The Paradox of Time
What I appreciate about Frampton's Critical Regionalism is the balanced and rational approach to architectural design that is in response to the growing "placelessness" of our built environment. On the one hand, we have a growing modernist approach to architecture that has created an ambiguous universalism that is lacking in connection to time and place. The other side of this paradoxical problem is the sentimentality and historicism of vernacular regionalism that ultimately fails to succeed in a modern society. Instead, critical regionalism is in constant evaluation of both the past and the future to determine the rational response to the specific time and place of the site. I agree with Frampton in that it’s crucial to consider first the setting and site of the building, while also being flexible enough to design architecture that responds to the changes of its place and time. It’s not enough to think only about the present, but about the past and future, too. How does the design consider its past context? How will it respond to the landscape in the future? This idea of critical regionalism brings me back to our previous discussion of adaptive architecture and how we even define adaptive in this sense. Is the goal to create architecture that is temporary so that it can become something else when the time calls for it? While I understand that adaptive architecture is an attempt to answer this problem of changing time and place, I do wonder how much of this adaptive architecture is simply a restoration of historic buildings rather than a truly malleable design that continues to respond to the constant change of time and place.
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| Charleston Cigar Factory |
It is an interesting paradox to consider... we have such fondness for the architecture of the past. How do we creating something that resonates with people without simply mimicking the past. In the way of adaptive architecture, I do think that the permanence in which buildings such as the cigar factory was built has allowed it to become a beautiful modern space. No one knew that it would become the Clemson center of design as well as all of the other programs the cigar factory houses when they built it as a cigar factory. They did however build it to last forever. I don't think we have the pride or the patience to build things to last the way they once did. I don't know why because we have advanced so far technologically but perhaps removing craftmanship was detrimental to the sense of pride or permanence. In this fast-paced world we may be more focused on the next project opposed to the present task at hand.
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