#202: TO BE OR NOT TO BE CONTEXTUAL

Context is discussed often in architecture. A project’s surroundings—whether a fabric of Cape Cod homes, a conglomerate of steel and glass high-rises, or the industrial vibe of a warehouse district—are a critical item on the design agenda. Should the architect mimic this context, use it as a point of departure, or ignore it and stand in protest?

The default position is to sympathetically match the context. Like an addition to a house, the owner typically chooses for the addition to be seamless with the original. But for some architects, this approach would be deemed boring. Architects don’t want to copy; they want to be original—whether through a clever reinterpretation of the context or disregarding it altogether.

Sometimes, the context surrounding a project is thought of literally and simplistically. If the environs comprise Spanish Colonial Revival-style structures, then the incoming project should also be Spanish Colonial Revival applying arches, columns, thick stucco walls and clay tile roofs. This would be argued as being responsibly contextual. In fact, many communities invoke specific requirements for the well-intentioned but overly general, “neighborhood compatibility, harmony, and consistency.”

But context is much more than visual appeal, such as architectural style, roof shape and paint colors. Context also includes how scale, proportions, expression, gestalt, and such abstract and powerful ideas that comprise a design.

When British architect, Norman Foster, completed the 1993 Carre d’Art, the city of Nimes, France, was not just disappointed but up in arms. Foster’s museum design used glass, concrete and steel, and did so in the most contemporary of ways. The apparent problem was one of context, which included the adjacent Maison Carree, a carefully preserved Roman temple from the 1st century AD. Of Foster’s glassy boxy museum, answers were demanded.

• Why doesn’t this modern building match the historical temple and the traditional surrounding buildings?
• Where are the Corinthian-style fluted columns?
• Why is this project not contextual?

The general public failed to understand the abstract nature of context. Because the context included Neoclassical columns, it was expected that the museum would too. Because the context employed a traditional stone exterior, it was expected that the museum would too. And so on.

But this architect had a different approach. He suggested that the city of Nimes was known for its quality of natural light, a graceful luminosity. Foster claimed that this light was the context, not the old buildings. The new elegant glass museum captured this light and embraced it, and in so doing, the design was indeed contextual.