EAST(Regionalism)WEST

Geographically, the United States is the west of the Western Europe which is what commonly known as "the West".

Looking back at the history of the U.S., it is a group of people from "the West" that decided to leave the "Old Country" behind "in pursuit of happiness and liberty". But nowadays that U.S. is generally lumped in with the Western Europe Canada and Australia as the West.

I guess I should talk about Architecture within the context of different cultural background.

 

“The next round of East-West tension will be fought over this question: weather democracy promotes or erodes social stability; whether free speech is worth the cultural trash it also produces; whether the health of a collective matters more than the unfettered freedom of the individual. To the West this authoritarianism seems a temporary aberration, a deviation from the norm; but it is more likely that a new norm; but it is more likely that a new norm is being synthesized in Singapore: a hard-core Confucian shamelessness, a kind of ultimate power of efficiency that will fuel Asian modernization. “The American view that out of contention, out of the clash of ideas and ideals, you get good government and a healthy economy that view is not shared in Asia.” Singapore has developed its own way. “The tenacious vitality of Confucianism lies in its combination of the dross of feudalism and the cream of democracy.””

 

-----S,M,L,XL Rem Koolhaas

 

Same things can be said about Japan and S. Korea. So how does this influence the way spaces are viewed differently in the West VS the East.

The line between what is public and private is extremely clear in the West as common signs like "PRIVATE PROPERTY" or "NO TRESPASSING" can be seen in the common suburban neighborhood. Whereas in the East there is no such a thing called "Personal Space" while one in the public, especially being on a public transport.

 

A pragmatic view of maximizing the use of spaces borne the street vendors in the East which stands in contrast with a more organized shops and arcades, law and orders.

The listed differences may go on, but what is coming toward us is a "flatter view" that is being pushed towards us in our day and age.

The newly finished Camperdown complex in downtown Greenville looks pretty much a repeat in any other neighborhood in the any other Eastern Asian cities from the plaza to the material selection, from the scale of the build to the program of the spaces.

 

Suzhou, China
Greenville, SC


 If Regionalism is not critical anymore, is Greenville still a Western city? 

Comments

  1. Hey Zach,

    What comes to mind when I read your work is the notion of the "Wild West". This usually refers to the American midwest and Cowboys but in this case, it makes me consider this notion of how American vernacular is essentially stolen and in its theft, the country's identity erodes. Another interesting thought about critical regionalism is that it is deeply connected to the age, maturity, and heritage of place. Large parts of America are young, rapidly developed and then populated. So there really its a regionalism to be critical of. There are, of course, settlements and cultures that inhabited places pre colonialism. Those cultures, in many cases, did not survived colonialism, and have been reduced to essentially nothing.

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