Catching up Part 2: On what is local.
I think Frampton has more in common with Till than Till would admit. As Frampton writes, “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” (Frampton 21). Critical regionalism is there to help navigate the complicated waters that come about in a globalized world where local means less and less. Till to some degree confirms this and mentions that we exist in a “liquid modernity,” where we can’t distinguish local and global because they are inseparable. Critical regionalism is here to help negotiate this “liquid modernity.” In this negotiation, I think Frampton is correct in basing it on tectonics. More than just abstract form or ambiguous function, tectonics are where the human emerges in the built environment. I think as we constantly search for representations of ourselves in our constructed environments, nothing is more powerful or more local than seeing the work of the human hand.
One of the important paradigms that Till brings up is the importance of scalar thinking in this discussion. He gives a scalar example of the local to the global:
“1:1 More than just a detail
1:100 One architect to one hundred citizens
1;10,000 These are stories not streets
1:10,000,000 Here, There, and North of Nowhere”
This reminded me of last semester’s studio that had an emphasis on vernacular forms and as a part of this we were asked to do drawings at a 1:1 scale. As much as I hate to admit it, there was an intimacy in the construction and design that developed because of this. You could imagine something getting built by a carpenter, or the countless hours a worker would have to work to get a detail right. The human hand was inserted at this scale. And maybe because of this myopia, I quickly forget about the larger context that the project fit in. I think this tension of scale is something that we must become accustomed to.
Comments
Post a Comment