Arquitectura

FROM “TOWARDS A CRITICAL REGIONALISM”
Kenneth Frampton (1981)

3. Critical Regionalism and World Culture
Architecture can only be sustained today as a critical practice if it assumes an arriéregarde position, that is to say, one which distances itself equally from the Enlightenment myth of progress and from a reactionary, unrealistic impulse to return to the architectonic forms of thepreindustrial past. A critical arriére-garde has to remove itself from both the optimization of advanced technology and the ever-present tendency to regress into nostalgic historicism or the glibly decorative. It is my contention that only an arriére-garde has the capacity to cultivate a resistant, identity-giving culture while at the same time having discreet recourse to universal technique. It isnecessary to qualify the term arriére-garde so as to diminish its critical scope from such conservative policies as Populism or sentimental Regionalism with which it has often been associated. In order to ground arriére-gardism in a rooted yet critical strategy, it is helpful to appropriate the term Critical Regionalism as coined by Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre in "The Grid and the Pathway" (1981);in this essay they caution against the ambiguity of regional reformism, as this has become occasionally manifest since the last quarter of the 19th century: Regionalism has dominated architecture in almost all countries at some time during the past two centuries and a half. By way of general definition we can say that it upholds the individual and local architectonic features against moreuniversal and abstract ones. In addition, however, regionalism bears the hallmark of ambiguity. On the one hand, it has been associated with movements of reform and liberation;. . . on the other, it has proved a powerful tool of repression and chauvinism. . . . Certainly, critical regionalism has its limitations. The upheaval of the populist movement – a more developed form of regionalism – has broughtto light these weak points. No new architecture can emerge without a new kind of relations between designer and user, without out new kinds of programs. . . . Despite these limitations critical regionalism is a bridge over which any humanistic architecture of the future must pass. The fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism is to mediate the impact of universal civilization with elementsderived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place. It is clear from the above that Critical Regionalism depends upon maintaining a high level of critical selfconsciousness. It may find its governing inspiration in such things as the range and quality of the local light, or in a tectonic derived from a peculiar structural mode, or in the topography of a given site. ... The case can be madethat Critical Regionalism as a cultural strategy is as much a bearer of world culture as it is a vehicle of universal civilization. . . . [T]he practice of Critical Regionalism is contingent upon a process of double mediation. In the first place, it has to "deconstruct" the overall spectrum of world culture which it inevitably inherits; in the second
GSD 7212 Issues in the Practice ofArchitecture Frampton: Critical Regionalism Page 1

place, it has to achieve, through synthetic contradiction, a manifest critique of universal civilization. . . . That Critical Regionalism cannot be simply based on the autochthonous forms of a specific region alone was well put by the Californian architect Hamilton Harwell Harris when he wrote, now nearly thirty years ago: Opposed to the Regionalism ofRestriction is another type of regionalism, the Regionalism of Liberation. This is the manifestation of a region that is especially in tune with the emerging thought of the time. We call such a manifestation "regional" only because it has not yet emerged elsewhere. . . . A region may develop ideas. A region may accept ideas. Imagination and intelligence are necessary for both. In California in...