"it seems rather criticized"

In schools it is criticized rather heavilty by students and younger professors. I think they often see it as an outdated response to the more theoretical trends of the mid 70's. If I remember the discussions from then critical regionalism was always framed as a polemic between people like Eisenman, Venturi, Graves, and on the other side people like Alexander, Schulz, and Frampton. At the time I went to school being on the side of Eisenman and co. was always a more popular position.

Ya, worm have fun with that class. Seriously, theory was one of my favorite classes but the tests are killer. Lets go get some pie this week.

frels i am all about the pie

JG
we read an article by frampton for theory: i think this is the link if you are interested..

http://f1.pg.briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/brex@sbcglobal.net/lst?.dir=/Texts&.order=&.view=l&.src=bc&.done=http%3a//f1.pg.briefcase.yahoo.com/
(its down at the bottom)

the topic seems to delve into whether critical regionalism is contextual or whether it has been generalized overtime. for instance what is regional since people can buy/import/use etc. whatever materials they choose? also, what is context and is that tied into regionalism or is regionalism just something larger?

i have not come to a conclusion yet...any more thoughts?

It was much criticized in my classes too, but I agree with it, and was frustrated by all the negativity..

worm - frampton is trying to argue (among other things) that an architecture of true 'resistence' would have to be predicated upon an attention to local building culture. not appropriation and transplantation of culture, nor mimickry in any form. by absorbing the lessons of a particular culture, one can work through them (sort of inside out) to create new ways of building and thus create a more meaningful architecture. frampton is trying to resist the impacts of the global building practice whereby an eisenman building looks the same in new york as it does in berlin as it does in tokyo. also, he wants to counteract the kind of generalizing forces that you briefly noted above. what he wants to emphasize, in a broad sense, is the differences that have grown up through hundreds and thousands of years of building in a particular place (not so much as a time issue). he is also, through all this, committed to the notion of modernity, so he is attempting to give some weight and direction to the impulses of mass production and consumption within architectural production. he's much less of a style driven thinker, as i'm sure you picked up in the article.

now, can you argue that the genie is too far out of the bottle and what he's crusading for impossible to attain? sure, on many levels. but i think it's one of the few theoretical positions articulated within the last 30 years that makes any real sense and is sustainable on the larger level of the profession.

here's an example:

You go from Phoenix to Berkeley to study architecture. For studio class, they tell you to design a winery in Napa Valley. What the hell do you know about Napa Valley? In theory class they tell you about "Critical Regionalism", an idea that can be easily articulated and understood - but to pull it off without falling into any of the "negative" aspects takes a long time - maybe a lifetime, maybe more. So, if you are a bright student, you design a winery that looks like a long drive to a traffic jam.

here's a theory:

To prove it we'll need to discover what the average time spent in a place by theorists who go negative on Crit. Reg. is and compare that with . . ? Anyway, it goes like this: they like to pontificate about architecture, move around a lot, and never quite fit in.

Its only of the few "responses" that will survive

its the re-invention of culture or the re-telling of a story
Critical regionalism manages to exist in art (David Hockney), literature and media

its the localised re-telling of a BIG story if you will
think of the work of Steven Holl and it seems to be self descriptive
or the work of Corb in India - a masking of the whole with the fine understanding of the local norms


hmmm cr always makes me happy - I did an A - Z of critical regionalism once - I wonder if I can still remember it
A - is for Aalto
B - is for Barragan
C - is for Corb in India
D - is for...wait stuck now

here's an analogy:

Small ski resort in Colorado. (as architectural theory)

Ski Bums come from the city, hurl themselves at the mountain, blow knees, shoulders. Ski Bums grow up, burn out, go back to the city. Locals are ski bums who never left. They ski on powder days when the conditions are perfect. Otherwise are seldom seen. Each year, the new crop of Ski Bum Cannon Fodder is the population that drives the fads in the industry, not the locals.

Locals know best the mountain and how to slide down it.

Ski Bum Cannon Fodder promote innovation of equipment, and provide the enthusiasm, labor, and capital the mountain needs to stay open.

I guess in this analogy, both have complementary rather than opposing values - so weighing one against the other is not the most appropriate method of analysis.

That said, ski bums are a bunch of spoiled debutante punks! Just like architects!

Never been to Napa Valley, could it be that the architectur there is Psuedo Italien?

So in the U.S., wouldn't you want to explore the possibilty of a foundation or ultimate source of this apparent regionalism before reeling in the contextual debate. Otherwise what is regional, teepees and totem poles, Pennsylvania Dutch Barns, Hippie Hollow tree houses... And who is to say what is regional if you have two or more traits (say a combination of African American, French, Dutch, Italien, Russian, Indian immigrant influences), who wins and what are the rest of the influences to do?

Dazed and Confused
10/05/04 9:49

What if the architect is a ski bum?
Does the dubutante punk cancel out - or is it mgnified exponentially?

gustav: critical reg is not style driven- it's dependent of materials and technique. i would argue that you can allow for immigration influences as long as there is an adaptation to local weather, traditions.

dazed and confused: to perpetuate your analogy, peter zumthor, an example of critical regionalism, is said to love skiing. have no idea if he huddles in a hut waiting for perfect snow though.

other examples of critical regionalism: renzo piano [not 100% but most of the time], alvaro siza, glenn murcutt.

What is the difference between traditions and immigration influences. It would seem that technique is universal (within the developed countries). So what's the difference in the weather: dogtrots in the southern U.S., Swiss chalet roofs in the Rocky Mountains, large overhangs for outdoor living areas in the Pacific Northwest. Does that all sound so very functional but sweetened with regional construction materials. There has got to be something more to it than this. Otherwise, boring!

Norm....like me. Moved to a ski town to practice Architecture.

But seriously I find that the critical regionalism thing has defined some really great work and you actually appreciate it more when you can celebrate the uniqueness of place. Locally I find that both the recent work of the Patkaus and past work of Arthur Erickson contributed to defining an architecture that was contemporay for its day and made one respect the circumstance of the pacific northwest with a typically canadian politeness for site.


I found in school that the discussions tended to dwell on vernacular which was in my opinion completely off base.

RN:
Is that herz or hertz.

whistler...
no - like me.

while i would call 'dwelling on vernacular architecture' misguided and unfortunate, i wouldn't call it completely off base. many things can and have been learned about the uniqueness of a place and its expression in architecture through the study of the vernacular. it's when regionalism isn't critical (looking to push past a vernacular understanding) that it fails and this isn't really a critical regionalism...

"There has got to be something more to it than this" . . . There is: scale. It means almost everything.

LARGE _ _ _ At a certain size of project, the architect's duties are limited to "exterior decorating" - snowball's chance in hell of a non-rhetorical response - snowball's chance of critical regionalism.

small _ _ _ At a the other end, a response in form to context and environment becomes much more important to the success of the project than a response in style. Especially with housing, a tendency to get caught up in style is missing the point of critical regionalism.

I still don't undertand, what is Critical Regionalism and it's relationship to Regionalism. Most of what has been said sounds like what most good architects have tried to do for many years. If it's not Critical Regionalism then what is it?

gustav - have you read any of frampton's work firsthand? just curious.
to quote from the source himself (and in an attempt to answer your question):

' architecture can only be sustained today as a critical practice if it assumes and arriere-garde position, that is to say, one which distances itself equally from the enlightenment myth of progress and from a reactionary, unrealistic impluse to return to the architectonic forms of the preindustrial past. a critical arriere-garde has to remove itself from both the opimization of advanced technology and the ever-present tendancy to regress into nostalgic historicism or the glibly decorative. it is my contention that only and arriere garde has the capacity to cultivate a resistant, identity-giving culture while at the same time having discreet recourse to universal technique.'

critical regionalism is different than regionalism in that does not seek to submit blindly to building techniques, but to instead use technique as a means of liberating architecture from image and propel it towards experience. regionalism seeks to replicate, more directly, the image nature of a particular locale.

g-love:
I have not read Frampton.
My questions are:
*What does "arriere garde" mean? I'm writting English here. Does one have to use French (assuming) to prop up ones concepts?
*What is the difference between nostalgic historicism and image nature of a particular locale"
*What exactly do you and Frampton mean by technique. Is it simply construction process or something more?
*Why must culture be resistant?
*Why must culture provide identity. Is it possible that a culture providing identity could be counter to the importance of one's own (above important) experience. Are we talking individual experience or regional (group) experience and why one over the other?
*What is the difference between glibly decorative and "convincingly" decorative?
*Why must architecture be liberated from image. By idicting image, what is the victim.
*How does one know the image nature of a particular locale? Is it possible to have more than one image nature and then which one to pick?
*And isn't experience a very tenuous concept. What about the experience of experince? Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as experience.
*How does this process step aside from the enlightenment myth of progress. Will this be like Post Modernism: Flash-Gone.

Like any form of architectural theory, critical regionalism is limited to as system of description of a type of architectural practice. The extension of the domain contained in the words "critical regionalism" is really up to the one that uses it. A book came out last year here in France, "architecture du reel" (architecture of the real), which is a good example of a sampling of project by differnet architects, put together in a book but not really related, that could be described as a "critical regionalism" book only if you decide that's what describes best this kind of architecture. The writer/critic that published it prefers to call it "architecture of the real". It's really up to you.
Anyway, check this book if you can it's pretty interesting and it gives a good sampling of a new architecture scene in europe.

gustav - good questions. i literally don't have time to do the answers justice right now, but will try to get to them later today.

some quick answers: 'arriere garde' literally translates as rear guard. my best understanding of the term is that it refers to a kind of counter-culture-as-practice (let's say opposed to the avant guard). i don't think frampton is as conceited as your comment suggests; it's simply a term that doesn't have a precise english translation.

#2 - not a lot of difference, to me anyways, between the two, except that a nostalgic historicism may not necessarily be tied to a particular location (think palladio in hong kong for example).

#3 - construction technique is something more. read the article.

#4-5- cultural resistance will have to be addressed later. (too involved)

#6 - like most things, it's a matter of intention, representation, and execution.
#7 - not sure there is a 'victim' more than a set of priorities. the type of 'image' that i understand frampton to be referring to is the 'sign' quality of an object (remember that this was written at the height of eisenman's semiotics driven influence) versus it's capacity for providing a (subjectively granted) complex spatial experience.
#8 - not sure exactly what you're asking - i didn't imply that one would simply pick from an available set of conditions. frampton, again in the article, talks a little about architects deriving inspiration from a particular location - the topography, materials, perhaps a detail - but that there is a required transformation of this stimuli to give it an authenticity for the time it was built.
#9 - experience is always subjective. how high we set the bar for what constitutes a great experience will determine the quality of what we ultimately settle for when we build.
#10 - too long and complicated an answer. again, read the article to get some better idea of frampton's position. i don't think the concepts frampton is articulating are tied to stylistic whims and there will always be architects drawn to that lineage. if you're asking will it dominate the media as fad of the month, i don't think that will happen either. it's been around as an undercurrent of modernism since day one. whether the architects who worked from similar principles have always gotten the same hype or recognition as others, well, who cares?

g-love:
OK, I'll try to get the article. From what I've read here it seems overly personal/subjective. In other words, "a very leaky boat in a very small pond". Oh well, it's my ignorance.

i agree with g-love further up. critical regionalism, in spite of its flaws, seems conceptually consistent, and professionally practicable. from my reading, frampton is a sensible theorist, if a dry historian.

the major difficulty i have with theories of the critical regionalist bent is that they pretend to welcome difference, while in fact reinforcing a universalist position. frampton's regionalism is 'critical' in so far as it attempts to address modernism's monocultural tendencies. instead it looks to locality as a source of 'inflection', a kind of esperanto spoken with an accent. It seems to me that it may in fact be a way for essentially conservative architects to salve their consciences.

gustav, your first question was quite valid. critical regionalism assumes more than just a steep roof for snow, or small windows in hot dry climates. what it attempts is to constitute 'a' local: in historical and cultural terms as well as climatic. What it fails to take account of is the inbetween (which may even be where most of us are) - immigrants, colonialism, etc. How long does an immigrant group have to hold out against the existing 'local' before it can be considered to have become a local condition itself (pennsylvania deutsch)? I am extremely uneasy, because I think critical regionalism is closely tied to nationalism, which seems to be increasingly fashionable as memories of the early twentieth-century fade.

i certainly don't want to deny that architects operating explicitly in a regionalist manner haven't produced immensely subtle, beautiful pieces of architecture: utzon (bagsvaerd church), zumthor (baths), aalto, murcutt as well as others mentioned.

A lot of really lame, conservative work also gets justified as being 'regionalist, too.

- gustav

go to your nearest bookstore/library and buy - 'modern architecture, a critical history'

read chapter 5, or go wild and read the whole thing.

then ask a million questions.

until you read source text, your questions are just going to be picking apart the answers of people who are just trying to help. your curiousity is great, but you can't expect people to summarily explain it for you - most theory is oriented towards close/repeated readings. after you read frampton first hand hopefully you will realize that critical regionalism is a very maleable idea with a ton of inherent power. to me, it was one of the few theoretical strains that did not seem dated upon publication or built realization, but simply an optisimitic and extremely self aware set of ideas for building in what has become a global environment.

Look this idea that critical regionalism can be "applied" is problematic. Frampton's argument is based upon the typical hero worship applied to architectural history. Rather than cast the bright lights of appreciation on just the moderist masters he looks to those who he sees dealing with an architecture that is responsive to local conditions but is careful to address construction issues of tectonics on a more global scale. Therefor the Utzon church project as an example offers an approach. Utzon takes local construction methods and a local formal language and uses his personal design ideology to create a spatial gesumptkunstwerk. And this is the important part for Frampton. That critical regionalism is about _place_ making in the same sense that heidigger discusses it.

over and out.

Hi all, I realize this discussion was dated back to 2004... just wondering if your still there for a chat?

Hi all, I realize this discussion was dated back to 2004... just wondering if your still there for a chat?