SCREENING IDENTITIES: ARCHITECTURE OF EXILE

 

 

THESIS STATEMENT

When globalization is gaining its significance worldwide, it seems that there is a preconception that the world is suffering from uniformization. However, can globalization arise the awareness of localization? How is the difference between cultural invasion and cultural fusion? William S. Logan claimed in the Disappearing ‘Asian’ City that the complex interconnections between national and global cultural attitudes and behaviors might renovate and diversify the definition of cultural heritage.

So by what means globalization dissolves or invades or fuses into one’s society? Spread of religious ideas through missionary brings in needs of religious architecture to accommodate related activities. Architects and expertise bring in knowledge from study abroad. Government policy might even tend to employ designers from abroad. Territory sovereignty promotes the intercrossing architectural style from a mother country that has been incorporated into the buildings of settlements or colonies in distant locations, from which colonial architecture synthesized the characteristics of the origin indigenous design to develop into a hybrid style.

When a colony is released from colonial control of the mother country, does it indicate an era of liberation or identity homelessness? Architecture is a form of record for the historical truthness of a society. The richness of historical layer should be revealed in one’s architectural sources. How should we treat these properties to contribute in enriching one’s collective memories?

 

DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT INTENDED TO TEST THE THESIS STATEMENT

To study the significance of historical identity to a society.
Knitting the old and new? Or separating the distinct?
To look into an urban renewal project/handover of colonial status, investigate the possibility of knitting the cultural heritage and the new generation of urban fabric.
Are Asian cities disappearing? Or renovating? Or evoluting?
Architecture of Exile: Cross boundary modernisation in the age of the refugee
Architectural Homelessness
Architecture beyond the age of Empire
Transnational studies and cultural transfers
Postcolonial architecture hybridity?

METHODOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Research in a horizontal way…
>Colonization
Taiwan and Korea taken by Japan, India and Vietnam taken by France, Singapore and Hong Kong taken by Britain, Columbia and Peru taken by Spain
>Religious:
Buddhist architecture: Stupa in Sri Lanka, Ajanta Cave in India, Pagodas in China, Temple in Japan…etc.
Research in a vertical way…
Communism, capitalism, external invasion…etc.
Study of multiple historical layers can help equipping the thesis with fusion/collision of cultural encounter/conflicts
Specific site rich in layers of history will be picked as experimental speciment.

Srilanka_galle_fort

The Dutch fort of Galle on the Southern Coast of Sri Lanka.