Critical Regionalism (Architecture)

This is a review of the monograph on the work of the Austrian architects Riegler Riewe, situating the work in the local history and architectural context. Eva Guttmann replaces the currently predominating and simplistic account, in which Riegler Riewe’s work is mainly understood in opposition to the Graz School, for a more complex view in which the work is explained as the result of differing circumstances and a variety of ideas. After the introduction by Guttmann, the book starts off with an interview by Otto Kapfinger with Riegler and Riewe. The focus is on the early influences and impressions in their work, such as the post-war modernists surrounding Ferdinand Schuster, relatively unknown local architects such as Josef Klose, and the highly tectonic work of Heinz Bienefeld.

Today our world is suffering from the lack of resources to meet the need of its inhabitant’s continuous demand. To meet this demand it is important to look for sustainable mediums or processes to attain the need. Architecture, like any other practices, is struggling with scarcity of resources and the manmade disproportionate distribution of it. In this situation individuals came up with the idea of adhocism. There is another approach in architecture pioneered by Kenneth Frampton, termed as critical regionalism. This approach addresses the problems and demands locally and globally with the resources available locally. In the sense of vernacular architecture it strives to counter the placelessness and achieve more humane architecture by addressing its local context, topography, and culture that too has a dialogue with the global stand. It is a progressive approach to design that seeks to mediate between global and local languages of architecture, driven by local forces that ensures optimum use of resources. Thus the intention of this paper is to find out what are the guidelines for making the built form to address the scarcity of resources.
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However tied universities might be with a heritage building, an iconic establishment, a place or a nation, the very word is actually founded on the notion of an ever-evolving, shifting and moving, expanding and contracting, association of individuals who are incorporated into a body of shared aspirations and function. The university is, first and foremost, a set of values and an endeavor of the exploration of knowledge, appealing to those who are apt to take on the shared burden of the task. By this definition universities transcend the limitations of place and space. They also act as a social condenser, turning diversity into community.
By necessity though, this activity is bound to happen somewhere. It is also likely to invest this ‘somewhere’ with appeal that extends further than mere geography. Likewise, the crowd that is attracted to that ‘somewhere’ now comes from all over the world, in physical or digital space. Seen as a generator of such interest, the locality of the university amounts to a capital that establishes value on a wider scale. Campuses, cities, even nations, achieve even mythical appeal because of this activity, which is not only limited to cultural production but extending also to an actual economic impact on the place.
Architecture comes in at the gap between function and place, reinstating spatial qualities as the foremost property of an otherwise utilitarian endeavor. It responds to the requirements of the site, it negotiates the terms of accessibility of and to the attached community, it decides the level of integration or distinction to the existing natural landscape or urban fabric. Finally it communicates the university’s aims and values, or it can act as a pedagogical tool by using its own formal and functional language to convey ideas, ignite the imagination, or foster creativity.
The selection of the case studies for this article was made in order to showcase the idea of building for the university, in the context of a regional or local condition.

Sogn Benedetg Chapel in Sumvitg, part of the early work of Peter Zumthor, condenses aspects of his ideas and his way of designing and building, which still remain valid today. Remembrances of childhood lay the foundation for his focus to architecture, which involves the collection of daily life traces, sensitive to the place and using materials treated in a precise manner, acquiring their presence under the light. With a tactile and tectonic language, from a phenomenological approach, he seeks to share a multi-sensory experience, encompassing complementary perceptions that transcend the visual geometry. As Kahn does, he relies on Heidegger’s thinking and is inspired by the little hut that the philosopher inhabited in the Black Forest, as well as by Rudolf Schwarz’s religious architecture, whose imprint can be appreciated in both the building and the objects encountered within it. The tension generated between interior and exterior keeps awake the senses of the visitor, while the characteristics of the chapel connect with an integrative regionalism that does not exclude contemporary abstract forms.

A Genealogy of Modern Architecture by Kenneth Frampton is the fruit of decades of teaching activity and gestation. The class on which this book is based was originally more succinctly called Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form, and was taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University from 2004 to 2008.
The 14 comparisons of some 28 buildings that make up most of the
book are divided into programmatic categories: Houses and Pavilions;
Housing; Office Buildings; Civic Buildings; Concert Halls; Museums; and Stadia, and are laid down in diagrams, photographic and orthographic representations, and in written text.
The analyses are richest, most compelling, and indeed exciting, when modernist works of different persuasion are set against each other. The comparison of the Schröder House by Rietveld to Maison Cook by Le Corbusier, and the Casa del Fascio by Terragni to the Gothenburg Law Courts of Asplund come to mind, or neo-plasticism versus purism and fascism versus social democracy.

À partir de l’évolution de la configuration réticulaire des voies de communication terrestres transfrontalières, cette thèse propose une analyse historique du processus d’intégration régionale entre le Cameroun et les pays limitrophes d’Afrique Centrale entre 1920 et 2016. Il s’agit de répondre à la préoccupation de savoir comment est-ce que, du point de vue du Cameroun, la construction desdites voies a influencé son rapport à ses voisins durant la période indiquée. Les méthodes de recherche et d’analyse historique sont couplées à la pluridisciplinarité. La démarche diachronique articule les mutations en deux temps.
Le temps colonial va de 1920 à 1960. Il est marqué, durant l’entre-deux-guerres, par des investissements importants en infrastructures de transports terrestres de la part de l’administration coloniale française pour projeter l’économie du Cameroun vers les colonies d’Afrique Centrale et leur faire profiter de sa position stratégique. Un processus d’intégration de fait s’esquisse entre le Cameroun et l’AEF. Toutefois, dès les années 1930 l’administration coloniale pense avoir établi la quantité de liaisons interterritoriales nécessaire pour susciter des interactions économiques entre le Cameroun et l’AEF. De 1940 à 1960 l’on constate une baisse progressive de l’intensité des travaux. En effet, le contexte politique heurte les enjeux économiques malgré la planification après 1945. La symétrie entre constructions des routes transfrontalières et désir d’exploitation économique harmonisée des territoires du Cameroun et de l’AEF qui cède à la construction d’un espace politique fragmentée au voisinage de 1960.
C’est dans ce contexte que le Cameroun et ses voisins de l’ex-AEF (Gabon, Congo, République Centrafricaine et Tchad) accèdent à l’indépendance. Considérablement, l’intégration est à reconstruire entre ces territoires qui décident de former une union douanière en 1964. Le Cameroun et ses voisins de l’UDÉAC l’envisagent tout en campant sur l’héritage matériel et immatériel (politique) colonial. Il est en résulte une stagnation du réseau routier transfrontalier et une dynamique d’intégration atténuée durant les trente-cinq ans de l’union. L’avènement de la CÉMAC en 1994 s’accompagne d’une cascade de projets d’infrastructures. Le Cameroun apparaît comme le point de départ ou d’aboutissement de plusieurs d’entre eux dans le sillage des travaux qui s’en suivent. Il en découle une redynamisation du processus d’intégration régionale avec les pays de la sous-région. Cependant, il est désormais sous l’influence de la mondialisation et du capital néolibéral.

O Αθηναϊκός μοντερνισμός εισήλθε στη διεθνή σκηνή διαμέσου της κριτικής ιστορίας της μοντέρνας αρχιτεκτονικής του Kenneth Frampton στα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1980. Αυτό το άρθρο αναδεικνύει του τρόπους με τους οποίους ο Βρετανός ιστορικός παρουσίασε θετικά, αλλά και , την Αθήνα ως την "κατεξοχήν μοντέρνα πόλη" και το έργο των αρχιτεκτόνων του "κριτικού τοπικισμού", Σουζάνας και Δημήτρη Αντωνακάκη.

This book provides readers with a wide overview of place-based planning and design experiments addressing such powerful transformations in the African built environment. This continent is currently undergoing fast paced urban, institutional and environmental changes, which have stimulated an increasing interest for alternative architectural solutions, urban designs and comprehensive planning experiments.
The international and balanced array of the collected contributions explore emerging research concepts for understanding urban and peri-urban processes in Africa, discuss bottom-up planning and design practices, and present inspirational and innovative co-design methods and participatory tools for steering such change through public spaces, sustainable services and infrastructures.
The book is intended for students, researchers, decision-makers and practitioners engaged in planning and design for the built environment in Africa and the Global South at large.

La arquitectura regionalista en Sevilla no se comprende sin su contexto europeo. La ideología regionalista estaba presente también en Inglaterra, Francia, Alemania y otros países europeos, aunque se conoce con nombres diferentes como Arts and Crafts, Heimatarchitektur o tradicionalismo. Al final la dominación de la arquitectura regionalista en Sevilla a principios del siglo XX, con Anibal González Álvarez como su principal representante, se compara con la situación en Hamburgo donde Fritz Schumacher impuso el regionalismo - el estilo neo-hanseatico - como estilo dominante.

Critical Regionalism is an idea that developed after post-modernism; as a response against the placeless-ness and lack of identity of modern architecture, and also the extreme individualism and ornamentation of postmodern architecture. It derived from the understanding that people feel a connection to vernacular architecture, which they don't feel towards mass produced houses.

Italomodern 1 and Italomodern 2 are extensive surveys of modern architecture in northern Italy from 1946 to 1976. The authors — Vienna-based architect Martin Feiersinger and his brother, artist and photographer Werner — started this collaborative project in 2004. Although these volumes are an excellent survey of post-war Italian architecture, the books could have documented the ideological positions of the architects in more depth.

From Strabo, the Greek geographer who visited Cyprus in the first Century BC, until the Archduke Louis Savator of Austria, a member of the Hapsburg Royal family who visited Cyprus in 1873, recorded travelogues repeatedly refer to the gardens of Nicosia as an identifying element of the city. Either in the form of productive orchards during the Lusignan Era, a compound of exotic plants and animals during the Venetian Rule or an enclosed- mystical domestic space with cisterns and small hammams during the Ottoman Rule, gardens hidden at the rear of the house and aside of the daily domestic routines, have claimed their historical place in the Cypriot capital city as heterotopic islands referring mainly to the stimulation of senses. By looking at historical documents and surviving historical gardens such as that of the Dragoman Kornesios, the article wants to highlight the ‘rear’ placement of this architectural element that also reflects its ‘rear’ function. The garden becomes the part of the domestic space that hosts, protects and cultivates all the informal activities of the domestic life. The purpose of this article is to explore the ‘rear’ function of the domestic gardens of Nicosia in their historical context, as well as investigate its role as an element that still survives today and identifies the relation of architecture with the place, possibly bearing possibilities of resistance to cultural homogenisation.

excerpt/ The bilingual volume is an architecture monograph (BA research project of the author) published at the half-century anniversary of the disappearance of the Romanian architect GM Cantacuzino (1890-1960). Founder of the Simetria review (1939-1947), GM Cantacuzino is known for innovative architectural works in Bucharest such as the palladian Chrissoveloni Bank Palace (1928), Corpus of the Kretzulescu Church Wardenship in Palace Square (1938), the Bragadiru blockhaus in Lahovary Square (1935), villas Nae Ionescu, Florica Mavrocordat and Policrate (1935), many projects on the Black Sea shore – villas Aviana and Bibescu in Eforie Nord (1933), the hotel Rex in Mamaia (1940) or the neo-palladian pavilions of the Metropolia Palace, Jassy (1960).

“The task of critical regionalism is to rethink architecture through the concept of region.” (Tzonis & Lefaivre, 2003) The term critical regionalism, in its sense, raises several arguments in the architectural field. Critical regionalism could debate the essence of the utopian idea of international design, that every building can be placed anywhere and function with high compatibility. Critical regionalism questions the approaches used in international design; it opens up the idea that each region could have a specific characteristic that could serve function, form, and efficiency. This could also mean that each region will be distinct in the means of materials and treatments. “Critical regionalism self- consciously seeks to deconstruct universal modernism in terms of values and images which are locally cultivated, while at the same time adulterating these autochthonous elements with paradigms drawn from alien sources.” (Frarmpton, 1983) Critical Regionalism does not intend to revisit history or dwell in the past, but to find a middle ground between two extremes. The universal design that the modernists strive to achieve by spearing Louis Sullivan’s saying “Form follows function” wherever the building might exist, and the post modernists who celebrated ornamentation for its own sake. Globalization is definitely a benefit for designers as it expands the visual cultures; yet designers need to use this design exposure in a way that could benefit the environment and maximize the built environment's efficiency.

This paper questions the possibility to use critical regionalism in promoting a region’s identity but at the same time adheres to the international developments. The aim is to explore the idea of critical regionalism applications, and whether it could relate to both international design and regional identity. Its being applied to four different interior design Master’s degree student projects in Florence, Italy. The students were given a specific building in the center of Florence to redesign but there were several fixed factors. First, the building should be a hotel that relates to the identity of the city of Florence, second, the design should be minimal, third the use of literal images or direct analogies were not allowed. The data is analyzed through a comparative study between the four projects in terms of concept, analogy, color scheme, materials and level of ornamentation.

The paper represents results of this focus group of interior design students who are from different demographics with only fixed education levels’ postgraduates in either interior design or architecture, and project description.

Aris Konstantinidis (1913-1993) was a leading figure of Greek postwar architecture.  The  topic of this publication is the 1998 Colloquium and exhibition of his work at the School of Architecture of Princeton University, entitled “Aris Konstantinidis. The building and the land”.  The publication includes: (a) the Colloquium program and presentation abstracts by the organizers (M. Christine Boyer, Marina Lathouri and Maurice van Eijs) and by the five speakers (Helen Fessas-Emmanouil, Kenneth Frampton, Dimitri Konstantinidis, David Leatherbarrow and Sokratis Georgiadis); (b) characteristic photographs of the exhibition at the School of Architecture of Princeton University (February 14 – March 7, 1998).

Contemporary Architecture in Khartoum have been affected by modernization and globalization, which lead to an architecture that has little attention to the existing local and regional architecture. Globalized architecture resulted in buildings that do not adapt to the changed environmental, social, cultural, economic or/and political context, and so is most of the emerging contemporary Architecture in Khartoum This study was conducted in order to find out if an appropriate context-related regionalistic architecture can be created by the integration of local architectural traditions and universal architectural realities through a Critical perspective; as well as, to gain a better understanding to contemporary residential Architecture in Khartoum using Frampton's theoretical concept of " Critical Regionalism ". Five main points were derived by the author from this concept and were used as an analysis tool and criteria that guided the study. This concept was chosen because it had been a successful worldwide tool, especially in the Third World Countries, which had been used to give a sense of a genuine, authentic, and modern architecture to people, as well as helping in creating architecture that is specifically relevant to their context and environment whilst being part of the world of modern architecture. The study proved that a context-related contemporary residential architecture does exist in Khartoum, and that Critical Regionalism is an applicable approach to be followed by architects in Khartoum. The case studies, although not designed with Critical Regionalism in mind, expressed the five points of Critical Regionalism successfully. The study also showed that the points can provide guidance to develop the existing architecture, as well as help architects understand and evaluate what has been built, and to help what is yet to be built here in Khartoum.

*This Paper was extracted from the Masters Thesis “Critical Regionalism: Studies on Contemporary Residential Architecture of Khartoum – Sudan”

The question about the influence of the place on architecture is almost born with Architecture itself. Nevertheless after economic and politic conflicts tendency has oriented itself towards capitalism and a world culture is coming out, which is walking on local identity. Each place, each space is different from the one that follows or precedes it. Some “local schools” thanks to reasoned architects doing clever architectures, have preserved the genius loci from globalization. But what will happen next when mankind is still running after progress and power, what place will have the regionalist question in the next ten years? Vorarlberg have already made a shy proposition with his sustainable architecture but will that be enough?


La question de l’influence du lieu sur l’architecture est quasiment née avec l’architecture elle-même. Cependant suite à des conflits d’ordres économiques et politiques, la tendance s’est orientée vers le capitalisme et à l’avènement d’une culture mondiale, marchant sur l’identité locale. Chaque lieu, chaque espace est différent de celui qui le suit ou qui le précède. Certaines « écoles régionales » grâce à des architectes raisonnés produisant des architectures intelligentes, ont su préserver ce genius loci. Mais qu’en sera-t-il à l’avenir alors que l’Homme court toujours après le progrès et le pouvoir, quelle place occupera la question régionaliste dans les prochaines années ? Le Vorarlberg, propose timidement une réponse avec son architecture durable. Cela suffira-t-il?

Critical regionalism is an architectural approach that seeks to correct sterile and abstract modernism by using contextual forces that focus on local needs and potential. As globalisation disrupts and displaces local building traditions in India's metropolitan cities, critical regionalism offers resistance to the homogenising forces of global modernism. This paper analyses five key architectural works realised in Delhi in the past four decades that incorporate the ideas of critical regionalism in their designs. The different approaches adopted by regionalist architects in dealing with local climate, topography, materials and sociological complexes have been presented. By limiting itself to regionalist works in Delhi, the paper attempts to highlight that critical regionalism is not a set of aesthetic preferences but a philosophical framework capable of producing diverse forms of architecture despite analogous external influences arising from similar site conditions.

By the emergence of the debate over the failure of Regionalism in the late 1970s, Critical Regionalism was introduced as a different way to respond to the state of architecture in the postwar era. Critical Regionalism is most often understood as a discourse that not only mediates the language of modern architecture with the local cultures but also revives the relation between architecture and spectator as indexed by capitalism. Since the inception of Critical Regionalism, a large number of architectural practices have emerged around the globe; however, the work of the well-known Portuguese architect, Alvaro Siza, is considered as a unique case amongst works associated with the discourse of Critical Regionalism. This paper intends to respond to a number of questions, including; what are the origins of Critical Regionalism? How does Siza's design strategy correspond to the thematic of Critical Regionalism? How does Siza recover the relation between object and subject in most of his projects? Using Siza's housing project for the Malagueira district in Evora, Portugal, this article will attempt to answer these questions, and highlight Alvaro Siza's design procedure which goes beyond the existing discourse of Critical Regionalism and contributes to our understanding of this practice.

Kenneth Frampton enters the populated scene of regionalism like figure of authority with a seal of approval. However, Towards a Critical Regionalism, the essay's title, seems to be vouching for a different approach. As Frampton pursues an "architecture of resistance," so does he pursue a resistance of preceding regionalisms. The essay critiques modernism's "dogmatic principles" and engages with the popular postmodernist movement during the 1980s; it is rooted and/or influenced by ideas of pluralism, phenomenology, new concepts of "place" and post-colonial liberation. He also makes allusions to ideas of environmental or sustainable architecture in a time when such discourse was not yet popular. Ultimately, the essay tries to offer what Architecture's response could become to the question which philosopher Paul Riceour asks:

The celebrated Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa was born in 1936
and came to notice as a theorist with the publication of ‘The Eyes of the Skin (1996): Architecture and the Senses’. The book is a phenomenological account that offers architecture as a multi-sensory experience as an alternative to the current emphasis on visual spectacle. In doing so Pallasmaa reminds us that one of the tasks of architecture is to address the deeper existential questions within us.
Pallasmaa’s book under review, ‘The Embodied Image – Imagination
and Imagery in Architecture’ develops this discourse. It argues that, in
our world of mass communication and consumption, the human imagination is diminished by the continuous bombardment of images. Thrown at us for commercial and ideological purposes, it dulls our senses, conditions us, and fragments our understanding of the world. The resulting alienation can be countered, according to Pallasmaa, by recuperating the image as a bearer of poetic content and meaning so it can inspire our mental imagery and imagination.
The review ends by posing the question if the embodied experience of two projects by Rem Koolhaas (OMA) and Steven Holl are, by this reading, really so qualitatively different.

This document is the syllabus for a graduate seminar I am offering this fall in the Department of Architecture at Kansas State University. The tripartite "Deep Beauty" construct, which is defined in the paper, outlines a new paradigm for sustainable design that recognizes that only those buildings and landscapes which are truly beautiful and connect us functionally and meaningfully to the living world  are truly sustainable. The textbooks and readings listed in the syllabus constitute an essential bibliography for an approach to design that must become universally applied if we are to survive and transcend the crisis of sustainability. It is both a call to action and a roadmap for change.

Critical regionalism is an architectural concept that seeks to balance local needs and capabilities with the progressive lessons of modernisation. Critical regionalism has been an influential architectural approach in postcolonial Indian architecture. Even before the term was coined in the 1980s, architects in India had subconsciously begun pursuing the ideas of critical regionalism in designing their buildings. The degree of influence of critical regionalism on postcolonial Indian architecture has varied over the course of time as a result of economic, political and social changes. This paper identifies key architectural projects realised in India since 1947 that adhere to the ideas and principles of critical regionalism. The identified regionalist projects have been categorised according to their building programmes and significant examples in each building type are discussed chronologically while bringing forth their qualities that make them regionalist in first place. By focussing on regionalist projects of significance in each building type, the paper highlights that critical regionalism is capable of producing potent architecture to cater to any building programme.

In the early 1980s, Indian architect Charles Correa was commissioned to build a new general assembly building, the Vidhan Sabha Bhawan, in Bhopal, the regional capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Correa was one of the most well-known architects of his generation in India. Educated in India and the United States, he was influenced by Le Corbusier and international modernism. Le Corbusier’s project for Chandigarh in the 1950s was particularly important to introducing these ideas to a whole generation of young architects in India. This paper considers the project for Vidhan Sabha in Bhopal and its place in Correa’s body of work. Unlike some of his earlier projects that borrowed heavily from Le Corbusier like the Hindustan Lever Pavilion in Delhi, Vidhan Sabha shows the influence of both Critical Regionalism and Postmodernism. By bringing together international and vernacular architectural strategies, the building illustrates how Indian architecture in the 1980s was developing its own identity that built on the Nehruvian legacy of a modern, but culturally rich Indian state.

In short, this essay does for the concept of the assemblage what Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben did for Foucault in their essays on the dispositif: it extracts from a large body of work the core formal features of its operative methodology or logic.

The book can be freely downloaded as an open-access PDF file from: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/180529

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’.

Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation.

Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography.

Praise for Resisting Postmodern Architecture

'Giamarelos reflects upon why Frampton’s critical regionalism continues to endure, particularly as a template for an engaged practice on the part of architects around the world today. He points to aspects of Frampton’s ideas, such as a respect for nature, local landscapes and site conditions, which easily segue to the pressing contemporary concerns regarding sustainability and climate change. For these reasons, Resisting Postmodern Architecture is a worthy, relevant and innovative work of scholarship.'
Mary Pepchinski

Αγγελόπουλος Παναγιώτης | Ερευνητική εργασία - Ακαδ. έτος: 2017-2018 - Αρχιτεκτονική Σχολή Πανεπιστημίου Πατρών____________________
Ο Gordon Matta-Clark εισάγει -με τα ζητήματα λειτουργικότητας που
προκύπτουν μέσα από το έργο του- μία προβληματική-πολεμική
για το φονξιοναλισμό και τις επιπτώσεις του στη μεταπολεμική
πόλη.
Ο φονξιοναλισμός, που υιοθετήθηκε σε διεθνή κλίμακα, με
τις δογματικές του επιβολές και τη λειτουργική του πόλη που
κατέτασσε τη καθημερινότητα του ανθρώπου σε κατηγορίες,
δημιούργησε ένα αφιλόξενο περιβάλλον για την κατοίκηση και τη
ζωή του ανθρώπου. Κατέστρεψε τον τόπο του με την αφέλειά του.
Η αποτυχία του φονξιοναλιστικού μοντερνισμού να διατηρήσει το
εκ προθέσεως κοινωνικό του πρόταγμα και ανθρώπινο πρόσωπο,
οδήγησε σε ουτοπικές-φανταστικές αναζητήσεις με αυτοσκοπό
την εξολοκλήρου κριτική του μοντερνισμού και της κοινωνίας που
τον υιοθέτησε, μιας και η αρχιτεκτονική πρακτική φαινόταν να μην
δύναται να υλοποιήσει -στην υπάρχουσα κοινωνία- οποιοδήποτε
κοινωνικό του όραμα.
Μέσα στο πλαίσιο της κριτικής και του επαναπροσδιορισμού,
κι εφόσον τα ζητήματα που προέκυψαν είναι υπαρκτά, με πιο
νηφάλια αντιμετώπιση άλλοι αρχιτέκτονες επιδόθηκαν στην
αναζήτηση ενδεχομένων ικανών να υπερβούν τον αφελή
φονξιοναλισμό.
Οι -διάφορες- νέες προσεγγίσεις οδήγησαν σε νέες τάσεις και
ρεύματα, μετά το μοντέρνο.
Η άνοδος των τοποφιλικών θεωρήσεων και η διάθεση
επανεξανθωπισμού της αρχιτεκτονικής, όμως, βρίσκει την πλήρη
έκφρασή του σε μία τάση, -πέρα των διαθέσεων υπερβάσεων, μα
προς την δημιουργία τόπων- αυτήν του «Κριτικού τοπικισμού».
Ο κριτικός τοπικισμός, ως ένα σύνολο αρχών-προσεγγίσεων
απέναντι στα ζητήματα περί του τόπου παρουσιάζεται ως το κριτικό
εκείνο παράδειγμα απέναντι στις καταστροφικές συνέπειες του
αφελή φονξιοναλισμού. Σε αυτό, το ενδεχόμενο του τοπικού, στο
οποίο ενέχεται ο «άνθρωπος» και η «κατοίκησή του», το οικουμενικό
συγκεκριμενοποιείται και το πραγματικό λαμβάνεται υπόψιν.
Σε αντίθεση, στην περιγραφή της πραγματικής πόλης από τον Rem
Koolhaas, τη «Γενική Πόλη», η αποδοχή του πραγματικού είναι η
αφετηρία και δε συγκεκριμενοποιείται τίποτα. Το γενικό επικρατεί
ως το μόνο ενδεχόμενο.
Με βάση τα παραπάνω, επιχειρείται να παρουσιαστεί το κρίσιμο
ενδεχόμενο της δημιουργία τόπων.

Abstract: A new and bold architectural movement, New Brutalism gained momentum in the 1950s across the world. At the same time, in Bulgaria in the wake of the April Plenum of 1956, architecture was let free to protest against the imposed until then Communist party line of nationally reframed socialist realism. This paper would try and show as to whether architecture in this country really felt free to experiment with forms and models so that to achieve the visual and ideological aesthetics of English Brutalists or Japanese metabolists. To provide evidence, some of the works of architect Stefka Georgieva would
be dealt with. She was a government’s architect, who, however, designed buildings in a distinctively “pro-western” manner with increasingly formal, ironic and unceremonious citing of Bulgarian building tradition. And though her buildings have been interpreted either as an ingenious reading of this tradition or branded as formalism for the formalism’s sake, they are now the most vivid example of the universal architectural language, used by architects of the second half of the twentieth century.

"This essay initiates a new approach to the architectural interpretation of chōra by considering the pre-philosophical meanings of chōra, as an inhabited “region” or “land,” and by drawing attention to certain situationally transformative scenes from Athenian drama in which chōra appears in the script. Through this approach, I intend to reveal the relatively ordinary meanings of chōra from the time just before Plato recast it, in Timaeus, as a highly enigmatic entity fundamental to cosmological formation and human making. Unfortunately, Jacques Derrida, whose philosophy of deconstruction influenced architectural theory in the 1980’s and 90’s, generally ignored and even dismissed the “ordinary” meanings and contexts of chōra, in favor of its more abstract “paradoxes and aporias.”  This essay counters that tendency with a hermeneutic approach. By taking a fresh look at primary sources, I aim to recover an understanding of the common yet complex world in which chōra originally came into being as a philosophically and architecturally suggestive concept. I believe this approach can help us to recognize not only where Plato’s notion of chōra was coming from, but also how chōra may remain relevant for present-day architects striving, amid politically and ecologically vexed circumstances, to engage and engender meaningful change."

Critical regionalism is a way of approaching architecture that tries to counter the lack of place identity in modern architecture, by using the geographical, historical and cultural context in the building conception. Until the 19th century, the necessities for defense and infrastructure, had guaranteed the traditional urban tissue density and contiguity. In this context, a closer look at the modern urban planning and architecture shows off that the contemporary city tends to dissolve under the pressure generated by the modern architecture object attachment.

Beginning with the 80’s, the importance of architecture temporal and social dimensions awareness was developed. Time has demonstrated that the modern architecture pragmatic approach may lead to the emergence of simplistic spaces, without personality.
According to the phenomenological understanding, the place, together with the building which stands on it, has to be an essentiality of the structure of nature, the celebration of the place specific qualities being a fundamental way in approaching the architecture project. Christian Norberg-Schulz refers to phenomenology as a method that calls to a (re)turn towards the essence of things, a fact opposed to the abstract space, reintroducing the idea of genius loci, which means the spirit of a certain place, with his distinct particularities. Alberto Perez-Gomez suggests the extension of architecture phenomenological understanding also in the sense of a cultural identification and connection with the history.

Although, lately, the interest for phenomenology seems to scatter, architect Peter Zumthor is described as a practitioner in the architecture phenomenology, because his interpretation of genius loci appears like a guide for his projects. From Zumthor point of view, the presence of buildings in a certain place it is natural when they simply appear like always being there, and when the place cannot be imagine without them. He is also saying that any new architecture work occurs in a specific historic context, therefore it is essential that the new building to assume the place qualities and to enter in a dialogue of meaning with the existing situation.

Peter Zumthor works now at the rehabilitation and the functional conversion of “De Meelfabriek”, an old industrial building complex in Leiden, Netherlands, in which the relation between old and new it is a very important theme. The project aims to infuse a new life to the area, introducing contemporary functions in the old buildings interiors, while the industrial heritage is preserved. In this way, the old factory will became an attractive place, but the physical integrity and the distinct quality atmosphere of the old industrial area will be kept and valorized.

Keywords: modernism, regionalism, context, phenomenology, memory, history.

In the early 1980s, Kenneth Frampton encompassed Alexander Tzonis & Liane Lefaivre’s theorisations of critical regionalism in his attempt to address the crisis of modern architecture. Tzonis & Lefaivre had originally constructed critical regionalism around the architecture of Suzana & Dimitris Antonakakis. The two theorists traced a regional genealogy that combined Aris Konstantinidis’s “rationalist grids” with Dimitris Pikionis’s “topographically sensitive pathways” to inform the work of the Greek architectural couple. However, it was an outward-looking transcultural genealogy that historically sustained the two Antonakakis’ critical regionalism. Focusing on their architectural education at the National Technical University of Athens in the late 1950s, this paper draws out the elements that conditioned the Greek architects’ specific understanding of the regional in relation to the modern. While their strong biographical connection with Pikionis sustained his influence on their work, Konstantinidis’s impact on their architectural outlook was limited. Apart from Pikionis’s teaching, the conducive factors to their architectural formation lay in the theoretical lessons from Panayotis Michelis, the drawing and painting classes of Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, as well as the teaching of the former disciple of Mies van der Rohe, Α. James Speyer. These cosmopolitan mentors enabled the two Antonakakis to rethink the regional in terms of the modern, in the way that rendered their work significant in the critical regionalist framework. The transcultural genealogy proposed here is therefore aligned both with the programmatic aims and principles of critical regionalism, and the two architects' historical formation.

The 'Art-Architecture Complex' by the art historian Hal Foster argues that the global styles of contemporary high architecture offer inauthentic
spectacle in place of visceral experience. Thomas Wensing meets him to ask what went wrong, and what architecture can learn from art.

Architecture in Context: Designing in the Middle East provides a foundation for understanding the critical context of architecture and design in this region. It does this by:

    1. presenting a practical overview of architectural know-how in the Middle East, and its potential for cultivating a sense of place
    2. introducing local architectural vocabularies and styles, and how they can still be reactivated in contemporary design
    3. exploring the cultural and contextual meaning of forms as references that may influence contemporary architecture
    4. discussing important discourses and trends in architecture that allow a rethinking of the current global/local dichotomy.

Highly illustrated, the book covers architecture and design in North Africa, the Levant, the Gulf, and Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.192

While the 1980 Venice Biennale is usually understood as the exhibition that crystallised postmodernism as a style of historicist eclecticism, the event also acted as a catalyst for the eventual convergence of alternative architectural sensibilities and ideas. This article shows how critical regionalism emerged when the physical and intellectual trajectories of British historian Kenneth Frampton and the Greek architects Suzana Antonakaki and Dimitris Antonakakis intersected in the aftermath of the Biennale. Offering an alternative way out of the contemporaneous crisis of modernism, this open-ended and extrovert regionalism that opposed static cultural insularities is thus the discursive footprint of architectural sensibilities travelling through cultures.

Davno uočena ovisnost dubrovačke međuratne arhitekture o graditeljskom nasljeđu razmatra se u svjetlu recentnijih znanstvenih nastojanja dekonstrukcije ustaljenih narativa o genezi moderne arhitekture koji su uglavnom zaobilazili ili umanjivali značaj pokušaja prilagodbe pokreta regionalnim posebnostima. Brojna teorijska promišljanja i rasprave o odnosu moderne arhitekture prema tradiciji vođene u međuratnoj Italiji nužno nameću usporedbu sa situacijom na istočnoj obali Jadrana. Naposljetku, na nekoliko primjera nastoji se upozoriti na različite pristupe i razine na kojima su arhitekti djelatni u Dubrovniku tijekom međuraća pokušali ostvariti vezu između suvremenih arhitektonskih tendencija i graditeljskog nasljeđa te upozoriti na važnost dubljeg istraživanja spomenutog odnosa.
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L’ARCHITETTURA A DUBROVNIK TRA LE DUE GUERRE E LA TRADIZIONE MEDITERRANEA
La maggioranza delle architetture importanti costruite tra le due guerre a Dubrovnik sono caratterizzate dai riferimenti alla tradizione. Anche se questo fenomeno  stato individuato da tempo, mancano ancora le indagini approfondite e una sua contestualizzazione a livello europeo. La ragione di questa mancanza sta soprattutto negli assiomi generalmente accettati sulla genesi dell’architettura moderna che, accentuando il suo carattere internazionale, evitano o diminuiscono l’importanza degli sforzi di avvicinare i principi del movimento moderno alle specificita` regionali.
I tentativi della decostruzione di tali narrazioni storiografiche affermate, con una visione che comprende una situazione molto piu` complessa ed eterogenea, caratterizzano gli ultimi decenni della storiografia europea. In particolare, si propone di comparare la situazione artistica tra le due guerre in Italia nel complesso delle controversie e dei disaccordi intellettuali, finalmente liberati dalle qualifiche ideologiche superficiali, con la situazione ragusea contemporanea