New Morphology of Urban Architecture in Asian Developing Countries

The 21st century has witnessed a new style of architecture which is characterized by incompleteness, imbalance, and contradiction, and this is especially true in western countries. Asian developing nations have also sensed the new cultural climate. Their open, developing policy over the years has given them the chance to be exposed to, comprehend, and thus accept such identity. This change seems inevitable.

 

However, with ever-accelerating globalization, such tendencies of similarity have been criticized, since, being pervasive throughout the contemporary world, they could overturn conventional perspectives of diversity, and diminish the complexity and richness of the world. The world we now know is effectively shrinking day by day. Asian developing nations, therefore, teach themselves to avoid globalization, by rejecting international style one the one hand, and retaining traditional urbanities on the other. In China, there is a saying for native architects: “To be national is to be global.” Local and traditional characteristics have been emphasized for the composite identity. But what we see are Chinese roofs on bland glass boxes in Beijing, stepped traditional gabled roofs on shops in Thailand, and ‘Disney-esque’ blocks in Singapore Chinatown. They are not customized; they are only hybrid constructions, crude compositions of Western and Eastern ideas.

 

Although rampant globalization does flatten differences in reality, urban architects should comprehend and accept such assimilation instead of flatly rejecting it, because the course of architectural invention in Asian developing countries is characterized by evolution, efficiency, and exchange.

 

Historically, the emerging of each urban culture, including its architectural images, construction technologies, and urban mechanism certainly has its unique causal origins. Likewise, every kind of urban architecture has experienced its own evolution which is decided by its economy, technology, culture, and society in each period. We cannot simply repeat such traditional identities alone for synchronic urban diversity. Today we have recognized “cultural continuity” and “historic value,” but at the same time we should be aware that “traditional culture” does not equal “preserved culture”. Some traditional cultures are only worth being reserved in museum when the time passed. , technology, culture, and society in each period. We cannot simply repeat such traditional identities alone for synchronic urban diversity. Today we have recognized “cultural continuity” and “historic value,” but at the same time we should be aware that “traditional culture” does not equal “preserved culture”. Some traditional cultures are only worth being reserved in museum when the time passed.

China is a country with a long history, rich cultural traditions and an ancient civilization; with a splendid, time-honoured architectural legacy which has undergone thousands of years of development to become a distinct part of the world’s architectural heritage. Among them, dougong, which is a system of brackets popular in wooden frameworks of buildings, is unique to traditional Chinese architecture. It is inserted between the top of a column and a crossbeam to hold the wood structure together and is highly resistant to collapsing force. This helped so many ancient buildings stand intact for hundreds of years. But with the improvement of the construction techniques and technologies over 700 years from the Nanbei dynasties (AD420-589) to Song (960-1279）dynasties, dougongs have evolved from being big and sparse to being small and dense. And nowadays, there is no reason for the dougong in the cornice of contemporary buildings other than to rouse people’s traditional sentiments.

 

Asian developing nations, most of which must confront huge scale, high density, urban population growth, and inadequate infrastructure, still have many problems in providing human accommodation. The contradiction between this need and the underdeveloped capability make us stress efficiency of construction as a top priority. It is, therefore, opportune to absorb ideas from advances to improve sustainability, flexibility, durability, recyclability, and so on. In this way the urban buildings will become “global.” This is what our age requires us to be.

Cities in Asian developing nations have become high-performance economic growth hubs and home for half of the world population in the 21^st Century. Urban growth is driven by available investment. The coastal region of China is closely tied to global production of manufactured products. The positive role of foreign investment on urban growth is commonly acknowledged without detailed analysis. The positive impact of international exchange on national culture is the same. There is no excellent culture without exchange. Also, the global and local are not necessarily antagonistic. Globalization means an adaptation of different cultural strands and a “civilization mix.” For example, Buddhism was first introduced to China from India in the first century and became popular during the Five Dynasties (AD581-960) and the Tang periods (AD618-907). Since then Buddhism has been part of Chinese culture and local practice. In this way we might think the word territorialization is not an entirely accurate term, as there are blended steps beyond it. is not an entirely accurate term, as there are blended steps beyond it.