The Lost Treasures of Architecture
The Lost Treasures
Time progresss, people come and go, same destiny for the old and out-of-date edifices. The hoarded wealths we one time had were long gone ; our lifetime memory ; the familiar odor ; the familiar sight ; the familiar sound ; the familiar touch ; the familiar gustatory sensation. The rapid development in this small ruddy point forces reclamation of edifices every now and so, there is non a individual country without building traveling on. Our places’ individuality easy fade out, or immerge into a new signifier of infinite.
Every topographic point we know is a location that has its peculiar significance in our head. It can be your first dating topographic point ; your front-runner haunt topographic point ; or the nearby promenade that you are so familiar with, you go to the specific shop you want to without believing but subconsciously. Emotions are attached to this specific topographic points. It might non hold to be a strong, lovesick emotion but decidedly an emptiness followed when the specific topographic point is deconstructed.
A infinite is an about abstract impression, except it ‘s filled with things ( can be the eco-nature, can be semisynthetic ) . The biggest difference between a infinite and a topographic point, is that you will non hold any emotional fond regard to a infinite. Spaces such as the nearby grass spot, workplace lavatory, canal along the route you walking place. This besides mean that certain attractive topographic points for others could go a meaning-less infinite to you, or a topographic point in your head could be a meaning-less infinite for others.
However, it is possible to transform an impersonal infinite into a personal topographic point. Since a personal infinite involve personal emotions and memories, we could perchance retroflex the atmosphere/items that trigger ones’ emotions and memory into an impersonal infinite which hence become a personal topographic point for the individual. For illustration, planing and adorning a trade name new empty room for yourself. The empty room itself give you a sense of strangeness, uncomfortableness, doing you want to go forth the infinite every bit shortly as possible. However, with walls flush with your favorite coloring material ; old new furniture that you have been long for, and the perfect cozy ambient you created, the infinite has become a trade name new topographic point that is personal to you. A topographic point to rest and acquire comfy in. Yet, retroflexing a similar atmosphere/items into a infinite might non be a fool cogent evidence solution to transform an impersonal infinite into a personal topographic point. After all, a replacing will ne’er make full emptiness, but cover it.
However, reproduction is non the lone possible solution. By understanding your ain demands and day-to-day experiences, you can make a personal topographic point for yourself out of a infinite. The intent of the place-making is the first thing to see. What is the infinite for? Is it for working? Playing? Resting? Eating? If a desire topographic point is created that does non work good for the intent, the full topographic point go a nuisance, a infinite that you do non wish to come in, doing the topographic point to be place-less. For illustration, a topographic point for working should hold basic air airing, sufficient lighting, table and chair. You can non anticipate to hold wok and oven right beside your working desk, it is infinite devouring and non utile for your day-to-day experiences in this specific topographic point for work.
Figure 1 when a topographic point lose its intent, it become a infinite
How approximately big graduated table undertakings? How do we counter the job of place-less-ness in infinites like hotels? Hotels edifice is a ne’er stoping procedure. As more and more people travel for leisure, hotel is a must-have installation for the tourers. Yet, designs of hotels are extras of one after another, you can hardly distinguish the hotels except the fact of holding different names board allocated at the tip top of their hotels.
Possibly all it takes is to add in a subject for the hotel’s design ; a historical subject ; a centripetal subject. Waking up in the forenoon or from a short sleep being able to smell the aroma of your mum’s cookery is a alone experience you have that no 1 else does. The colliding sound of Turner against the sauteing pan ; the odor of place fried rice ; the nonliteral shadow of Dendranthema grandifloruom in the kitchen, it is a similar yet wholly different experience from anyone else. When this experience can be considered as centripetal subject into the hotel, it start to go a topographic point with significance, with a certain emotional fond regard made, despite the experience is unreal, illusionary, partly similar.
Or could we include the historical/geographical facet into design? Take a expression of our Singapore’s Airport. Art installings such as the Kinetic rain, is designed due to Singapore’s conditions where rain is a common sight in the Torrid Zones. Or the Floral Inspiration, it resembling a bunch of elephantine seedpods, their corrugated surfaces symbolizing the realistic texture of botanical beings, an look of Singapore as a garden metropolis that continues to shoot and boom. The installings decidedly represent certain looks the creative persons want to demo instance, but do other people really feel positively towards this art installings, or merely a impersonal emotions and take exposures of it in awe. In this state of affairs, this installings could non alter the infinite into a personal infinite, even though geographical and historical factors are considered for the ornaments for the infinite ( airdrome ) .
Figure 2 Floral Inspiration @ Terminal 3, Singapore
Figure 3 Kinetic Rain @ Terminal 1, Singapore
Indeed, modernization pushes us to follow the technological tendency, and our desire for new is ne’er stoping. Historically meaningful constructions were lacerate down ; topographic points filled with memories were lacerate down ; transeunt locales such as airdromes and Stationss become place-less-ness. Treasures were lost. Ancient hoarded wealths. Treasures which include our past memories, our possible centripetal experiences. However, is these hoarded wealths still a hoarded wealths to the younger coevals? Their past memory do non include street peddlers walking about ; nor merry-go-round or bouldery airplanes in pasar malam ( which have been replaced by air-pumped playrooms/slides ) . It is besides rare to hold parents cooking for kids in the early forenoon. The centripetal experiences have been reduced down to the tiniest spot possible. The thought of holding topographic points all over infinites is simply a wild phantasy, it can non get the better of the current state of affairs of the universe, where net incomes are the exclusive ground of why corporates continue vertical edifice after edifice, with the demand of clip efficiency and cost efficiency, with a small ornament of art to spice up the market.
Bibliography
Blesser, Barry. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? : Experiencing Aural Architecture, ( The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009 )
Gibson, William. Disneyland with the Death Penalty, September/October 1993, Wired magazine issue 1.04.
Available from: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html? topic= & A ; topic_set ( Last Accessed on 20th May 2014 )
Pallasmaa, Juhaini. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, ( John Wiley & A ; Sons, erectile dysfunction. 2005 )
List of illustrations
Fig 1 — – Irwin Tan, TREKKING THE KTM TRACKS: A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE Last updated 21stJuly 2011.
Available from: hypertext transfer protocol: //ashutterbugslife.wordpress.com/tag/ktm-railway-tracks-singapore/ ( Last accessed 4th May 2014 )
Fig 2 — – concern traveler, New & A ; Noted at Singapore ‘s Changi Airport Last updated 31stMay 2010
Available from: hypertext transfer protocol: //www.businesstraveller.asia/asia-pacific/archive/2010/june-2010/special-reports/new-and-noted-at-singapores-changi-airport ( Last accessed 4th May 2014 )
