Influence Of Western Architecture

Submitted By Perry-Cheang
Words: 1507
Pages: 7

The pervasive influence of western cultural has been spread all over to the world. It began with the colonisation stretching around to the globe from time to time, following with the industrial revolution in eighteenth century to nineteenth century. The big influence of the manufacturing processes by the machines influencing the market because of the mass production. In the western culture, the unique values of foreign culture are always can be found. It emerges in a lot of different area of design but especially in architecture which reversed the influence from Asian, India and Middle East. For example the Chinese goods, Japanese printing, Indian textiles and African which had influence a lot to the west. After the World War II, the Japanese economy became more strongly contrast to the China and India. The design influencing the culture seem only more important to the upper class than the low class. Thus, with the accelerating communication between cultures, regions and countries, internationalization or globalisation of design by the western became stronger and stronger. However, there has been debate due to whether or not increasing internationalisation or globalisation design, culture, regional, national, and local factors remain important. This essay will discuss the internationalism relating to modernist movement, the functionalism of the high-rise, the usage of high-rise building for obtaining business and status, the breakdown of social network and the breakdown of economic network suggest that should maintain the consideration of local design. It will argue that the architecture should understand the cultural, regional, national and local factors to adapt into the local design. The beginning of internationalism can be traced back to the modernist movement, particularly the architecture in this time was influenced by the notion of functionalism. To clarify, the functional concept of functionalism relates to human needs drive the function of an object, which determines architectural form, as form should be followed by function. This concept was conveys reflected in the ‘international style’ of the Bauhaus. The functionalism is the concept taught in this school. Bauhaus used geometric styles to highlight the simplicity of modernism. That’s because the aesthetically building exemplifies the noblest function of the great architectural form which demonstrated ‘functionalism’ (Grabow 1999, p.33). For example, Alvar Aalto’s Tuberculosis Sanatorium is built the long corridors along with the windows on the both side which provided the fresh air and sunlight for the patients healing. This design had built within take consideration of what exactly they need which highlights the idea of the functionalism is dominated for all the architecture (Grabow 1999, p.35). Thus, the modernism movements, together with functionalism, are two things emphasized in the architecture design. The modernist design of high-rise is another impact of western culture had been spread all over the world during nineteenth century. The tall building come from Chicago as the big fire destroy the city. After the World War II, it started to become popular at New York to pass through the whole world, the reason of the high rise’s space efficiency is the solution of housing people which was important for such city with small land area. It functioning in the way that high rises built in vertically instead of horizontally to save the space and allow the cost less. That is one of the main factors that make it spread over the world (Walker 2014). Also the new technology of water pump and elevator successfully built together with the material of steels, glasses and concretes characterised and allowed the building of this Western architecture design. Similarly,