Monumentality Of Architecture Within The Urban Context

The proliferation of the iconic building is a “stubborn disease” of urban environment in the age of globalization.It makes the architecture become a consumable,commercialized "spectacle”,and it also makes the public life of city decline.The architecture gradually lost its role in the expression of cultural values of society as a whole,and could not generate symbolic and spiritual significance.In the process of the rapid urbanization in China,the iconic "image projects" and cluttered,rough urban environment are also acute problems plaguing us.In this dissertation,“monumentality of architecture” is the study object,and the “urban context” is the specific perspective.This dissetation gives a strong response to these problems through clarifying the complex and pluralistic meanings of “monumentality”,tracing the course of meaning evolution,analysing and criticizing the iconic building,retrospecting and exploring the value of theory of modern monumentality,constructing the theory of monumentality in the contemporary urban context,and finding suitable design strategy of monumentality for the Chinese urban condition.In this dissertation,the contemporary monumentality of architecture is considered as an important essence of civic center of city.It will serve as an important urban development intervention,and will profoundly affect urban space and public life.This dissertation will explore a new model,to against the iconic building as the “spectacle” in current urban environment.Thus it will become a new type of monumentality with critical and urbanism attitude.This dissertation is composed in four parts:The first part is to define the argument:Charpter I starts from the acute urban problems,and leads the argument.It describes the academic fundamental value,methods and framework of the research.Charpter II defines the concept and essence of “monumentality”(the research object)and “urban context”(research perspective)and establishs the basis and direction of research.Firstly,it discusses the evolution of meaning of “monumentality”.And then it discusses the concept and current problems of “the urban”.Finally,it discusses the relationship between “monumentality” and “the urban”.The second part is to analyse and criticise the problem:Chapter III criticises the opposite of monumentality-the iconic building as spectacle.It is the cultural context when we construct the theory of contemporary monumentality.At the beginning of this charpter,the research introduces the theory of “the society of the spectacle” as the philosophical foundation to criticise the architectural spectacle and iconic building.Then,it analyzes the relationship between architecture and spectacle,and the formation mechanism of the architectural spectacle.Finally,through the comparison of the concept of modern monumentality and the iconic building,it criticises the iconic building.The third part is to construct the theory:Charpter IV retrospects the fundamental of the theory of monumentality,and re-explores the theoretical value of modern monumentality as the important sustentation of theory of contemporary monumentality.This charpter discusses historical context,meaning,essences,multiple perspectives and reasons for the gradual decline of modern monumentality.Charpter V reconstructs the theory of contemporary monumentality and use the systematic theory to respond to a serious problem of contemporary urban context.It defines the conceptual basis of contemporary monumental,and then starts a new discourse of contemporary monumental elements.The fouth part is to explore the theory and strategy in China:Chapter VI will apply the theory of monumentality in Chinese cities,and to explore the suitbal theory in Chinese urban context.Firstly it rethinks and criticises the current urbanization process and the Chinese “image project”.Then it analyses the city center in different periods and different functions to show the evolution of monumentality.Finally it explores the essence of contemporary monumentality in China.Chapter VII proposes the design strategies of contemporary monumentality for the contemporary urban condition in China,and transforms the abstract theory to concrete design strategies.It includes the three levels: urban,fabric and building dimension.It summarizes the effective strategies by specific cases.