The New mix : culturally dynamic architecture

Author

Additional Author(s)

• Castle, Helen

Publisher

Chichester: Architectural Design Profile, 2005

Language

English

ISBN

9780470014677

Series

Subject(s)

• ARCHITECTURE AND SOCIETY
• ARCHITECTURE, MODERN-20TH CENTURY
• CULTURAL PLURALISM

Notes

. .

Abstract

We are at a new moment in architecture, one when many cultures are contributing to the unfolding of modernism. This enriching influence is broadening the mix, extending the range available to architecture, of materials and colours, of evocative forms, of cultural references and of social thinking.
In an era of boredom with monocultures and orthodoxies, there is the almost universal expectation that the metroculture, be it in London or Beijing, will provide broadened cultural experiences in food, performance, dress and sound. The new ethnically diverse city is a place of zesty daily encounters/collisions/cohabitation between cultures, a place of mixed signals, contradictions, delightful confusions. Franco-Japanese cuisine, elite schoolchildren wearing doo-rags, jazz performed on gamelans—no matter what one’s mother culture - we’re all getting addicted to varied rhythms, different emotional emphases, ‘other’ ideas of beauty.
This change is visible in schools of architecture, at least in the range of students, typically from many ethnicities, none of them constituting a majority. No wonder, then, that there is increased interest in ways that architecture can incorporate a larger compass of riches.
A rising group of practitioners is meeting the challenge of this broadening cultural landscape in pursuing strategies of quick switching, layering, reframing. These new architectural expressions of multiple cultures represent an enrichment that ultimately might help create a more robust modernism, helping to rescue it from a ‘potato blight’ of too much sameness.

Physical Dimension

Number of Page(s)

128 p.

Dimension

29 cm.

Other Desc.

ill.

Summary / Review / Table of Content

Editorial (Helen Castle).
Introduction: Mixology (Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson).
London Calling (Jeremy Melvin).
Crazy Quilt Queens (Jayne Merkel).
Fabricating Pluralism (Jamie Horwitz).
Tijuana Case Study: Tactics of Invasion (Teddy Cruz).
House/Home: Dwelling in the New South Africa (Iain Low).
Cengiz Bektas and the Community of Kuzguncuk in Istanbul (David Height).
Building Traditions: The Benny W Reich Cultural Center for the Ethiopian Community, Yavneh, Israel (Ruth Palmon).
Making Place in Bangalore (Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi).
Masala City (Kazi K Ashraf ).
21st-Century China (Edmund Ong).
Holl on Hybrids (Everardo Jefferson).
Australasia (Leon Van Schaik).
Weeksville Education Building (Sara Caples).
Interior Eye: Turning Japanese Craig Kellogg
Building Profile: St John’s College, Oxford Jeremy Melvin
Practice Profile: Hodgetts + Fung: The Art of Remix
Home Run: Westerton Road, Grangemouth Henry McKeown
McLean’s Nuggets Will McLean
Site Lines: Puerta of Dreams Howard Watson

Exemplar(s)

#	Accession No.	Call Number	Location	Status
1.	01274/17	724.7 New	Library - 7th Floor	Available