A STUDY OF BUILDING & IDENTITY

A STUDY OF BUILDING

& IDENTITY

IN PLACEA STUDY OF BUILDING

& IDENTITY

© INTBAU 2015

HARRIET WENNBERG

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DEFINING ‘PLACE IDENtIty ’

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tHE IMPACt OF GLOBALISAtION

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LO CAL VALUE

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REFLECtING PLACE IDENtIty

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CASE StUDIE S

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ANALySIS & CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRApHY Pg. 35

Sponsored by:

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DEFINING ‘PLACE IDENtIty ’

Research on place has proliferated since

the 1970s, when phenomenological geographers Yi-Fu

Tuan, Edward Relph, and Anne Buttimer realised “the

need to explore the topic in terms of its everyday lived

dimensions” (Seamon, 2012). Beyond the current broad

trans-disciplinary agreement that place identity is an

important concept, its precise definition varies from one

field of study to another.

While from an architectural perspective a

particular identity is seen as arising from and belonging

to a particular place, environmental psychology considers

place identity to be a feature of a person rather than

‘Place’ is a phenomenon always

present in human life: “to be is to be in

place” (Casey, 1993). Having emerged at

the end of the 20th century, the term

‘place identity’ focuses on the significance of

place, people, and meaning. Place identity

is acknowledged as an important topic

in the fields of geography, environmental

psychology, urban and ecological sociology,

urban design, and architecture.

This study will examine

developments in the expression of place

identity in architecture, giving a brief

multidisciplinary overview of the concept

of place identity, establishing the meaning

of place identity in a rapidly globalising

world, and providing examples of the

diverse ways in which the locality and

specificity of place are represented in

contemporary architecture.

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of a place. Harold Proshansky, for example, argues that

place identity derives from ‘self theory’ as a sub-structure

of an individual’s self-identity, which consists broadly

of cognitions about the physical world representing

“memories, ideas, feelings, attitudes, values, preferences,

meanings, and conceptions of behaviours and experience”

(Proshansky et al., 1983). To environmental psychologists,

individuals define who and what they are in terms of

highly subjective “affective ties” to home, neighbourhood,

and community. Through attachment to places, individuals

derive a sense of belonging and purpose that gives meaning

to their lives (ibid.). It has also been hypothesised that an

individual’s identification with place can be causally linked

to their sense of coherence and their health (Hull, 1994).

In architecture and urban design, place identity

is distinct from self-identity, and can be more literally

defined. A place can embody a clear identity to be

perceived collectively by groups of inhabitants and users by

encompassing “a set of features that guarantee the place’s

distinctiveness and continuity in time. The concept of

‘genius loci’, used to describe the impalpable but generally

agreed upon unique character of a place, reflects this

meaning of ‘place identity’” (Lewicka, 2008). Place exerts its

influence through “physical features and symbolic meanings,

with the former often being a cue to the latter” (Stedman,

2003). Stokols (1981) defines these place-based meanings

as “the nonmaterial properties of the physical milieu –

the socio-cultural ‘residue’ (or residual meaning) that

becomes attached to places as a result of their continuous

association with group activities”.

“[P]lace is space endowed with meaning”

(Lewicka, 2008), while identity involves two things:

sameness, or continuity; and distinctiveness, or uniqueness

(Jacobson-Widding, 1983). Place identity in the built

environment arises from both continuity and “distinctive

characteristics” (Gospodini, 2002), and concerns the

meaning and significance of places for their inhabitants

and users. Place identity is simultaneously straightforward

and complex: place is afforded a unique identity through

a “persistent sameness and unity which allows [it] to be

differentiated from others” (Relph, 1976); yet the process

of how a place has achieved and retains its sameness and

unity, and how a place’s distinctiveness is perceived and

interpreted by its inhabitants and users is many-layered

and evolving.

The process of identity formation, it is argued,

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“can never start from scratch; it always builds upon a pre-

existing set of symbolic materials which form the bedrock

of identity” (Thompson, 1996). Numerous studies have

been conducted to establish what forms the bedrock of

identity for specific communities. Given place identity’s

in-built need for distinctiveness, its precise nature varies

from one place to another. In an architectural sense,

however, it is possible to define the fundamental, material

components of place identity, which all observers of place

can recognise: shape, or form; texture; material; colour; and

detail.

The complex ties that bind people to place

arise through interaction with the distinct physical and

visual elements of place, which combine to give a place

its individual identity. This identity is not static; it can shift

and evolve depending on the social, political, and economic

climate, which can in turn affect how a place’s inhabitants

and users engage with it. Architecture and urban design are

stable environmental symbols because they are harder and

slower to change, which means that significant shifts and

evolution in place identity can occur relatively slowly over

years or generations. This allows for a balance between

change and the continuity of the particular set of features

that guarantee the place’s distinctiveness.

In the architectural sense, place identity is the

sum of specific material components and features, which

provoke non-material symbolic meanings for collective

groups of inhabitants and users. The existence and

essential role of these material components and features

mean that the generally agreed upon distinct identity of a

place can be literally perceived and defined.

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As we all come from and reside in a place, we

are all to some extent able to recognise when a place has

become unrecognisable as itself. This can occur when the

continuity in time of the distinct material components

of place identity – shape, texture, material, colour, and

detail – is overtaken or overwhelmed by broad societal

change. Globalisation is by nature a homogenising

force in economics, politics, culture, and consequently

in architecture, and has presented a challenge to the

perceivable and definable uniqueness of place.

The current age allows unprecedented levels

of movement of people, capital, ideas, and styles. Despite

globalisation’s many obvious and significant benefits, it

also threatens to replace local distinctness with global

sameness. However, many sociologists, scholars, and

historians have observed that “globalisation, rather than

homogenising society, has been an agent of fragmentation”

(Adam, 2012). It would appear that the processes of

globalisation and localisation are “inextricably bound

together”: the doubts and anxieties that the inherent

complexities of globalisation engender precipitate “the

desire to remain in a bounded locality or return to some

notion of ‘home’” (Featherstone, 1995). The connection

between globalisation and localisation stems in part

from the increased collective awareness of place identity

and bonds to place that occurs when “sense of place is

threatened” (Proshansky et al., 1983). As anthropologist

Marc Augé (1995) has noted, “[a]t the very same moment

when it becomes possible to think in terms of the unity of

terrestrial space, and the big multinational networks grow

strong, the clamour of particularisms rises”. Communities

have to drop “their heaviest cultural anchors” during

periods of intensive social change “in order to resist the

currents of transformation” (Cohen, 1985).

t HE IMPACt O F G L OBA LISAtIO N

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Creating place identity has emerged as a

solution to the destabilising effects of modern, globalised

societies. This can be observed in contemporary

architecture that seeks to connect people with their

environment and “increase the sense of attachment and

belonging in architectural spaces” (Noormohammadi,

2012). Environmental psychologists have pointed out

the importance of belonging to or in a certain place,

and there is widespread agreement that the primary

function of place is to “engender a sense of belonging

and attachment” (Proshansky et al., 1983). The results

of studies have promoted the encouragement of

development practices that promote and exploit place

identity “and hence encourage (or at least do not

discourage) people’s psychological investment in their

local, physical communities” (Hull, 1994). These theories

for counteracting alienation and homogeneity in a

globalised world have also found support in UNESCO’s

2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, which states

that “cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as

biological diversity”.

The International Style, or Modernism, became

the dominant architectural style after World War II.

Modernism’s principles applied the same or similar

physical components of shape and material to buildings,

regardless of the places in which they were built. In the

late 1970s, Postmodernism emerged and made fashionable

“the inclusion of historical elements in the name of

local identity” (Adam, 2012). A strand of Modernism

began to recognise the importance of place identity

and the representation of the locality and specificity of

place in the early 1980s. In 1981, architectural historians

Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre published an essay

entitled ‘The Grid and the Pathway’, which called this

localising tendency ‘Critical Regionalism’. Following texts

LO CA L VA LU E

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by architect, critic, and historian Kenneth Frampton that

have expanded the theory supporting Critical Regionalism,

it has become increasingly the norm for architects to

describe their work as locally responsive. One revealing

example is the language employed on the websites of

prominent modernist architects – many of whom have

become internationally renowned for designing icons with

a deliberate lack of ties to any particular place – which

describes projects as “inspired by”, “responding to”,

“evocative of”, “in sympathy with”, and “in harmony with”

existing built fabric and place identity.

There is currently widespread agreement, in

architectural discourse and in other disciplines, concerning

the importance of reflecting locality and contributing

to place identity. This agreement is at a broad level. In

practice, a spectrum of ways exists in which local and

regional features are referenced and represented in

architecture, ranging from the very literal to the highly

allegorised, abstracted, and metaphorical.

According to Kenneth Frampton (1985), Critical

Regionalism “is regional to the degree that it invariably

stresses certain site-specific factors, ranging from the

topography, considered as a three-dimensional matrix

REFLECtING PLACE IDENtIty

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into which the structure is fitted, to the varying play

of local light across the structure”. Critical Regionalism

tends towards the “paradoxical creation of a regionally

based ‘world culture’” and is “opposed to the sentimental

simulation of the local vernacular”, but will on occasion

“insert reinterpreted vernacular elements as disjunctive

episodes within the whole” (ibid.). Tzonis and Lefaivre

(2003) outline Critical Regionalism’s interest “in specific

elements from the region, […] the place-defining elements,

[which it] incorporates ‘strangely’, rather than familiarly;

it makes them appear strange, distant, difficult, even

disturbing”.

We can identify two current and widely-

employed techniques for giving architecture “an identity

that relates a building to its locality”: site-specific design,

which is embodied in Critical Regionalism’s use of local

idiosyncrasies of place to define design; and symbolic

identity, or the architect’s “personal discovery of local

symbolism” (Adam, 2012). However, despite the intentions

of any architect to create works that achieve a sense of

place, no method exists to guarantee that a building will be

considered to reflect locality and contribute to the identity

of the place in which it has been built. There is agreement

that making a building locally responsive is important; there

is no agreement on how to measure whether a design’s

local responsiveness has been meaningfully and effectively

achieved.

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CASE StUDIE S

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CASE STUDY

‘ tHE RO OMS’

ST JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA, 2004

PHB Group — St. John’s, Canada [no longer practising]

The Rooms in St John’s, Newfoundland, is a

cultural facility housing an art gallery, the provincial

archives, and the provincial museum for Newfoundland

and Labrador. The building’s name and its architecture

reference the simple gable-roofed sheds, or ‘fishing rooms’,

which were used historically by Newfoundlanders in

outport communities to process their catch.

Fishing rooms were a common sight in these

outport communities prior to the steep decline in fishing

that followed the 1992 moratorium on catching northern

cod. Many former residents of outports now reside in

St John’s and The Rooms, visible from almost any point in

the city, is designed as a larger-than-life reminder of their

former way of life.

“It’s as unique as we are.”

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A distinct place identity has been transposed into a new

environment, enlarged, and adapted to house archives,

artefacts, and art.

As The Rooms now competes with the Basilica of

St John the Baptist for dominance of the St John’s skyline, a

saying has developed amongst local residents: “there’s the

basilica; and there’s the box it came in” (Brodkorb, 2014).

CASE STUDY

SCOttISH PARLIAMENt

EDINBURGH, UNITED KINGDOM, 2004

Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) — Barcelona, Spain

Scotland’s Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh

was built to house the devolved Scottish Parliament

following the 1997 referendum. The complex incorporates

the debating chamber building, four tower buildings

containing committee rooms, briefing rooms, and staff

offices, the Members of Scottish Parliament (MSP) building,

the Cannongate buildings, a media building, and a large

foyer. The Arcspace website describes the project as

having drawn inspiration “from the surrounding landscape,

flower paintings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and

upturned boats on the seashore”.

On their practice’s website, Miralles and Tagliabue

express their hope that the Scottish Parliament fosters “a

series of identifications between the building and the land,

land and citizens, citizens and building”. Some layers of

meaning, however, proved too obscure to be identifiable.

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The building’s facades have an irregular pattern of a

repeated abstract shape, for which local residents supplied

their own interpretation.

The shape was alternately referred to as anvil,

hammer, and hairdryer, before it was made clear that the

shape was “Miralles’ highly abstracted profile of Henry

Raeburn’s 18th century painting, The Skating Minister”

(Adam, 2012).

“The building design should be like the land, built out

of the land and carved into the land.”

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The Menara Mesiniaga Tower houses IBM’s

headquarters in Subang Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur. It is the

first ‘bioclimatic’ tower that provides regional identity by

responding to regional climatic conditions. The singular

appearance of the tower is the result of Ken Yeang’s

ecologically and environmentally conscious design

strategies, which optimise the use of the locality’s ambient

energies. The tower is lauded on the Aga Khan Award for

Architecture’s website as a singular, innovative landmark;

yet it is also claimed that the tower is essentially of its

place and expressive of its place, because of its regional

bioclimatic adaptations.

CASE STUDY

MENARA ME SINIAGA tOwER

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, 1992

Ken Yeang (Hamzah and Yeang) — Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“a building in [the] context of its place – reflecting

cultural and climatic influences.”

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CASE STUDY

NAtIO NAL MU S EUM O F QAtAR

DOHA, QATAR, 2016 (ExPECTED)

Jean Nouvel (Ateliers Jean Nouvel) — Paris, France

Conceived as growing out of the ground,

the design for the National Museum of Qatar in Doha

uses sand-coloured concrete rings to form low-lying,

interlocking pavilions, encircling a large courtyard. It is

being built around the historic Fariq Al Salatah Palace,

which since 1975 had been serving as a heritage museum.

The form of the enclosed courtyard symbolises

a ‘caravanserai’: the traditional resting places that formed

part of desert trade routes. According to E-Architect’s

website, Jean Nouvel’s design “gives concrete expression

to the identity of a nation in movement” and manifests the

“crystallisation of Qatari identity”. Nouvel’s own likening

of the design to a “bladelike petal of the desert rose”

refers to a mineral formation of crystallised sand, which

is found in the briny layer that lies beneath the desert’s

surface.

“like the bladelike petals of a desert

rose, growing out of the ground as if it

was one with it.”

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ANALySIS & CON CLUSIO NS

The preceding case studies are examples of

Critical Regionalism that claim a connection to the places

in which they have been built. These examples can all be

sited on the spectrum of ways in which local and regional

features are referenced and represented in architecture,

with a range of symbols, allegories, metaphors, and

references to built and unbuilt elements of local place

identity being deployed to contend that these buildings are

natural expressions of their contexts.

It could be argued that some elements of local

identity do not work when expressed architecturally,

perhaps particularly those that have been subjectively

selected by the architect, or that are highly abstracted,

symbolic, or immaterial. A dividing line must exist, on one

side of which references to locality are understood and

appreciated by the local community, and on the other side

of which the chosen symbolism has become so abstracted

as to cease to bear any relevance for the local community.

The purpose of this study is not to come to

definite conclusions regarding contemporary architecture’s

relative success or lack of success at expressing place

identity. The purpose is rather to point to the need for

further research into this subject, to determine whether an

architect’s written or verbal claims to a building’s being ‘in

place’ are enough to make it so, and to develop a method

through which examples of contemporary architecture

claiming a local connection can be assessed against the

literal definition of a place’s distinct identity. Success at

representing something of such past, present, and future

significance as place identity is surely best measured by the

local community whose identity is being represented.

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BIBLIOGRApHY

BOOKS

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Adam, Robert. The Globalisation of Modern Architecture. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.

AlSayyad, N. ‘Identity, culture, and urbanism’. In The Territories of Identity: Architecture in the Age of Evolving Globalisation. Edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and G.G. Montel. London: Routledge, 2013.

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Canizaro, v. Introduction to Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity and Tradition. Edited by v. Canizaro. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

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Cohen, A. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Oxford: Routledge, 1985.

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Frampton, K. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames & Hudson, 1985.

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Hall, S. ‘New Cultures for Old’. In A Place in the World? Place, cultures, and globalisation. Edited by D. Massey and P. Jess. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Hely, P. ‘Buildings and the performance of identity’. In The Territories of Identity: Architecture in the Age of Evolving Globalisation. Edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and G.G. Montel. London: Routledge, 2013.

Hough, M. Out of Place. London: Yale University Press, 1990.

Ibelings, H. Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalisation. Rotterdam: NAi, 1998.

Jacobson-Widding, A. Identity: Personal and Socio-Cultural: a symposium. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis, 1983.

Jameson, F. Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Jencks, C. Iconic Building: the power of enigma. London: Frances Lincoln, 2005.

Lang, J. ‘Symbolic aesthetics in architecture: toward a research agenda’. In Environmental Aesthetics: Theory, research, and applications. Edited by J.L. Nasar. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Lefaivre, L. and A. Tzonis. Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalised World. Munich: Prestel, 2003.

Lefebvre, H. The Production of Space. Translated by P. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

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ARtICLES

McCarthy, E.D. ‘Towards a sociology of the physical world: George Herbert Mead on physical objects’. In Studies in Symbolic Interaction. Edited by N.K. Denzer. Greenwich: JAI, 1984.

Mumford, Lewis. The South in Architecture: The Dancy Lectures, Alabama College, 1941. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941.

Noormohammadi, S. ‘Essential Human Qualities in Strengthening Place Identity as Expressed in Louis Kahn’s Architectural Theory’. In The Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of Built Environments. Edited by H. Casakin and F. Bernardo. Bentam e-Books, 2012. PDF edition.

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Relph, E. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited, 1976.

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Seamon, D. ‘Place, Place Identity, and Phenomenology: A Triadic Interpretation Based on J.G. Bennett’s Systematics’. In The Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of Built Environments. Edited by H. Casakin and F. Bernardo. Bentam e-Books, 2012. PDF edition.

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38 39

wEBSItES

Aga Khan Award for Architecture. ‘Menara Mesiniaga’. Accessed 31 January 2015. http://www.akdn.org/architecture/project.asp?id=1356

Arcspace. ‘Scottish Parliament’. Accessed 1 February 2015. http://www.arcspace.com/features/enric-miralles-benedetta-tagliabue-embt/scottish-parliament

E-Architect: Architecture News – World Buildings. ‘National Museum of Qatar – Jean Nouvel Building’. Accessed 1 February 2015. http://www.e-architect.co.uk/qatar/national-museum-qatar

EMBT. ‘New Scottish Parliament’. Accessed 31 January 2015. http://www.mirallestagliabue.com/project.asp?id=55

Memorial University of Newfoundland. ‘Outports’. Accessed 1 February 2015. http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society/outports.html

INtERVIEwS

Brodkorb, M. Interviewed by the author 29 December 2014.

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