How?
This week's readings and presentations revolving around the topic of Critical Regionalism really stand out to me for their contemporary applications. What spoke to me was how different the architectural responses of each project were in comparison to the work of their globalized contemporaries.
Projects from the typical starchitects, by design, typically do not fit with what everyone's used to seeing and living in. Frampton advocates for a focused approach to an architectural practice, where the familiar is intertwined with the globalized to help deliver a solution of the time, for long-standing problems. Frampton, Tzonis, and Lefaivre do not claim to be the founders of regionalism or try to garner attention for something new they've discovered, but instead, they spin this moment in history as the next installment of an oft repeated response to larger forces.
"From its earliest manifestation regionalism has expressed aspirations of liberation from the brute force of an a priori typology imposed by a power perceived as foreign and illegitimate." - Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre on Critical Regionalism
This week's themes - and hopefully the second chapter next week - leave us with a question on how we want to practice as designers: where we're following these big ol' global trends, or hunkering down and trying to focus in on what's going on around us at arm's reach.
First off, love the image. Second, I really think its important to think how we want to practice as designers, but more importantly how we envision this country in the future. Which, seems really forking bleak right now. But I think we need people who will look at the big picture and people who will look at the small picture. We could probably use global trends to keep the economy going, but if we don't focus on the smaller communities, no one will be happy. Personally, I like getting into the small communities and focusing on projects in one region, but it's good that others want to influence multiple areas in ways that are (hopefully) successful to these communities. Like starchitects.
ReplyDeleteHilarious pic. This is a great point. It's tough to anticipate what is timeless and what is not. I feel like we are all bound to trends in some capacity. I think a lot of critical regionalism is centered around this relationship with the local in ways that answer questions about human nature rather than a particular solution or aesthetic. It feels like a better solution to "pure architecture" because it addresses the reality that we cannot escape context.
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