I went to Rome in the Christmas of 2019. I went up to the top of the relics of Foro di Augusto and captured the picture drawn by Rome history. In the picture, Altare della Patria and Chiesa didel Gesu at the distance merged with a few columns of Foro di Augusto that were left. The sky above my head seemed to be still and eternal, but the land underneath has gone through thousands of years of changes. The relics of Foro di Augusto were still standing there, struggling to tell people that the culture of their time had existed. At that moment, I was moved to tears. The architecture in Rome is a vivid record of human culture and the manifesto of the existence of human beings. 

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Later I had a few conversations with people about the essence of architecture. The answer that left me a deep impression is that architecture is different layers of thinking, which often are related to and overlapped with each other. Architecture making is the communication and sometimes negotiation with different ideas. Rome is the most complicated city I have ever seen. Its beauty comes from its complexity, which results from its multiple layers of history and thinking. 

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No design exists in a vacuum. It exists in a context. And for me, the context is its historical connections and social connections. Architecture solves problems. But architecture would be given greater value if the design also addresses attitudes, stances, and manifestos. The architecture is an expression of an opinion towards the essence of the problems it aims to solve, or what I call contradictions. Contradictions might be a reoccurring theme along the history, and high chances that those contradictions have been discussed and addressed many times historically. Therefore historical reference, i.e. how architects responded to the same contradiction is important to me. 

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Context is the most important for architecture making. An architecture fitting in the context not only reconciles with its surroundings but also serves as the extension of its soil culture. This idea only gets stronger after several internship experience. For me it is a shame to see the subtlety of architecture’s response to its context is missing in the practice of even the most famous architecture company I have interned for.

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I have always wondered in what way architecture influences society. And I finally reckon that the making of the architecture is more profound than the architecture itself. The making of architecture is the breaking down and analysis of the truths.  The architecture generated by the thinking process is a thinking machine, which can be used to analyze other truths due to the clear causal chain it contains. Architecture as a thinking machine is the most valuable contribution to the discussion of social issues.

 

The fact that architecture is different layers of thinking indicates that architecture is a complex matrix or the assemblage of elements. But a mind can only decipher one element of the matrix. Or it can also work the other way around, that the architecture making with a clear ambition generates the richness and ambiguity of the architecture due to the variation of its context. When EUR, the satellite city of Rome was first built to display the power of Fascist Italy, it is now regarded as an example of eclectic style due to the simplified classicism architecture language it has adapted. The richness of the architecture is granted by its connection with past styles and past context.