THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE DESIGN

What is the role of nature in architecture today? Is nature predominantly a design metaphor, a set of physical factors to emulate, or a set of physical factors to overcome or oppose; some combination of these; or something else?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nature is an important part in traditional architecture, in general. Architecture responds to local conditions such as climate, geology and seismic conditions. Local building materials and their properties are key in the technical design.Architecture has become independent from its natural  since early twentieth century. With becoming an independent art, architecture found references in its own realm. The materials used do not necessarily indicate the geographical location of the project.But much has changed since nature first influence the architecture. Even the evolution of the society, architecture principle had much transform but I strongly think that nature of architecture won’t faded away so easily.

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To me, nature is a design metaphor and a set of physical factors to overcome .From the history of architecture we can see most of the construction method is taking the nature concept as basic consideration.’’The column must be tapered from bottom to top in imitation of nature where this diminution is found in all plants.’’ Mac-antoine Laugier stated this quote as taking the construction of column as metaphor to the nature ( the tree etc).Building also has to be simple in form ( geometry form),well proportion and having the natural spatial quality to reach the NATURErequirement.

Glass/Wood house by kengo kuma

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It is built tohether with the existing building.The existing building was a symmetric glass box of Palladian villa architecture, standing solitarily in a forest. It is built a new house to make this glass box orthogonal and formed an L-shaped terrain, as an attempt to create a kind of “intimacy” in the forest.Other than this, Kengo Kuma proposed the L-shaped plan in which the new building hitched on the old one, in order to present a new relation between the nature and the architecture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As they proposed the L-shaped plan in which the new building hitched on the old one, in order to present a new relation between the nature and the architecture. As an attempt to make the architecture “intimate,” they adopted a type of mixed structure in the new house, where a wooden joisted roof comes over pillars of flat steel bars in 3 inches × 6 inches. They also gave a major change also in the existing house, by getting rid of the symmetry and covering the exterior with wooden louvers, so that the architecture would gain more “intimacy”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Overall I do believe that the role of nature today is not just as a metaphor, or physical factors, but a combination of these. More to that, the role of nature had been more complex today because of different culture and regions.  We acknowledge that man needs a balanced relationship with nature instead of total separation from it and we seek for pieces of nature in our artificial environment. Green is seen as an essential part of architectural context but the building is not necessary to be said natural . A natural building is not equal to '' nature '' as it can be using another way to achieve the feeling or quality which makes user think of it is natural.