Scale.

1:1 More than just a detail

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1:100 One architect to one hundred citizens

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1;10,000 These are stories not streets

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1:10,000,000 Here, There, and North of Nowhere

What Scale is this? Where is your scale figure? How big is that ___________? At this point I have heard these questions an incomprehensible amount even as a young designer. The question that echos in my mind is what are we scaling and against what? global or regional what exactly? It could be a myriad of things according to Frampton; materials, forms, culture, proportions, people per unit area, building elements, etc... What drives the design? In many ways it is up to the architect and client to provide that answer, and again the architect acts as a filter for information. However, by responding in a "safe" manner to contextual clues, is the design missing something? Frampton in many ways proposes a balance of context clues to drive design, but if what about external forces? I believe that a respectful solution that balances Regional and Global influences is a much more rich way to design. Anytime an architect puts on blinders to something, design suffers.

  

Now the question that remains is how what is the physical scale of regional? How far do we have to look before we have "regionalized" enough? The word itself has an ambiguous meaning, and as a designer, seems to be left to us to define on our own terms. Is that truly regional or is it the region I happen to look at when I was designing the whatever? We as architects are suppose to understand scale the best, but at a point when we hit 1:1 (More than just a detail), are we scaling too much, why even scale it? When talking about a scale, you always have to define what you are scaling in comparison to what (1/8" = 1'-0") (Global Culture vs. Regional Culture), and once done, we can begin analysis. To me that is the greatest miss with critical regionalism, the ambiguity of the word itself, regional. It always seeks to be defined by those involved with the project which is beneficial, but can also be detrimental. It carries the risk of being completely missed by "non-regionalized" folk experiencing the design or in the design itself.

Z Scale. Heck Yeah 

I do not think global is defined either. I struggle to see a solution, but perhaps regionalism is more of a solid design tool rather than a full on driver. Regionalism + What?