Architecture Manifesto Example Essay

Words: 3526
Pages: 15
Open Document
Course: ARC 103
Title: Architecture and Sensitivity: A Manifesto for Sustainable Design

This manifesto proposes an approach to sustainable design that I am interested in exploring during my time studying architecture. The idea of sustainability is a complex one, not without apparent contradictions. This makes it difficult to define in a wholly satisfactory manner. For the purposes of this manifesto I will advert to the definition proposed by Jason McLennan who asserts that sustainable design: “seeks to maximize the quality of the built environment, while minimizing or eliminating negative impact to the natural environment.” I find this definition particularly useful in the emphasis which it places on quality. By quality, in this …show more content…
The fact that this building is sited in the middle of a highly populated area shows what can be done to help people live a fuller life – including those who have no focused interest in the Arts. This approach seems particularly relevant as more and more people live in cities and comes as a reminder that a city need not be a soulless, inhuman place.

3. Contextual

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”
-- Eliel Saarinen
Architecture is inextricably rooted to place. An awareness of context then, would seem to be a sine qua non but unfortunately this is not always the case. An understanding of the social, historical, environmental, cultural and human qualities of a place is vital to building to best effect. By “contextual”, then, I mean an architecture that is sensitive to the history and memory of the site. This would by no means exclude an awareness of the buildings that surround it.
I admire Alvar Aalto for his understanding of the importance of relating design to the most significant features of the local site: the kind of features that are, as Michael Trencher puts it, “either physically self-evident or historically and culturally relevant.” Aalto’s design for the Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters in Helsinki, (1959-62), affords a good example of this approach (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Alvar
Show More

Related Documents: Architecture Manifesto Example Essay

Trinity College Exam Hall Classical Essay

‘Classical’ architecture is a language that speaks to us with antiquity. The Exam Hall, once Theatre, on the campus of Trinity College Dublin can be viewed as a neo-classical building, built during the Georgian era. Neo-classical architecture is the revival of Greek and Roman classicism that took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This revival of architecture as James Adams, a famous English architect said, “was ready to seize with some degree of success, the beautiful spirit of…

Words 1204 - Pages 5

Rem Koolhaas Keynote lecture on two strands of thinking in sustainability Essay

Koolhaas Keynote lecture on two strands of thinking in sustainability: advancement vs. apocalypse. Ecological Urbanism Conference, I did not assume that anyone in the academic world would ask a practicing architect in the 21st century, given the architecture that we collectively produce, to participate in a conference on ecological urbanism. So, I'm very grateful that you challenge me, but I am also deeply aware that my presentation is defined by this doubt and this condition. Because you invited…

Words 2498 - Pages 10

Hideki Yukawa

Order of the Rising Sun in 1997. Yukawa also worked on the theory of K-capture, in which a low energy electron is absorbed in the nucleus. In 1955, Yukawa, and ten other leading scientists and intellectuals, joined to sign the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for nuclear disarmament. On September 8, 1981, Hideki Yukawa died in his house in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto from pneumonia and heart failure. I feel as though Hideki Yukawa studied a very complicated matter, theoretical physics. The reason why I…

Words 934 - Pages 4

Course Study Guide Essay

Century (1600’s) Art Characteristics Flamboyant nature Dramatic nature Strong colors Scale is large Religious nature Lavish Louis XIV Chiaroscuro (huge contrast between light and dark) Artists &Architects and their Art& Architecture (Look up the art/architecture on mypisd.net) Caravaggio The Calling of Saint Matthew The Cardsharps Bernini St. Theresa in Ecstasy St. Peter’s Colonnade Gentileschi Judith and Holofernes Valazquez Las Meninas El Greco Burial of Count Orgaz…

Words 5048 - Pages 21

Modernism and Design Aust Essay

technological advances in machinery and materials. Modernism is word that is difficult to define in some ways, as it is a term that is so broadly used, but modestly put it describes a group of cultural movements that changed Western Society within art, architecture, music and literature. This article will cover the relationship between Modernism, Modernisation and modernity in Melbourne within the inter-war period that stretched from 1919 to 1939, focusing on magazines and advertising; promoting Modern Australia…

Words 2755 - Pages 12

Essay on Summary of History of Graphic Design by Meggs

Chapter 1: The Invention of Writing - From the early Paleolithic to the Neolithic period (35,000 BC to 4,000 BC), early Africans and Europeans left paintings in caves, including the Lascaux caves in Southern France. - Early pictures were made for survival and for utilitarian and ritualistic purposes. - Petroglyphs are carved or scratched signs on rock. - These images became symbols for what would be the first spokenlanguage. - Cuneiform – Wedged shaped writing, created in 3000BC. Started…

Words 14951 - Pages 60

World War Ii Essay

Popular Sovereignty & Political Upheaval Enlightened and Revolutionary ideas (CAUSE) * Authority comes from consent of governed * Freedom and equality * Important values of enlightenment * These values had strong global influence * Freedom of worship/ expression * Legal equality * The social contract American revolution: (EFFECT) * Tension between Britain and N. American colonies. * Legacy of seven years war (British debt, American tax burden) * Heavy…

Words 2022 - Pages 9

Reengineering in Access Bank Plc Essay

1.0 INTRODUCTION Access Bank Plc is on the company carrying on the business of commercial banking in Nigeria. Access Bank Plc has its registered corporate head office at Plot 1665 Oyin Jolayemi Street Victoria Island Lagos. Access bank Plc was in- corporated as a private limited liability company on February 8, 1989, to undertake the business of commercial banking and commercial operations started on May 11, 1989. The bank converted to a public limited liability company on March 24, 1989 and was…

Words 15007 - Pages 61

Essay on The Work of Art

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin (1935) “Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of The Beautiful. In…

Words 9709 - Pages 39

Play Into The Theme Of Class Conflict

of multiple groups. It can be seen as racial, geographical, religious, sex and residential segregation Significance: Play into the theme of class conflict as well as how urban settings have been developed in order to keep racial groups separated Example: From Nightingale reading, white people in Baltimore wanted to extend segregation to the city’s residential neighbourhood. Mayor Barry Mahool signed the segregation ordinance into law, dividing every street into “white blocks” and “coloured blocks”…

Words 5785 - Pages 24