The idea or notion of identity is profoundly related to sameness of a thing with its context. More specifically it is related with the sameness or similarity of man with his environment. Identity is the forming of character and behavior and culture through contact with place or contact with what one belongs to; this relationship which renders identity to the subject and to place is a contract the human makes with the earth. Identity grows with roots. Independence from place or from context gives way to increasing abstraction; this is visible in modernism or much of 20th century architecture which had the principle of independence from place.
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