Luiz Zerbini Happiness Beyond Paradise, 2020

Context is an important idea in post-modernist design, and the machine metaphor denies this significance. An engine is an engine is an engine, and it always works the same way no matter where it is. —Stephen Friedman

 

Architecture is an extension; a modification establishing absolute meanings relative to a place.
 —Steven Holl

 

In its widest sense, the term context refers to all the issues and circumstances that surround a design of which the nature of the setting is the most tangible. As the derivation of the word means ‘weave together’, the spirit of its meaning denotes an interdependence—‘weaving’ or ‘knitting’ designs into existing site conditions and the striving for a sense of fit.


Context refers to the fact that most buildings are designed and made for a specific place; the characteristics of which represent many of the constraints and opportunities in which a design is determined. Because architecture cannot detach itself from its context, and because context is never the same, it is essential that knowledge and insight be gained.

 

The technique for gaining insight into a setting is the ‘site appraisal’ or ‘site analysis’, i.e. the systematic investigation of palpable (hard data) and intangible factors (soft data). Owing to the more subjective aspects of this analysis, the question of how the features of a site may impinge upon a design holds no clear-cut solution.

This is under the control of the designer; it is subject to ideas on which he or she has to make a stand. ‘Contextualism’ is an approach that respects the setting in terms of its history, topography, memory, route and so on.

 However, respect for context does not necessarily mean that a design has to conform. Steven Holl describes the site for a building as the setting in which all its intentions are gathered together. The design for a specific place may mean an inversion of inherent conditions. These may be based upon other related frameworks for invention, such as esoteric or poetic linkages. Holl argues that today the link between situation and architecture must be formed in new ways,’…which are a part of a constructive transformation in modern life’.

Book Reference:
Archispeak: An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms
https://amzn.to/3GE2g8K