Context Theory

Context theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This produced the context theory that towns (the foreground) should be compact ... Kenneth Frampton put forward a context theory which he described as Critical ...
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Theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... the word theory picks out several different concepts dependent on the context. ... to the more philosophical context where a scientific theory is understood to be ...
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Context and Discourse Michael Glanzberg
Philosophical Theories of Context ... One cannot give an adequate philosophical theory of context ... The ?rst is what I shall call the index theory of context. ...
philosophy.ucdavis.edu

Context theory of classification learning - CiteSeerX citation query
Scientific documents that cite the following paper: Context theory of classification learning, by Douglas Medin, Marguerite M Schaffer
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Context theory is the theory of how environmental design and environmental planning of new development should relate to its context. When decisions have been taken they are implemented by means of Land use planning, Zoning and Environmental impact statement. A number of context theories set out principles for relationships new designs and the existing environment.

Theories Picturesque theorists argued that landscapes should be composed 'like a picture' (ie a landscape painting) with a foreground, a middleground and a background. The theory was applied to landscape gardens in the eighteenth century and as Nikolaus Pevsner argued to the wider topic of regional planning in the twentieth century. This produced the context theory that towns (the foreground) should be compact and urban, that the surrounding countryside (the middleground) should retain its agricultural character and that remote areas (the background) should remain as natural parks.

Modernism town planners lacked sympathy with picturesque context theory. Their firm belief that 'form follows function' led to the prioritising of certain human needs over environmental considerations or deeper issues of meaning. When planning a new road, for example, the emphasis was on traffic analysis and engineering rather than on the relationship between the new road and its environmental context.

Ian McHarg opposed Modernist planning in his book Design with nature. He believed that new development should be preceded by the fullest possible analysis of the environmental context in which building would take place. The highway planners who were, in his view, destroying the American landscape at that time were described as 'highwaymen'.

Kenneth Frampton put forward a context theory which he described as Critical Regionalism to help consider the relationship between new architecture and its context. He believed that designers should make a critical response, rather than a sentimental or copyist response, to local design traditions.

Tom Turner, in Chapter 3 of a book on Landscape planning and environmental impact design (1998), argued for a broad approach to context theory based on an index of Similarity, Identity and Difference (the SID Index): 'On different occasions... a powerful case can be made for developments which are "similar to", "identical with" or "different from" their surroundings' (p88).

Rem Koolhaas is reputed famously to have said 'fuck context', and his essay on the generic city in the book S,M,L,XL argues that context is an out of date idea that places too much of a restraint upon what cities might become.

Jonathan Watts reported (on Tuesday June 12, 2007 in The Guardian) "China has become the land of 1,000 identical cities, a senior government official has warned in an outspoken attack on the country's rush towards modernity."

See also

Land use planning
Zoning
Environmental impact statement
New urbanism
Urban design
Architecture

External links

Environmental Design Research Association
Essay on architecture, language and the environment