Contextualised Objects: The Application of Object Oriented Ontology in Chinese Embassy Design

Embassies represent their country abroad by promoting their diplomatic interests to conduct political, economic and cultural relations with the host country. Furthermore, they provide a range of consulate services which address the needs of their citizens. Symbolically, embassy architecture communicates the country’s values and ideals.

Historically, 20th century embassy topologies have reached an impasse. Previous attempts at creating inviting embassy complexes failed due to prescribed safety and security regulations. These have ultimately led to embassy architecture being visually misrepresented as uninviting and oppressive. An alienation of the existing context and a failure to properly recognise the host country has not been uncommon. Strict adherence to regulatory processes have retrospectively rendered embassy buildings to resemble detainee compounds. This project affords an opportunity for China to create an embassy facility which exemplifies a quality, inviting and engaging approach to architecture; whilst still providing appropriate measures of security. This proposal postulates that this could be achieved through adoption of a contemporary western design philosophy called Object Oriented Ontology (OOO). This direction runs parallel to China’s foray into engagement with western knowledge during the 1949 Chinese Industrial Revolution, to expand, update and improve Chinese architecture.

Within the framework of OOO, non-living non-human entities are recognised as possessing agency, are grounded in the real and operate privately outside of the human realm. The traditional post phenomenological viewpoint of ‘correlationism’ which is a subjective interpretation of what an object means to humans, is bound by an anthropocentric framework. It is the subject who acts upon the object. Conversely within the guise of OOO, it is the object which exerts its power over the subject and all surrounding objects.

This approach challenges conventional notions of relationship structures between objects and the connectedness to their existing surroundings.