“TOWARDS A CRITICAL REGIONALISM”

Kenneth Frampton
From Anti-Aesthetic, Hal Foster, ed.

3. Critical Regionalism and World Culture

Architecture can only be sustained today as a critical practice if it assumes an arriére-

garde 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 the
preindustrial 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 is necessary 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 more universal 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 brought to 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 elements derived 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 self-
consciousness. 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.
But it is necessary, as I have already suggested, to distinguish between Critical
Regionalism and simple-minded attempts to revive the hypothetical forms of a lost vernacular. In
contradistinction to Critical Regionalism, the primary vehicle of Populism is the communicative
or instrumental sign. Such a sign seeks to evoke not a critical perception of reality, but rather the

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sublimation of a desire for direct experience through the provision of information. . . . [T]he
strong affinity of Populism for the rhetorical techniques and imagery of advertising is hardly
accidental. Unless one guards against such a convergence, one will confuse the resistant capacity
of a critical practice with the demagogic tendencies of Populism.
The case can be made that 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
place, it has to achieve, through synthetic contradiction, a manifest critique of universal
civilization. To deconstruct world culture is to remove oneself from that eclecticism of the fin de
siecle which appropriated alien, exotic forms in order to revitalize the expressivity of an
enervated society. (One thinks of the "form-force" aesthetics of Henri van de Velde or the
"whiplash-Arabesques" of Victor Horta.) On the other hand, the mediation of universal technique
involves imposing limits on the optimization of industrial and postindustrial technology. . . .
[T]he Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck wrote: "Western civilization habitually identifies itself
with civilization as such on the pontificial assumption that what is not like it is a deviation, less
advanced, primitive, or, at best, exotically interesting at a safe distance."
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 of Restriction 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 the late Twenties and Thirties modern
European ideas met a still-developing regionalism. In New England, on the other
hand, European Modernism met a rigid and restrictive regionalism that at first
resisted and then surrendered. New England accepted European Modernism
whole because its own regionalism had been reduced to a collection of
restrictions.

...

4. The Resistance of the Place-Form

The Megalopolis recognized as such in 1961 by the geographer Jean Gottman continues
to proliferate throughout the developed world to such an extent that, with the exception of cities
which were laid in place before the turn of the century, we are no longer able to maintain defined
urban forms. The last quarter of a century has seen the so-called field of urban design degenerate
into a theoretical subject whose discourse bears little relation to the processal realities of modern
development. Today even the supemanagerial discipline of urban planning has entered into a
state of crisis. . . .
In his essay of 1954, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking," Martin Heidegger provides us with
a critical vantage point from which to behold this phenomenon of universal placelessness.
Against the Latin or, rather, the antique abstract concept of space as a more or less endless

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continuum of evenly subdivided spatial components or integers – what he terms spatium and
extensio – Heidegger opposes the German word for space (or, rather, place), which is the term
Raum. Heidegger argues that the phenomenological essence of such a space/place depends upon
the concrete, clearly defined nature of its boundary, for, as he puts it, "A boundary is not that at
which something stops, but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which
something begins its presencing.” . . . Heidegger goes on to state that the condition of "dwelling"
and hence ultimately of "being" can only take place in a domain that is clearly bounded.
. . . [W]e are, when confronted with the ubiquitous placelessness of our modern
environment, nonetheless brought to posit, after Heidegger, the absolute precondition of a
bounded domain in order to create an architecture of resistence. Only such a defined boundary
will permit the built form to stand against – and hence literally to withstand in an institutional
sense – the endless processal flux of the Megalopolis.
The bounded place-form, in its public mode, is also essential to what Hannah Arendt has
termed "the space of human appearance," since the evolution of legitimate power has always
been predicated upon the existence of the "polis" and upon comparable units of institutional and
physical form. While the political life of the Greek polis did not stem directly from the physical
presence and representation of the city-state, it displayed in contrast to the Megalopolis the
cantonal attributes of urban density. Thus Arendt writes in The Human Condition:

The only indispensable material factor in the generation of power is the

living together of people. Only where men live so close together that the
potentialities for action are always present will power remain with them
and the foundation of cities, which as city states have remained
paradigmatic for all Western political organization, is therefore the most
important material prerequisite for power.

Nothing could be more removed from the political essence of the citystate than the
rationalizations of positivistic urban planners such as Melvin Webber, whose ideological
concepts of community without propinquity and the non-place urban realm are nothing if not
slogans devised to rationalize the absence of any true public realm in the modern motopia. The
manipulative bias of such ideologies has never been more openly expressed than in Robert
Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) wherein the author asserts that
Americans do not need piazzas, since they should be at home watching television. Such
reactionary attitudes emphasize the impotence of an urbanized populace which has paradoxically
lost the object of its urbanization.
While the strategy of Critical Regionalism as outlined above addresses itself mainly to
the maintenance of an expressive density and resonance in an architecture of resistance (a
cultural density which under today's conditions could be said to be potentially liberative in and of
itself since it opens the user to manifold experiences), the provision of a place-form is equally
essential to critical practice, inasmuch as a resistant architecture, in an institutional sense, is
necessarily dependent on a clearly defined domain. Perhaps the most generic example of such an
urban form is the perimeter block, although other related, introspective types may be evoked,
such as the galleria, the atrium, the forecourt and the labyrinth. And while these types have in
many instances today simply become the vehicles for accommodating pseudo-public realms (one
thinks of recent megastructures in housing, hotels, shopping centers, etc.), one cannot even in
these instances entirely discount the latent political and resistant potential of the place-form.

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 5. Culture Versus Nature: Topography, Context,
Climate, Light and Tectonic Form

Critical Regionalism necessarily involves a more directly dialectical relation with nature
than the more abstract, formal traditions of modern avant-garde architecture allow. It is self-
evident that the tabula rasa tendency of modernization favors the optimum use of earth-moving
equipment inasmuch as a totally flat datum is regarded as the most economic matrix upon which
to predicate the rationalization of construction. Here again, one touches in concrete terms this
fundamental opposition between universal civilization and autochthonous culture. The
bulldozing of an irregular topography into a flat site is clearly a technocratic gesture which
aspires to a condition of absolute placelessness, whereas the terracing of the same site to receive
the stepped form of a building is an engagement in the act of "cultivating" the site.
Clearly such a mode of beholding and acting brings one close once again to Heidegger's
etymology; at the same time, it evokes the method alluded to by the Swiss architect Mario Botta
as "building the site." It is possible to argue that in this last instance the specific culture of the
region – that is to say, its history in both a geological and agricultural sense – becomes inscribed
into the form and realization of the work. This inscription, which arises out of "in-laying" the
building into the site, has many levels of significance, for it has a capacity to embody, in built
form, the prehistory of the place, its archeological past and its subsequent cultivation and
transformation across time. Through this layering into the site the idiosyncrasies of place find
their expression without falling into sentimentality.
What is evident in the case of topography applies to a similar degree in the case of an
existing urban fabric, and the same can be claimed for the contingencies of climate and the
temporally inflected qualities of local light. Once again, the sensitive modulation and
incorporation of such factors must almost by definition be fundamentally opposed to the
optimum use of universal technique. This is perhaps most clear in the case of light and climate
control. The generic window is obviously the most delicate point at which these two natural
forces impinge upon the outer membrane of the building, fenestration having an innate capacity
to inscribe architecture with the character of a region and hence to express the place in which the
work is situated.
Until recently, the received precepts of modern curatorial practice favored the exclusive
use of artificial light in all art galleries. It has perhaps been insufficiently recognized how this
encapsulation tends to reduce the artwork to a commodity, since such an environment must
conspire to render the work placeless. This is because the local light spectrum is never permitted
to play across its surface: here, then, we see how the loss of aura, attributed by Walter Benjamin
to the processes of mechanical reproduction, also arises from a relatively static application of
universal technology. The converse of this "placeless" practice would be to provide that art
galleries be top-lit through carefully contrived monitors so that, while the injurious effects of
direct sunlight are avoided, the ambient light of the exhibition volume changes under the impact
of time, season, humidity, etc. Such conditions guarantee the appearance of a place-conscious
poetic – a form of filtration compounded out of an interaction between culture and nature,
between art and light. Clearly this principle applies to all fenestration, irrespective of size and
location. A constant "regional inflection" of the form arises directly from the fact that in certain
climates the glazed aperture is advanced, while in others it is recessed behind the masonry facade
(or, alternatively, shielded by adjustable sun breakers).

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 The way in which such openings provide for appropriate ventilation also constitutes an
unsentimental element reflecting the nature of local culture. Here, clearly, the main antagonist of
rooted culture is the ubiquitous airconditioner, applied in all times and in all places, irrespective
of the local climatic conditions which have a capacity to express the specific place and the
seasonal variations of its climate. Wherever they occur, the fixed window and the remote-
controlled air-conditioning system are mutually indicative of domination by universal technique.
Despite the critical importance of topography and light, the primary principle of
architectural autonomy resides in the tectonic rather than the scenographic: that is to say, this
autonomy is embodied in the revealed ligaments of the construction and in the way in which the
syntactical form of the structure explicitly -resists the action of gravity. It is obvious that this
discourse of the load borne (the beam) and the load-bearing (the column) cannot be brought into
being where the structure is masked or otherwise concealed. On the other hand, the tectonic is
not to be confused with the purely technical, for it is more than the simple revelation of
stereotomy or the expression of skeletal framework. Its essence . . . was perhaps best
summarized by the architectural historian Stanford Anderson when he wrote:

"Tektonik" referred not just to the activity of making the materially

requisite construction. . . but rather to the activity that raises this
construction to an art form. . . . The functionally adequate form must be
adapted so as to give expression to its function. The sense of bearing
provided by the entasis of Greek columns became the touchstone of this
concept of Tektonik.

The tectonic remains to us today as a potential means for distilling play between material,
craftwork and gravity, so as to yield a component which is in fact a condensation of the entire
structure. We may speak here of the presentation of a structural poetic rather than the re-
presentation of a facade.

6. The Visual Versus the Tactile

The tactile resilience of the place-form and the capacity of the body to read the
environment in terms other than those of sight alone suggest a potential strategy for resisting the
domination of universal technology. It is symptomatic of the priority given to sight that we find
it necessary to remind ourselves that the tactile is an important dimension in the perception of
built form. One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptions which are
registered by the labile body: the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of
humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses its
own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait and the relative inertia of the body as it
traverses the floor; the echoing resonance of our own footfall. Luchino Visconti was well aware
of these factors when making the film The Damned, for he insisted that the main set of the
Altona mansion should be paved in real wooden parquet. It was his belief that without a solid
floor underfoot the actors would be incapable of assuming appropriate and convincing postures.
A similar tactile sensitivity is evident in the finishing of the public circulation in Alvar
Aalto's Saynatsalo Town Hall of 1952. The main route leading to the second-floor council
chamber is ultimately orchestrated in terms which are as much tactile as they are visual. Not only
is the principal access stair lined in raked brickwork, but the treads and risers are also finished in

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brick. The kinetic impetus of the body in climbing the stair is thus checked by the friction of the
steps, which are "read" soon after in contrast to the timber floor of the council chamber itself.
This chamber asserts its honorific status through sound, smell and texture, not to mention the
springy deflection of the floor underfoot (and a noticeable tendency to lose one's balance on its
polished surface). From this example it is clear that the liberative importance of the tactile
resides in the fact that it can only be decoded in terms of experience itself: it cannot be reduced
to mere information, to representation or to the simple evocation of a simulacrum substituting for
absent presences.

In this way, Critical Regionalism seeks to complement our normative visual experience
by readdressing the tactile range of human perceptions. In so doing, it endeavors to balance the
priority accorded to the image and to counter the Western tendency to interpret the environment
in exclusively perspectival terms. According to its etymology, perspective means rationalized
sight or clear seeing, and as such it presupposes a conscious suppression of the senses of smell,
hearing and taste, and a consequent distancing from a more direct experience of the environment.
This self-imposed limitation relates to that which Heidegger has called a "loss of nearness." In
attempting to counter this loss, the tactile opposes itself to the scenographic and the drawing of
veils over the surface of reality. Its capacity to arouse the impulse to touch returns the architect to
the poetics of construction and to the erection of works in which the tectonic value of each
component depends upon the density of its objecthood. The tactile and the tectonic jointly have
the capacity to transcend the mere appearance of the technical in much the same way as the
place-form has the potential to withstand the relentless onslaught of global modernization.

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