GATEWAY COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN,

SONIPAT, HARYANA 131001

DISSERTATION 2022

Architecture of Culture: Revamping cultural identity of a city through

current scenarios

Submitted By-
Gurusha Mengi
(GCAD/18/111)
Topic
Architecture of Culture: Revamping cultural identity of a city through current scenarios

Introduction

Since secondary school, the term ‘Culture’ has been fed to us quite often in context of
understanding the ecological, historical, geographical and social perspectives of a city or a
space. The past two centuries have overseen an incredible amount of industrialization and
urbanization which has made the notion of culture and its identity ubiquitous yet unclear and
elusive.

Culture is an intangible aspect of the psychological domain. According to UNESCO, culture

is defined as a ‘set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of
society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature, but lifestyles,
ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs’. Culture of a place is defined
by its people and its traditions and it is an ever-evolving paradigm. Human beings, their
habits and methods create culture whereas the presence and existence of culture is a proof of
humanity.

‘A world without culture is a world without a future’ (UNESCO). Cultural and traditional
values are said to be the foundation system for the identity/ social sustainability of any city.
All cities are a by-product of a predominant culture embedded in its urban fabric. As the
cities keep growing, its population keeps progressing, their thoughts keep changing and
hence, the culture keeps evolving. It is, therefore, very important to study and observe the
current scenarios of urbanization and recognize the evolved definition of cultural identity of a
city.

If each city has culture as it’s backbone/ foundation, how is it that each city looks different?
The purpose of this research is to delineate what constitutes culture for different urban
settings and how it translates through different paradigms.
It would also be a conscious effort to elucidate the various ingredients that are the reasons
behind the architecture of culture in any city.

Aim
- To recognize the ingredients of the architecture of culture of a city.
- To clarify the notion of cultural identity of a city and identify the parameters that
affect the architecture of culture.
- To understand the difference in loss of culture and evolution of culture.
- To understand the terms ‘cultural sustainability’,‘cultural continuity’ and ‘cancel
culture’.

Objectives
- To analyze various definitions of culture, identity and their relation with architecture
for interpretations of cultural identity and its formulation through architecture.
 - To indulge into the study of the concept of place and space in urban culture &its effect
on the person’s feelings and sense of belonging.
- To study and record the current urban fabric of various cities.
- To study case examples of cities like Punjab, Jaipur and Assam and re-define cultural
identity for each of them and its influence on architecture.

Need of the research

- The need of research is to re-define urban culture in the context of today’s era and
breakthrough from the old and vague definitions of the same.
- To understand : Culture As Is Versus Culture As It Would Be

Scope of the research

- The scope of the research is to delineate what constitutes culture for different urban
settings and how it translates through different paradigms.
- The research also focuses on unveiling cultural sustainability as a fourth dimension of
sustainable development
- To understand what parameter or ingredient of culture helps in city/nation branding
and building its reputation.

Limitation of research
- The research will be focussed on understanding the identity and legibility of culture in
the current and future scenarios without much investigation of the past.