Regionalism

 The main topic of conversation this week was the concept of regionalism, architecture that is designed to fit within the regional context it inhabits through cultural, contextual, material, or other parameters. The idea of regionalism is pretty straightforward in moulding to the context but the execution of this idea is very difficult. This push and pull of new ideas is highlighted in “Towards a Critical Regionalism”’s part 3, specifically the arrière-gard position.  This position is a delicate one to manage. It may incorporate specific design aspects of the region, but it needs to avoid running back to this safety net for all of its answers. This reminds me a bit of “Made in Tokyo” and the on vs off discussion by Atelier Bow Wow and I think something like this can be utilized to avoid the pitfalls of replication of typologies. For example if the tectonics of a regional typology are used, then make sure the programmatic needs are satisfied in a better manner and the environmental considerations are new and more thought through. Design considerations are then thought through in the same regional manner, but us as designers are incorporating better design into this regional architecture to give way to better regional typologies. While not a completely flushed out idea, it would be interesting to see what is accepted by people as a new regional architecture vs what the profession would consider as a new one. I think the greater community would be less forgiving on something radical. I can’t recall the novel I read it in so I’m paraphrasing, but the author stated something along the lines of, deviate too far from the norm and the user won’t understand how it works. And while a new radical architecture may have no culture attached to it, the architecture may deviate so far outside of the daily cultural norm that it may feel foreign culturally.