this is problematic, but over-simplification can still get discussion going...
all scales are in the realm of architecture, if we're talking about form and its counterpart, space. a building should be considered a part to a greater whole. medical doctors who specialize in an area of the body have first to learn all the systems of the human body and how they work together. like this we should approach the study of architecture. in our post-study apprenticeship we will begin to specialize in building design; later, if we like, we would specialize in a type of building, or an aspect of architectural service (spatial design, technical design, project management). On small projects an architect can and should wear all these hats; on large projects it is impossible - only a team of people performing different roles can pull it off. But I digress…
the realm of an architect is space. therefore architecture is environmental - thinking of our surroundings - how we have structured and articulated space. a building as object has its place, but it should be only one out of hundreds. It must be so, or we get dubai (though i haven't been there). Indeed the fewer special buildings a city has and the more continuous fabric a city can produce to set up its special buildings, the better. Examples: guggenheim bilbao, the eiffel tower, empire state building, chrysler building, freedom tower (point towers supported by a sea of slab towers), the skylines of venice, san francisco, zurich. the church in a medieval european town, the pompidou center in paris. All these examples are set up by a dense, continuous urban fabric.
at the lower level of the city the same spirit of hierarchy occurs in material and form. the cooper union school of engineering and the new museum in lower manhattan are striking departures from their pre-war, masonry surroundings. if the whole block of these buildings were of forms and materials similar to the morphosis or saana designs, then i would be celebrating the one masonry building on the block.
it's okay to be a-contextual, as long as your project is the first and only one in the immediate area to be so. if too many buildings are a-contextual: dubai (though i haven't been there)
in the villa borghese gallery in rome, one is surrounded by great art. the sculptures of ancient rome create a mood, and the renaissance paintings line the walls and in some cases the ceiling. the architecture takes a decidedly understated role, but that is not my point here. my point is that when one turns the corner and enters the room with bernini's "rape of proserpina", one is almost knocked off one's feet. that is the essence of the special object set up by continuous context. and truth be told, there is another scale of space - that which is created by the object itself. all in the realm of the architect.
cities cannot be curated (at least not so easily). for cities to be composed like this, it comes down to architects. future architects: if you want to create the object then you must become a master. dive into architecture and sacrifice a lot. and even then, no guarantee. if you are not a master, take pride in your work all the same, and create excellent, continuous fabric. otherwise: dubai (though i haven't been there).
It's a good setup, but the last paragraph is honestly a bit strange. Why do you have to be a "master" to design the object building, if the best objects are defined by their difference, not any innate quality of the object building itself? I think in extreme examples, you can call a building an object and others fabric (but actually a lot of what you're calling fabric is actually not architecture in the sense of buildings designed by architects). But in most cases, contemporary architecture will fall somewhere in between, with elements that are contextual and others that are not. i.e. the New Museum is highly contextual in its scale and the way it fills the lot, but is acontextual in really fantastic and innovative ways. The trick is probably figuring out how much of each to do where and when. Relegating the fabric to the bad architects is definitely an over-simplification.
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