The Inheritance and Innovation of Sustainable Development of the Traditional Architecture and Sculpture in Today's Globalization
Abstract
In today's globalized world, the crisis in the fields of sculpture, urban construction, architecture and urbanism is at its peak. Such disaster is obviously reflected in the common sentiment found in modern cities.
Human alienation, especially in existing and emerging metropolis, is growing at an unprecedented rate. There is no sign of such phenomenon slowing down despite some creative community projects introduced here and there.
On the contrary, this alarming situation is continuously deepening and intensifying resulting in the stagnation of future cultural development worldwide. According to prediction, 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2030.
Therefore it is of utmost importance for the planet Earth and its inhabitants to move away from the current self-destructive modernist ideology applied in the above mentioned fields, which is responsible in creating all our tangible urban living environment. Due to the predominant introduction of modernist approach in the teaching and practice of architecture schools and related fields, current trend of urban construction and living environment creation are evidently causing the inevitable withering of essential cultural growth in urban areas.
China and the US are currently the world's largest environmental polluters, which is largely contributed by their industry and all those skyscrapers and automobile traffic surface that support their enormous economic scale. Political, economic and administrative issues aside, the culprit responsible for our monopolized building destructive style is the move away from the traditionalist education of architects, which was commonly practiced in Europe until 1918.
As a result, such recent global trend of solitary high-rise buildings and transportation covered surface in cities, which is mostly represented by China and the US, results in irreversible disruption of traditional streets, squares and everything that was built according to human scale. Hence, the issue of stagnant cultural development is the most serious and obvious in these cities.
On the opposite spectrum, smaller Central European and Scandinavian cities have actively rejected the idea of building modern skyscrapers since its rise among developed countries. They instead focus on protecting their own architectural heritage, improving living standards, sustainability, happiness and well-being of their residents.
The effect of such choice is not only shown in GDP figures but also in general cultural development on average. Therefore, to offer a new angle on solving the endless array of issues created by concentrated urban population, the introduction of accredited teaching of traditionalism at public schools of architecture, with an emphasis on regional traditions, local materials, pedestrian streets, traditional low-rise construction and underground car transport is undeniably essential.
Without offering a new light from early education onwards, we could only continue to blindly cultivate professionals who are ignorant about better choices when they are the ones who hold the glamorous authority on deciding what and how to build. Preliminary programmes that pave way for this new direction are recently held in the form of workshops and summer schools of classical architecture and sculpture in Europe, USA and China.
The Global Acupuncture Project and Layered Urban Planning on a Local Scale are proposed among other proposed solutions for a more beautiful and healthier planet Earth and its inhabitants.