ENVIRONMENT AND ARCHITECTURE – A PARADIGM SHIFT

The interaction of human cultures and the built environment allows a wide range of interpretations and has been studied inside the domain of many disciplines. This paper discusses three interpretations descending from a systemic approach to the question:

- architecture as an "emergence" of the settlement system;

- place (and space) as an "accumulator" of time and a "flux" of systems;

- landscape as one representation/description of the human settlement.

Architecture emerges as a new physical conformation or layout, or as a change in a specific site, arising from actions and representations of political, religious, economical or social powers, being shaped at all times by the material culture belonging to a specific time and place in the course of human evolution.

Any inhabited space becomes over time a place as well as a landscape, i.e. a representation of the settlement and a relationship between setting and people. Therefore, any place owns a landscape which, in turn, is a system of physical systems; it could be defined as a system of sites that builds up its own structure stemming from the orographical features and the geometry of land surfaces that set out the basic characters of its space.