• What is Architectural Identity?
• Place, Time, Architecture: Defining Regional Identities & Eras
• ?Ornament is Crime? & ?Less is More? – Minimalist Lifestyle and Maximalist Developments
• Hyperindividualism & Inspired Identities in Architecture
• The Present Era & Future of Architectural Identity

If I asked you where this could be from in India, you would probably guess right!

Now, how about this one? 
Scratching your head?
I wouldn?t blame you if you did a Google scan (and still got multiple answers!). 

Stylish Spanish villas, chic French cottages, charming Kerala bungalows, Rajasthani mahals, quaint, minimalist Japanese homes? do these sound like Air BnB listings? What?s a ?rare find? today, even in the hospitality space, used to be a lifestyle once upon a time contained in the most iconic architectural styles. Regional architectural identities are diminishing as we speak. An apartment in Mumbai resembles a luxury resort in Hong Kong, and we can?t tell apart two corporate offices today. How did we, as generations of civilisations, go from recognising a place in the world with just a glance to being unable to identify a new street in our own city? Let?s decode!

What is Architectural Identity?

Identity is who you are. It is the personal value that differentiates one from another and adds profound meaning to our existence. Today, we have ID proofs, where details like our name, address, contact information and more are specified. Besides these, our identities are built on our work, culture, historical background, beliefs, and value systems. That?s what tells us who we are beyond names and numbers.

Throughout our thousands of years of history as civilisations, we have sought to know the identities of various people, places, and things, for identifying a thing becomes the first step in understanding it. Naturally, human identities, both individual and collective, marked their influence in their built environment to make the place truly theirs and to identify with it. This unique characterisation of built spaces that reflected the culture, lifestyles and people of those particular times is called architectural identity.

Place, Time, Architecture: Defining Regional Identities & Eras

The architecture of a place has always been key to defining historical eras. From the mysterious premises of the Stone Age to the exquisite edifices of the Medieval Era to the high-tech ?high performance? glass box buildings of the Modern Age, developments throughout the world and the materials and tools used for construction helped us understand how societies functioned during those times and in those regions. Attention to detail and smart use of materials were impeccable in these eras. The Egyptian civilisations laid a whole network of underground labyrinths to safeguard the graves of their late pharaohs and let them have a peaceful ?afterlife?. The Greeks and Romans exemplified structures of the highest order, with no columns even slightly misaligned and no surface unfinished. Art, sculpture, culture and religious expression screamed in the skilfully carved facades of Islamic mosques and palaces, and in the masterfully built Indian temples and vernacular settlements. And the woodwork of Medieval Asian provinces still leaves architecture historians in awe.

While architectural styles like Gothic, Baroque, and Classical embraced order and grandeur in every inch, even the more recent architectural styles like Art Deco and Art Noveau seemed to capture the essence of societies while being full of flair and wrought with details. It was when the Industrial Revolution took over the world that identity in architecture started to fizzle.

?Ornament is Crime? & ?Less is More? – Minimalist Lifestyle and Maximalist Developments

In the early 20th century, a few decades after the Industrial Revolution, Austrian architect Adolf Loos spread his ideology of hyper-functional and optimum built spaces through lectures and essays across Europe, campaigning ?Ornament is Crime.? His belief resonated with a large section of society experiencing economic instability at the doorstep of WWI. Clean elements, simple forms and functional buildings were what the world turned towards during this time, some examples of which are the iconic Looshaus by Adolf Loos and Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier.

This kindling began to spread worldwide after the WWII. Together with globalisation and the mass production of goods, even the way we built our homes and public spaces changed drastically. To reel from the aftermath of two world wars, there was a boom in economic activity and the rise of the middle class in society. More people began to shift to urban and sub-urban locations, increasing the demand for housing, commercial and industrial infrastructure.

While society shunned ornamental and non-functional elements from their homes, it also embraced the legacy of the American architect Mies Van Der Rohe??less is more.? Even today, most of the world abides by it, and it has become the face of influential Western architecture. In the setting of readily available and commodified architectural elements (think precast slabs, columns, modular homes!), the world unanimously also strived for a life with less clutter, less decoration and faster development. Minimalism as a lifestyle was also starkly reflected in living spaces. Curvy, intricate details and intimate spaces were being replaced by sleek and clean surfaces and ?open plans?. Building materials also shifted – from locally available natural wood and stone to mass-produced structural steel, cement, concrete and glass – which basically looked the same without any treatment.

Hyperindividualism & Inspired Identities in Architecture

At this point also, everything was everywhere in the world. You could transport the finest marble from Italy if you wanted and get inspired (or influenced) by the Western lifestyle through the virtues of print media. This unbounded exposure to the resources, culture, and knowledge from every corner of the world allowed people to impart some of these newfound muses to their individual identities, which were also reflected in their built spaces. Before we had the time to retrospect, hospitals started resembling Greek prayer houses and “tropical rainforest” interiors were being made on the 27th floor of a skyscraper. There was this dire need for people to once again identify themselves with their places amidst the sprawling clones of developments, but this time around, finding the identity became a more nuclear, hyper-individualistic task rather than a cultural inspiration and a function of collective identity.

Even today’s “starchitects” strive to leave their mark on everything they create, making architecture almost exclusive as people and students dream of living in or even experiencing a signature ‘Calatrava’ or working at ‘iconic’ firms like Zaha Hadid Architects. At the end of the day, it all stems from finding, shaping and declaring one’s identity to the world, whether it was in the contextually sound organic old cities of India, even the planned ones like Jaipur city, or the orderly western-influenced towns that dropped like a colour block into a mesh of biodiverse geographies, like Chandigarh.

The Present Era & Future of Architectural Identity

Today, we are in the “high-tech age”. Technology has influenced every corner of the world and also how we build our environment. Architects today will undoubtedly benefit from skills like Building Information Modelling and Computational Designing. Their innovative use can help us complete even the most ambitious contemporary projects (London Crossrail) as well as the bygone historical projects (Sagrada Familia). The merits of modernisation cannot be discounted. However, this transformation curve has been so steep that we may be unable to look beyond the peak except for historical documentation and architectural conservation efforts.

As we continue to mould a sustainable future for ourselves, I wonder if we are gradually diminishing the treasure trove of sustainability we inherited?our architectural heritage and identities?and whether we’ll ever be able to get back to a place where a Maharashtrian Wada or a Kath Kuni building in the foothills of the Himalayas are no longer “rare finds.”

Sources

• Architecture | Free Full-Text | Analyzing the Role of Identity Elements and Features of Housing in Historical and Modern Architecture in Shaping Architectural Identity: The Case of Herat City (mdpi.com) 
• Modernization and regionalism: Approaches for sustainable revival of local urban identity (sciencedirectassets.com)
• Architecture with Identity Crisis: The Lost Heritage of the Middle East | biourbanism.org
• Has the United States Lost its Architectural Identity? | by Avinash Saravanan ?????????????? | Medium
• Minimalism and the Loss of Identity – BUILD Magazine (build-review.com)
• Eras in Human History | Overview, Timeline & Significance – Lesson | Study.com