Spoken language comes automatically to us. All of us learned it as children. We seldom give a thought to the fact that most of the words we use are centuries old. Yet, in spite of the age of the words we use, we have little difficulty in expressing new thoughts every day of our lives. The same is true of urban language.
Our streets, our houses, our parks, weren¡¯t invented by us. We learned the form and texture of buildings, and of urban community, when we were children-when we first ventured from room to room, and from house to street, and when we first learned to ride a bicycle. The language of urban tradition comes as automatically to us as spoken language, and it comes to us at neighborhood and community textures and scales.
I am always amazed that in our architecture schools, we continue to train students to design buildings as egotistical art-objects, as though architects have a divine right to disregard the traditions and urban form of the cities into which they insert their statements. And I am constantly amazed that our professional journals continue to applaud willful buildings that violate the urban context in which they are located- as though exciting architecture is only possible to the degree that it¡¯s inappropriate.
Buildings do not exist in a vacuum. Every city has its own language. When we travel from one city to another, what we enjoy is getting to know the language of that city, its streets and its rivers, its squares and its markets, its history and its people. And the deeper we delve, the more intriguing the city becomes for us.
The shape of every city¡¯s future is based on its heritages. As architects and urban designers we might indeed say that the greatest strength of any city is its tradition and its local culture. And like spoken language, the language of the local tradition is always evolving, and always renewing its vitality by responding to the forces of changes.
