Create Your Own Nation (Essay)
- 1. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE ARCHITECTURE AND NATION BUILDING (ARC60503) Project: CREATE YOUR OWN NATION (ESSAY) Name: Calvin Suah Jake Ginn Student ID: 0313324 Tutor: Dr. Nor Hayati
- 2. After having discussed with my group members, one of the identity that we had integrated in our nation “Trumptopia” is the four season weather that will lead to nation building. The four season includes summer, winter, autumn and spring as shown in the figure below. With regards to this four season weather, the nation needs urban planning development in the early stage to prevent buildings from falling apart due to weather restrictions. For example, design considerations of a building needs to be taken care off by having sustainability design to withstand all weather conditions whether in summer, winter, autumn or spring. With the considerations being taken care off, this would encourage gestalt therapy that is part of humanistic perspective. Gestalt therapy is a special type of therapy that encourages an individual not to allow the past to affect the present, and focuses on the here and now rather than anything else. However, architectural practices of form and design are always about learning from the past. Becoming a better nation, we need to keep a balance of the past and the future to succeed as a nation. Architect Norman Foster quoted “As an architect, you design the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown”. I agree with his quote and that should always be a practice of all of us to succeed in our design. Knowing and learning from the past does not only let us move forward but also maintaining the nation’s identity. The humanistic perspective believes that people seek value, meaning, Figure 1.0: Summer Season Figure 1.1: Winter Season Figure 1.2: Spring Season Figure 1.3: Autumn Season
- 3. and creativity in all they do. It understands that people have goals, and that reaching these goals is very important. It also understands that individuals are able to make choices that affect them and others, and so those choices carry with them a sense of responsibility. Next, we have also emphasized about high tides and hydroelectricity as the main source of generating electricity. Hydropower is fuelled by water as shown in Figure 1.4, so it's a clean fuel source, meaning it won't pollute the air like power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas. Hydroelectric power is a domestic source of energy, allowing each state to produce their own energy without being reliant on international fuel sources. Taking into considerations of the four seasons climate, the energy generated through hydropower relies on the water cycle, which is driven by the sun, making it a renewable power source, making it a more reliable and affordable source than fossil fuels that are rapidly being depleted. Based on political values, the feasibility of the hydropower can be questionable. Hydropower can benefit the nation because it is a sustainable fuel source. Also, hydropower efforts provide a lot of benefit to the nation, such as flood control, irrigation, and water supply. However, damming cross-border rivers can cause international disputes. It is common that a river crosses through two different nations. The nation "upstream", if it chooses to dam the river, can degrade the value of it where it crosses through the other nation. This can cause disputes and even conflict. Figure 1.4: Hydroelectric Power
- 4. Furthermore, we have also mentioned harnessing solar and thermal energy during summer season. Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis. It is an important source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Complementary to religious values, political values and aspirational commitment values, everyone in the nation hopes that their own activities cause no harm to others and, indeed, may help; however, energy supply has very considerable impacts. Negative impacts are the most worrying. For instance, fossil fuels use cause local pollution and damage health, but most importantly increase climate change. In addition, nuclear power adds to the legacy of radioactive waste and, by default, to the politics of nuclear warfare. Renewable energy has less environmental impact and may have beneficial impacts on employment, security and environment. As a nation, we have a duty to consider the energy we use and its impacts. Thus, we may change electricity supplier to have ‘green (renewables) electricity’, insulate buildings, have solar water heating, install biomass heating (e.g. wood-pellet stoves), change to a low- energy car (perhaps hybrid or multi/biofuel), offset air-travel fuel, lobby officials and exercise our vote for environmental policies. There is hardly any action using energy that cannot be reduced, so decreasing the impact (e.g. changing thermostats, turning devices off, low-energy lighting, ‘A class’ white-goods, travel reduction). Figure 1.5: Diagram of Political Values and etc on Renewable Energy In a Nation
- 5. Besides that, another key identity of our nation is the cultural integration. The concepts of cultural diversity and cultural identity are at the forefront of the political debate in many western societies. In Europe, the discussion is stimulated by the political pressures associated to immigration flows, which are increasing in many European countries. Dealing with the ethnic and cultural heterogeneity associated to such trends is one of the most important challenges that European societies will face. The debate on the perceived costs and benefits of cultural diversity is already intense. Three main perspectives on cultural integration confront themselves in the social sciences: assimilation theory, multiculturalism, and structuralism. This section briefly discusses the main elements of each of these views as well as those of a recent synthetic perspective, called segmented assimilation. While other social scientists tend to focus on the effects of the social environment on cultural patterns across groups, the starting point of the economic approach to cultural integration is the analysis of individual behaviour, extended to account for endogenous preferences and identity formation as shown in Figure 1.6. Economists, therefore, emphasize the importance of individual incentives and of the opportunity costs associated to different integration patterns. One important element of the previous analyses is the fact that cultural identity formation is modelled as a simple binary choice: individuals with foreign backgrounds either choose to identify with the dominant culture or to their ethnic minority culture. Even when the model is extended to allow for oppositional identity, its scope and complexity is limited by assuming that a stronger identification to the culture of the majority necessarily implies a weaker identification to the ethnic minority. These views however have been criticized as too simplistic to capture the different possible patterns of cultural integration of minorities. Indeed, Figure 1.6: Diagram of Cultural Integration That Leads to Sustainability
- 6. studies within cross-cultural psychology suggest a more complex model of identity formation, treating the degree of identification with the culture of the majority as separate and independent from the degree of identification with the minority culture. Individuals may for example simultaneously feel a strong affinity for the majority and for a minority culture. Another aspect that was looked into our nation is the connection between politics and architecture. Architectural attributes, form and space, can potentiate messages for individual users. In other words, architecture is also capable of acting as a sign for large groups of people or audiences: that is, a form of mass communication. As stated by Jencks, architecture seems to offer messages that have mass appeal, that lend themselves to being taken for granted even when they are not highly conventional, but there are at the same time inventive and heuristic aspects to these messages. He also adds that architectural objects besides permitting and promoting certain functions, permit and promote critical readings, in which one compares them with prior (and subsequent) means of societies‘ ideologies and inhabitation. Therefore, it is appropriate to say that architecture is a cultural object closely tied to a particular social context and historical moment. So how does the relationship between political values and architecture affect forms? Attributes of architectural form such as visual and relational properties, are key components which may express political authority of the ruling body. Both of these attributes will be discussed below. (i) Visual properties Visual properties refer to the external appearance of form that can be recognised from a distance or from a certain angles involving the physical dimension of form such as scale and façade. (ii) Relational properties Architectural form also depends on relational properties, such as position, to determine its overall relationship with the other elements surrounding it. Relational properties can also help to symbolise the political authority and ideology of the building‘s patron.
- 7. It is apparent that architecture is a form of sign which may convey messages, when sign-users invest them with meaning with reference to an intended and recognised code. However, through this overview a particular type of symbolic relationship has been reinforced and the means to achieve that end revealed. From this discussion, it can be said that architecture may symbolise the political ideology of a particular group or ruling body, as the symbols of authority are institutionally embedded through the built design elements, form and space. To demonstrate, this review highlights, through exemplars how the relationship between relationship of architecture and politics has operated to date. To recapitulate, form is an important property in architecture, due to its ability to develop a dialectic relationship between itself and the perceiver. Form also carries intrinsic meaning and has the capacity to arouse strong perceptual interest for its audience in order to communicate across cultures. It also has the ability to symbolise certain ideas, values and beliefs due to its existing properties and function which can be recognised in code‘s form by the audience. Therefore, form is commonly used to express the authority of the ruling body. This occurs when: • Form is presented in monumental and dominant scale, which dominates other existing structure and its physical context. • Form is portrayed in symmetrical composition or hierarchical organisation with a dominant focal point and richly decorated façade with embellishments that show an interplay of colour, texture and materials. • Form is placed in a dominant context, such as higher ground level in order for it to stand as a distinct structure in an open site. Space also is an important property which may also symbolise the political ideology of the ruling body due to its elemental properties. Architectural space does not simply meant to serve their own purposes, but is also part of the dominant discourse of power and domination in society. Spatial organisation symbolises the concept of power and authority. This occurs when: • Spaces are portrayed in exaggerated height, width and depth with monumental scale structures which produces maximum spatial quality. • Spaces are arranged in segments, in a symmetrical and hierarchical manner along an axial path based on linear and fanned syntax structures, to form a single and dominant focal point.
- 8. • Spatial organisation is from a single entrance with no transverse point, which results in constricted and restricted movement within space segments. This forms high visibility of surveillance within the spatial organisation, hence expressing patterns of authority and control. • Perceptual dominance is given to the primary space, which is centrally positioned in the middle of the entire spatial organisation surrounded by ancillary space. • Spaces are articulated and decorated with a rich variety of materials, surface texture, embellishments and interplay of painterly coloured effects. An overview of the relationship between political ideology and architecture in terms of form and space has been provided. The above essay is important as it focuses on architecture as a form of communication and how the architectural design characteristics form and space symbolise political power. This is important, as built form in the present context has also become part of the ruling authority‘s political agenda particularly in the newly independent nation.