Buildings are physical manifestations of the political, social, and cultural environments in which they are situated. They tell stories about who we are as people and inform our sense of group or individual identity which has to do with gender, a region, a locality, an ethnic group, or a nation.

​

The concept of identity is fundamentally linked to how we situate ourselves in society. Moving towards a modern global world view, the sense of identity of a place is increasingly becoming questionable. Quoting Koolhaas from Venice Biennale 2014, "In 1914, it made sense, perhaps, to talk about 'Chinese' architecture, 'Swiss' architecture, 'Indian' architecture... One hundred years later, under the influence of wars, revolutions, diverse political regimes, different states of development, architectural movements, and technological progress, architectures that were once specific and local have become seemingly interchangeable and global."

​

This raises two important questions: Has identity been sacrificed to modernization? In an era of globalization is the "where" of architecture becoming increasingly irrelevant?

​

Let's look at identity in architecture as a process of articulating the attributes that define a 'self', persons or buildings which are associated with real or imagined people and communities. Architects play an important role in articulating the identities of the groups concerned with the projects. All our choices of configuration, material, aesthetic, proportion and scale can be viewed as part of the project of identity formation. KVDF 2019 encourages participants to look at how their projects contribute to the idea of identity in architecture.