You go, Glen Glocal

     When digesting what critical regionalism means to me, and how I apply this concept to the architecture that I relate most with, I find that it all comes down to how conscious design really is. To depend on maintaining a high level of criticism with a built environment allows for a beautiful relationship between the human and the building. What I mean by this is simply that when the architecture focuses most on how it can serve the body, it is at its strongest point of physical presence. Good architecture - to me - is when the massing and tectonics are specific for its intentions… also could be phrased as spaces that only make sense in the place that it resides. A good architect designs for this; they take the time to understand local character and gently fold in contemporary elements. Instead of commanding a copy/paste notion on what traditionally occurs in a place assuming that the mentality here is “what works well now will always work so let’s leave it how it is,” the better way to practice is to reinvent the working well to fit with a progressive time. Essentially the building methods could be expanded upon to better serve the people today, while the same methods - in a derivative of what would be applied now - better served people in the past.

    Continuing this theory that I find super interesting to think about, is how the global and local categorizations play into this. By taking this so-called successful wheel, and applying it at a global scale in hopes to universally breed successful architecture, there is a great level of possible monotony. Tedious repetition and the reuse of the same geometries, site considerations, fenestration and building orientations - to touch on some examples - allows for the loss of variety and cultural traditions. These traditions within a culture is what makes the local spaces the best local spaces, the main characteristic of defining one space to another. Using the Chicago wheel that works incredibly well for fast-paced walkers and aggressive drivers on four lane roads, and applying the same sidewalk configurations and infrastructure patterns to Clemson city would be a disaster. The southern charm and enjoyable pace of life in Clemson would be hit hard, and probably scare away all of the natives who love being here. 

Assuming your early teenage experiences were a lot like mine, watching Mean Girls on the weekends and quoting lines throughout the week until next Saturday night sleepover.. Critical regionalism is something that I can easily compare. In terms of Glen Coco and candy cane grams, the key understanding is who do you want to pass them to…

If the intellectual and optimized social conditions in architecture now become Glen Coco, then Gretchen Wieners is on the opposite end, a local who predominantly represents a site specific condition. The candy cane grams - individualized elements we use to design with - can be applied to wherever the architect sees fit. He is able to pass them all to Glen Coco (design for a singular place that is then arrayed across multiple local spaces), or he could pass one or two candy cane grams that would fit in various places but then selectively choose where any remaining types would best receive these said design strategies and elements. 

Interesting to merge these ideas, would be to introduce a third way to pass out candy cane grams. Jeremy Till, and I as I type this blog, am curious on this notion of a Glocal strategy. This commonplace term implies that it is quite possible to inevitably hybrid global and local applications of design into an uncritical one. In this case, a glocal system could be more effective than separating a universally optimized society with multiple successful smaller-scale local ones. If we were to pass all of our candy cane grams to Glen Glocal, would this really be the most effective? Thinking in terms of an effective regionalism as one that adapts local success without falling to the overpowered global ones, I’m not sure if a hybrid would do any better than creating instances of global-powered design and local-strong building environments.