments. The centerpiece of this exploration is the detailed examination of Dar Hi, showcasing how itencapsulates traditional troglodyte elements within a contemporary architectural framework. It dissects thearchitectural components, materials, and design strategies employed, emphasizing sustainability and culturalpreservation. Moreover, this research highlights the experiential aspect, emphasizing how Dar Hi's design fosters asensory connection with Nefta's cultural heritage. It emphasizes how the integration of troglodyte architecturalelements within the establishment creates a unique blend of tradition and modernity. By spotlighting the case studyof Dar Hi, this study sheds light on the potential of harmonizing ancient architectural wisdom with modern design,aiming to inspire discussions on preserving and creatively incorporating troglodyte architecture into contemporaryarchitectural discourse.

The interaction of history and modern thought in the creation of Iran's architecture by investigating the approaches of past-oriented architecture

The relationship between tradition and modernity significantly influences society, culture, and architectural discourse. This philosophy offers a framework for exploring the impact of traditional architecture on contemporary Iranian architecture from different perspectives and approaches. Various viewpoints exist on whether historical architecture can be a defining characteristic of contemporary architectural discourse. Through an in-depth review of analysis-centred architectural literature, a unique method was chosen for analysing contemporary architecture and gaining insight into its creation. The main goal of this study is to establish a productive relationship between past-oriented architecture, innovative architectural concepts, and contemporary thought. This article examines three critical viewpoints, tradition as imitation, transmission, and transformation, alongside analysing their influential components on architectural form to gain insight into productively connecting with historical achievements and show that the role of history is to add new values to architecture-conscious needs that have changed during history. Ultimately, the challenge lies in finding a suitable path among diverse perspectives and reinterpretations and establishing a productive relationship with history and contemporary thought.

Christopher Alexander As An Architectural Thinker

In this commentary the author discusses why Christopher Alexander remains on the margins of contemporary architectural discourse despite his original, important, and lasting contributions to the field. Being a somewhat controversial figure in architecture and architectural theory, Alexander has occupied the status of a seminal albeit not always adequately understood and interpreted author. The rejection and misinterpretation of his ideas are due to multiple reasons, including his refusal to act and write as a standard scholar and his lack of interest in appealing to his professional community. While his attitude perhaps explains the neglect of his intellectual legacy, it does not justify it. A reconsideration of his legacy could benefit from rethinking his intellectual identity. This commentary suggests that Alexander should be approached as an original architectural thinker rather than a standard architectural academic. Thus, he could be comparable to other renowned figures of the modern era, including such influential yet often misunderstood social thinkers as Ivan Illich or Jacques Ellul.

Exploring Performalism: An In-Depth Analysis of Architecture’s Performative Dimension and its Relevance in Contemporary Discourse

In architecture, performalism is a conceptual belief that a building’s form should be based on its purpose or function. This concept is often contrasted with the more traditional view that form should follow function. As a result, this paper examines the concept of performalism and its importance to architectural discourse. Using a mixed method approach, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of architecture’s performative dimension and examines architecture’s potential to shape and create meaningful experiences. This analysis explores performalism in contemporary architectural discourse using essays and architectural projects that connects theory and practice related to architecture’s performative dimensions. This performative dimension is explored through relevant literature and examples comparing performative theory with performative practice. In addition, a critical assessment of the concepts potential to inform architectural practice is provided by assessing their theoretical implications and relevance to current discourse and practice.

Passive house design in temperate continental climate for increasing indoor comfort conditions

In the last couple of years, we have witnessed dramatic changes in the fabric of our society, with great impact on cities, neighborhoods and living conditions. Therefore, the contemporary architectural discourse tries to shift its attention towards these social, cultural and climatic changes, while trying to better respond to the challenges that occur in our society at different levels. The present paper analyzes a project for an energy efficient single-family house that integrates into a heterogeneous urban context, with specific constraints pertaining to local regulations and climatic regional conditions. The chosen site is situated in a historical area of Iasi, Romania, aspect that must be taken into account when proposing the overall volumetric concept. The passive design strategies have also been implemented in order to achieve the nZEB status. Among other energy and cost efficient solutions we mention: use of renewable energies along with a very efficient constructive system for an airtight house configuration; natural cross ventilation strategies and maximizing the daylight factor for all indoor spaces. Simulations in DIALux provided very good values for daylight factor, an important aspect for minimizing the energy consumption for electricity, especially during winter. For increasing the overall indoor comfort hours during summer and winter, additional systems/features were proposed for direct solar intake, shading and increase of thermal mass.

The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985

The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985

Fear the Elephant: Selling Flexibility at the Austin Company in the Aftermath of the Great Depression

Architecture seems to have lost sight of flexibility’s multiple definitions and historical depth. The concept’s easy presence in contemporary architectural discourse masks flexibility’s intimate connection to the contraction and expansion of industrial production and changing manufacturing processes in the first half of the twentieth century. Flexibility at this historical moment required rendering the manufactory divisible, thereby allowing space, a financial asset, to be redistributed over time. This article follows one such firm, the Austin Company, through a series of commissions to illustrate how it positioned itself as a flexibility supplier. Doing so allows for inquiry into the nature of flexibility in the history of industrial capitalism.

Aestheticisation in contemporary architectural discourse: The dualism of staged and authentic

In the global market of aesthetic sensations, good space turns into attractive product design. While aestheticisation attacks the space through digital cognitive stimulation, it is upsetting that day-to-day life is insufficiently treated in architectural design. With the necessity of considering space and life in conjunction, the research question is placed between the aesthetic imaginations of the conceptual and ethical requirements of the everyday. The initial hypothesis is that architectural space is determined by the dualism of different modalities, which affect the spectator's perception and the dweller's day-to-day life. That dualism of staged and authentic space manifests an increasingly conflicting relationship, which makes their common element, the concept of space, questionable. The research aim is to show that the architectural duality turns into an antagonistic relationship between two modalities (staged and authentic), caused by an aestheticised context, which glorifies the dominance of the visual and results in the translation of the architectural concept into a manner.

New Public Excavations

The paper draws on recent salvage archaeological excavations in Melbourne, Australia that prompt questions on architectural concerns of ‘site’ in contemporary architectural discourse. For design practitioners, site is usually communicated in direct and straightforward ways, with some practical understanding of the physical forces that form the current site, but little of influencing political or cultural elements. This is particularly problematic in settler-colonial cities such as Melbourne which are built out of complex and contested environments. The urban archaeological excavation is therefore seen as a metaphorical ‘autopsy,’ a brief moment of pause when the site’s history and composition can be publicly examined and challenged. Crucially, the act exposes the significant and potent presence of ground and dirt as actants in the city. This paper examines archaeological and architectural texts and practices to explore the added meaning that a refocusing on dirt and ground as material and medium can add to the architectural reading and interpretation of site in the settler‑colonial city.

El Croquis Night: Excursus into Nocturnal Obliteration in Architectural Media

El Croquis is one of the most prestigious architectural magazines in the world. Founded in 1982 by Richard Levene and Fernando Marquez, it publishes five monographs every year. The volumes dedicated to established Pritzker Prize names like OMA Rem Koolhaas, SANAA Sejima & Nishizawa, Herzog & de Meuron, Alvaro Siza or Rafael Moneo, are considered their respective oeuvre complète. The journal almost never publishes nocturnal photographs of interior spaces. The same goes for other major architecture magazines. In February 2020, HEAD – Genève invited Richard Levene to create a night edition of El Croquis. The workshop focused on the idea that night is a forgotten paradigm in the construction of modern and contemporary architectural discourse.

Architecture Discourses and Thermal Environment of Initial Urban Residence in Northeast China: A Case Study of the 156 Projects Residences

The objective of this study was to understand the development of Chinese contemporary architectural discourses and analyze the comfort of the 156 projects residences to help improve the sustainable planning and design of today’s urban residential buildings. With a literature review, we described the formation and evolution process of the Soviet Union socialist realism architectural discourses that initially and deeply influenced urban residence in Northeast China and revealed the input channel and localization process of Chinese socialist realism in residential projects. Through field measurement and investigation into the building design and construction from four aspects—building group planning, unit schema standardization design, facade aesthetics, and structural design—we comparatively analyzed results that indicated the design and construction in that era. The thermal environment was also simulated using analytical software to comprehensively evaluate heat loss and heat accumulation in the cases. Finally, three passive design strategies were discussed to improve the sustainability of residence in Northeast China.

Modern Heritage and the Living City: Arab Identity and Modernization in the Architecture of Abu Dhabi

Our work analyzes some key public, late modernist and contemporary buildings in Abu Dhabi in order to examine how the capital of this Arab country has dealt with issues of local tradition versus modernization, at a time of rapid economic and social change. Modernist and contemporary interpretations of Arab architectural tradition are deliberated as well as, design strategies to create spaces of social inclusion and provide sustainable solutions appropriate for the harsh regional climatic conditions. Our article also argues that recognition and integration of buildings from the late modernist era, such as the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, are essential elements for a city of sparse historical references, playing the role of “modern heritage”. Preservation of such buildings and resilient architecture can guide contemporary architectural discourse and reconcile local tradition and modern design strategies, thus counteracting uncritical importation of iconic projects in the modern Gulf cities.

Style Debates in Early 20th-Century German Architectural Discourse

In spite of the negative connotations ‘style’ has in contemporary architectural discourse, in early 20th-century Germany there was no consensus on the meaning or value of the concept amongst architects and critics. Although style was a dirty word for some like Hermann Muthesius, it represented the pinnacle of achievement for others like Walter Curt Behrendt. Against the backdrop of Behrendt’s famous Victory of the New Building Style, of 1927, were very diverse understandings of the term. This plurality was partly due to conceptual confusion between ‘the styles’ and ‘style’, but it was also a legacy of Gottfried Semper’s and Alois Riegl’s respective efforts to resituate style as a practical and historiographical tool. Although style was endlessly debated between 1910 and 1930 by German architects, critics, and intellectuals of all stripes, later scholars have either largely overlooked its significance or used the term as a way of describing a particular group of works with a narrow set of formal tropes. The debates, the conceptual confusion, and the incredible variety of opinion over style in early 20th-century discourse have not been addressed, especially in relation to practicing architects. This essay examines some of the intersecting positions of several important German practitioners to show how the notion of style served as a conceptual framework for divergent modern practices.

Contributory Economies,

This paper will deploy French philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s neo-Marxist notion of the contributory economy to explore conceptions and practices of ‘DIY (Do It Yourself) urbanism’, with a specific focus on disused interior spaces. Reference will be made to contemporary design and architectural discourses on DIY urbanism and design activism, particularly in relation to the Renew Newcastle scheme in Newcastle, Australia. Although Renew is now a recognised model for urban regeneration, it began in 2008 as a socially-orientated experiment within the unoccupied shopfronts and tenancies of this rapidly transforming post-industrial city. Its DIY urbanism occurs alongside established institutional and commercial entities and as such, it could be superficially understood as an extension of, rather than an alternative to, mainstream project procurement models. Here, Stiegler’s invocations of contributory economies, driven by an ethic of care or cura, suggest a way of understanding Renew Newcastle’s urbanism as a participatory economy coexistent with the same capitalistic economy that prompted the urban decline it addresses.

Hibridnost u i izvan arhitekture - liminalno stanje

The focus of this research is on hybrids and hybridity, with the emphasis on their liminal character - programme and formal non-finiteness. This paper presents a part of an ongoing doctoral research concerning theoretical frame for discussion and defining hybridity in architectural theory and practice. It deliberates hybridity through the social and humanistic discourse as well as theory of architecture in the context of both culture and architecture. The research describes hybrid as a condition, which can be observed through the concept of liminality and constant transformations, as opposed to finiteness of any kind. In this context, the aim of this paper is to locate and discuss hybridity in the contemporary architectural discourse, on the basis of etymological and connotative characteristics established through the architectural theory and other relevant disciplines in the field of social and humanistic sciences.

Dirty realism and Europe on the edge of postmodernity

The text is concerned with the analysis and theorization of dirty realism as one of the topics of minor regard in the contemporary architectural discourse. Defined by the most theorists as a kind of architectural production created on specific grounds of European urban reality in the mid-eighties of the past century, historically speaking, dirty realism coincides with the beginning of the Postmodern Era. The text aims to shed light on the spatial-economic and cultural context in which dirty realism was constituted as a movement, tendency or theoretical construct, as well as to make detailed reference to the typical theories of its protagonists - architects and theorists of architecture who participated in it. Given the fact that the reception of dirty realism in architectural discourse is based on a reductionist approach, the text will focus on the analysis of primary sources which point to several different possibilities to deal with this topic. On the one hand, the analysis of diverse visual manifestations shows all that dirty realism can be in a formalistic sense of the word. On the other, the text pays special attention to the comparison of theoretical models that were used in deriving and establishing the initial poetic and critical premises of dirty realism. Appropriation of theories of vastly diverse artistic, literary, film and philosophical-aesthetic provenience is what makes the architectural dirty realism one of the rather unstable and controversial topics in the history and theory of contemporary architecture.

SHAPING ARCHITECTURAL DISCOURSE BY ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS AT QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY BELFAST

While design practices are generally seen as a major driver for shaping debates and trends in architecture and urbanism, architectural discourse is typically shaped by discussions in books, journal articles, short essays, and reviews of design trends or critiques of buildings or design competitions. In many cases however, critical essays may have the power to communicate ideas and concepts in a concise manner while books can still be seen by some academics or many practitioners as lacking the capacity to communicate the same ideas or concepts effectively. Whether or not one would agree with this view is a different issue. Yet, as a reaction to such a view it is possible to see book reviews playing the role of short essays or articles which enable readers to grasp the message a book author is trying to convey-yet in a short and quick way. In person-environment research—as part of contemporary architectural discourse—book reviews are important as they provide significant slices of larger arguments, but enable readers to classify, categorize, and relate those arguments to other discourses on theories of architecture and urbanism, and thereby comprehending the full spectrum of issues introduced through a specific period of time. In this article, I discuss the notion of reviews and book reviews, outline the assignment delivered to architecture students at Queen’s University Belfast, then present selected students’ reviews. While this article is simply a presentation of students’ work, the ultimate objective is to offer a package of ideas and concepts generated in the literature of person-environment interaction as viewed by the students. This is coupled with students’ articulations of and reflections on how the merits and demerits of those ideas and the way in which they relate to such ideas in their reviews. While this article does not reflect on students’ work and does not have a conclusion, it calls for a database that is exclusively dedicated to reviewed books on person-environment interactions, which could be published online on the web of one of the societies or associations concerned with people environment interactions including EDRA-Environmental Design Research Association and IAPS-International Association of People- Environments Studies.

Where the Spell is Chanted (Fallacies of Contemporary Architectural Discourses)

The new design approaches that prevail today suggest a certain shift in the way architecture is conceived, materialized and described: architecture is now “animate,” “animalistic,” “evolutionary.” The leading fallacy towards which these words are paving the way is that form can be self-formatted; that new machines, robots and three-dimensional (3D) printers – which are now themselves regarded as animate – could substitute for human labor and create surplus value – contrary to what Karl Marx’s analysis on machines has claimed. This paper focuses on the elucidation of such fallacies: on their exposition, their challenging.

The NE 51 Series Frontier: The Grand Narrative of Apartheid Planning and the Small Town

The article proposes to bring the urban development of Usakos, a small Namibian town on the fringe of the South African empire, into conversation with the ‘grand narrative’ of the apartheid city. Narratives of the apartheid city were shaped by contemporary academic architectural discourses sustained by those who pioneered and promoted urban planning in South Africa. It was formulated in texts on architecture and apartheid produced in the 1980s and 1990s, which developed a strong argument about South African architects' involvement in the creation of standardised housing for Africans. Big cities constituted the main reference for both critics and promoters of South African urban planning, and their analyses subscribed to paradigmatic notions of rapidly growing cities and inevitable housing crises, slums and chaos. The analysis of the urban development in Usakos in the 20th century allows for challenging the teleological model of such hegemonic narratives. The case of a small town also integrates otherwise separate discussions on ‘white’ and ‘black’ housing. In Usakos, the transformation of urban space was primarily ideologically driven, and part of a general attempt to create a tangible and visible experience of a homogenous imperial South African space. One of the dominant material manifestations of such an imperial space were the iconic NE 51 series houses in standardised neighbourhoods, to which Africans were forcibly removed.

The spatial context of the cinematic aspect of architecture

This paper presents the findings, conclusions and results of my PhD research entitled, "The spatial context of the cinematic aspect of architecture". The purpose of this paper is to present the possibilities of adopting the cinematic qualities of architecture as an approach to tracing current modifications in contemporary architectural discourse in relation to the paradigmatic change of perception of urban space towards a movement perspective. The design process tradition, which comprises a standard series of procedural exercises aided by new technology, is in contrast to the experimental architectural research of the last decade that has clearly demonstrated the tendency to enrich the limited traditional approach in order to extend human vision beyond what is perceivable. Accordingly, I propose that we can test the cinematic aspect of architecture, first having harmonized the relationship between architecture and film through their common methodological and didactic approaches. To verify the cinematic aspect of architecture in theory, practice and education, and to maintain the level of creativity present in design practice, I initiated a reassessment of current design practice and proposed alternative architectural design strategies.