Author(s)

YOMNA YASSER FAHMY, DINA MAMDOUH NASSAR, ZEYAD TAREK ELSAYAD

Abstract

In the past decade, many of the world’s aspects were subjected to a great change caused by many events that took place in various countries and yet affected almost the whole world, which is now explained by the term “globalization”. That recent picture of the world is a result of many accumulated changes that had happened over a long period of time, which of course had an influence on people’s lives. Architecture was deeply influenced by these changes as it represented them in its concepts and designs through consecutive eras as a witness to the different events that took place. However, sometimes the architectural changes were slight, but other times the changes were deeper which indicates how people’s lives were affected back then, which eventually affected the architectural characters of many cities across the globe. This research connects the cycles of globalization with the architectural evolution and the changes in local architectural identities over time to detect the severity of the impact of globalization on the architectural products. Therefore, the study focuses on two main points: the impact of globalization forces on architecture, and the evolution of the architectural identity features in three cities with deep rooted history, which are Paris, Moscow and Cairo. The study analyzes architectural products from subsequent years, which were subjected to many world-changing global events in order to track the change and to detect the era in which architecture lost most of its unique identity in these cities. Eventually it was clear that the last phase of architectural development – which extends to the present time – had the most brutal impact on people, due to the openness that led to globalize cultures and standardize norms. Architects focused on the building’s functions rather than the local identity, which eventually resulted in making the replicas of buildings around the world without a unique character for each place.

Keywords

architectural identity, architectural character, globalization, globalization forces