Our interest, invariably, is to showcase authentic culture in each project in every location where we play a role. Mostly, this means how our team members showcase their communities to visitors from other communities in other parts of the world. But it also means something about architecture and design. With the recent opening of Spice Harbour, and the soon-to-open Marari Pearl, we have found ourselves describing the architecture of each property without reference to local or national architectural style so much as to what is “appropriate” to the location.

We admit we do not always know exactly what we mean when we say this. On the other hand, we are content to note that even the “experts” do not always have neat answers to such complex questions, as noted on Phaidon’s website about a forum at the Venice Biennale:

…The debate was ably chaired by the British Council’s Vicky Richardson who began by asking Stephan Petermann a little about the brief set by Koolhaas for this year’s biennale.

“What we were hoping for is that the countries would reveal themselves and their national characteristics by looking at their own history,” he said. “We think they have. It might not be as blatant as the provocation we made, but (you can see it) in the subtleties of the details and angles that some countries take. I hope that people enjoy the diversity of the directions we took.”

Vicky Robertson asked him if this was something he and Rem “really believed in – this idea that there are no national characteristics – or whether it was more important to get a reaction.

“The last!” Petermann responded, to laughter from the audience. “As a company we work all over the globe and we enjoy and suffer the blessings of working in a large variety of countries, so we are aware of how countries are completely different and how you find different clients and relationships within a country.’

“But it was an exciting way to tap into who cares and maybe we can get this identity crisis we seem to be suffering to the next level, and to try to also reach for the virtues that this crisis offers.”

Richardson turned to Ma Yansong of MAD, asking him if this was a live topic in China. She mentioned that “one of the things Rem explored in the brief was the mobility of architects in the last 100 years,” and pointed out that “The Phaidon Atlas has some wonderful data where you can map the mobility of architects.” Above all though, she wanted to know: How does that affect the meaning and the type of architecture?…

Read the whole post here.