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Dlab's search for deeper meaning in the creation of architecture
Given the current condition of globalization, the production of architecture is slowly leaning toward a form of universalisation; an ambivalent international style that fits all. This condition is further exacerbated by the present economy of branded and iconic architecture, a culture that promotes blatant consumption of images and appropriation en masse. The result is an inevitable homogenization of architectural styles and concepts that are "placeless", contributing to incongruous new urban environments.
In reaction to this phenomenon, architectural firm DLab was set up to search for deeper meaning in the creation of architecture, one that focuses more on crafting of new and intense experiences that are relevant to their place, time, context and less about creating a product . DLab's projects are linked to one another not by their architectural expression, but through a consistent and natural evolution process that allows multivalent issues and factors to shape the design. This approach sees architecture as an extension of a place and a context that addresses specific technological, geographical, programmatic, social, and economic conditions as an inter-connected system. It is an attempt to fully embrace the polymorphic nature of individual architectural projects to allow their complexity, uniqueness and the "now-ness" to emerge from that process.
The making of such architecture involves a slow and intensive search for a convergence to a clear, optimal, and elegant solution. It is through finding order in a non-reductive, contentious and parallel processing of multi-vector influences, that architecture finds poetry and its particular identity. This process results in rich and unexpected experiences that resonate with the site and context. Some of the particular issues within the projects are the customized adaptability of space, the problem of use in prolonging the occupancy life span of buildings, reducing waste by design, and the integration of systems in relation to architectural spaces and the environment.
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