The question here so far seems to be: What are the boundaries of “context”? My thought is that human scale is always what I crave. AT & T park succeeds because it carefully shrinks 40,000 seats in a way that Candlestick didn’t. I still really wish I could move into the top of the Fresno Pacific Tower (finances are a BIT of an issue) because it is a great building for a town the size of Fresno. Also, it isn’t beside the Empire state building which would ruin it as a site.

New construction should draw from everything that both of you have said regarding scale of a project, and use of materials. All in a human scale.

Again, thanks to you both for your insights.

what i find interesting however is how different architects are manipulating the spatial/temporal boundaries of ‘context.’ when a project is in the process of design and the designer(s) are vetting out information from the site [what i like to call the "DNA of place"] the spatial/temporal boundary is subject to the designer(s).

an example: the design of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis by Jean Nouvel took its ques from the mill silos and the smokestacks surrounding the site on the Mississippi River. this clearly set the spatial boundary to the immediate surrounding. locally, we have the H Street Lofts, which similarly took it’s tactile clues from the surrounding railroad tracks and industrial materials.

however, for the design of the new MOMA Tower in New York, Nouvel sets the contextual boundaries [space] to an entire city and [time] an entire century. in this case tipping his hat to the modernist style from the 20th century that dominates New Yorks urban fabric.

what than, if any, are the parameters for ‘rootedness’? need it be a city block, or a district, or a region, or a nation, or a hemisphere………