Context refers to the dialogue and internal connection between various elements, and the internal connection between the part and the whole.
Another definition of "context": the context in which Chinese civilization originated. This context originated from the two river basins. Today, the only area where the "Cultural Dragon Vein" and the "Feng Shui Context" coexist intact are in Hu County, Shaanxi Province (the Hu family of the ancient Xia Dynasty, now part of Xi'an City). The other "double-standard" contexts are due to Historical changes have all existed in name only (most of them are cultural inheritance, and the physical context has been completely destroyed). Many scholars continue to call for the suspension of the view of "treating all Feng Shui theories as superstition" and suggest that on the premise of preserving historical "customs", they should try to avoid destructive large-scale modern development - the only remaining cultural context of Jiulong Mountain in the Qinling Mountains It has also been developed into a cemetery. Fortunately, no large-scale artificial transformation has been carried out. Instead, it has been built as a scenic spot-level cemetery in accordance with the original surface form, so that the "ancestry of Chinese culture" can be preserved as much as possible, which is a blessing among misfortunes. The word context originated from the field of linguistics. It is a historical category developed in a specific space, and its extension contains extremely wide content. Interpreted in a narrow sense as "the context of a culture", American anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Clarkson pointed out: "Culture includes various explicit or implicit behavioral patterns. It is learned or taught through the use of symbols and constitutes the outstanding achievements of human groups; the basic core of culture, including traditional concepts, especially values, derived and selected through history; although cultural systems can be considered to be human The product of activities, but it can also be regarded as a factor that limits further human activities." Clarkson defined "context" as "a system of patterns of existence created in history."
City is. Formed by history, from the perspective of understanding history, cities are a collection of social culture, a collection of architectural essences, and the crystallization of science and technology. Gordon Childe, a famous British "prehistoric" scholar, believes that the emergence of cities is a milestone in human civilization. In the study of human culture, the emergence of urban architecture should be regarded as a specific symbol of the civilized era, alongside writing and (metal) tools. The exploration of urban architecture undoubtedly needs to be based on the context of culture. Due to differences in natural conditions, economic technology, and social and cultural customs, there will always be some unique symbols and arrangements in the environment, forming the city's unique regional culture and architectural style, and thus its unique urban image.
With the advancement of the times, the progress of science and technology and the frequent cultural exchanges, the image of the city may bring about a convergence aspect, and the cultural context allows us to look for cultural highlights from the nation and region from time to time. If we only maintain the city's historical buildings, it will still be like a rigid shell, and its brilliance will only gradually diminish and disappear. This kind of protection will only maintain a natural decline. In fact, we can adopt a proactive approach. The thinking process of changing perspectives - injecting new life into the historical environment, giving new connotations to buildings, harmonizing new and old buildings, and continuing the memory of history. The understanding of contextual issues has existed for a long time and can be traced back to the pre-industrial era and even the ancient Greek period. The idea of ??context was really formally proposed after the 1960s, with the emergence of postmodern architecture.
Postmodern architecture has noticed that modernist architecture and urban planning overemphasize the object itself, without paying attention to the relationship and context between the objects, and lack of understanding of the urban context. Architecturally, the uniform square boxes of the international style are detached from history and locality. They only have technical semantics and a small amount of functional semantics, leaving no room for reflection and aftertaste, resulting in an indifferent and boring environment, causing the industrial city to fall into a trap. In chaos. To this end, postmodern architecture attempts to restore the order and spirit of the original city, reconstruct the lost urban structure and culture, and actively explore new language models and new development directions for urban design and architectural design from theory to practice. They advocate: find their own foothold from traditional, localized, folk-oriented content and form (i.e. context), and activate creative inspiration from it, and apply historical fragments and traditional vocabulary in architectural creation, but at the same time It is not a simple retro, but with obvious "modern consciousness". Through extraction, transformation, transplantation and other creative methods to achieve a new creative process, the architectural tradition and culture can be organically combined with contemporary society and be understood by contemporary people. accept.
The mention of postmodernism here is just to introduce the essential cognition of postmodernist architecture into the thinking about the continuation of urban memory from the perspective of architectural language, and to draw lessons from the era behind the postmodernist trend of thought. The way of thinking and specific methods of dealing with problems determined by gender and regionality, combined with some successful examples around us, enable it to effectively participate in the reconstruction of contemporary urban construction. Modern architectural language is a spatial language based on the theory of architectural design and building materials and methods. Its formal language is not a symbol, but a means of constructing architectural form and space. Mature design behavior must be supported by a profound theoretical foundation. As far as the coordination of new and old buildings is concerned, the first task is to analyze history. Knowledge is the recognition of established architectural facts, including history and culture. Therefore, the creation of historical buildings must be Re-understand the process of history, re-seek the medium of dialogue between discordant factors such as space, environment, and technical concepts, and use the essential unity of the new and the old as the starting point to develop the concept of students. Students can not only maximize the It truly retains the old building, while using the contrast of modern materials and methods in the new design to maximize the time difference to express the long history of the old building and the culture of the city.
The continuation of memory cannot be sustained by the efforts of one person or a group of people, but also requires the joint creation of all people. What we need to think about is not just the building or city itself, but Perhaps the ultimate goal of architectural design is to transcend the needs of the building material itself and create a spiritual world that can produce cultural resonance.