Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance

This reading talks about rapid growth and development hindering the ability of people to design thoughtfully and meaningfully while also designing with our roots in mind. The rapid push for new technology and universalization has led to inorganic architecture. The author goes on to say that Postmodern architects are designing for commodity – creating aesthetically pleasing and technically attractive designs that don’t address significant architectural concerns or cultural context, which was a huge issue in modernism was ignoring culture. The author speaks on avant-gardism being a pivotal aspect of the modernism movement. Modernism is now acknowledged as not being “liberative,” so avant-gardism is not as well. They go on to say that “Architecture can only be sustained today as a critical practice if it assumes an arriere-garde position,” meaning that the professionals themselves need to be aware and avoid the pursuit of blind progress while also not going back to “architectonic forms of the preindustrial past.”  Critical regionalism is discussed, saying that it is something all architects must think of and requires “critical self-consciousness.” Then Heidegger, a German philosopher, is discussed where he explains place form and that true dwelling and “being” can only be done “in a domain that is clearly bounded.” Heidegger believes that only a built form can foster the people’s ability to withstand institutional ideals such as global modernization. In the last bit of the reading, the combination of being tactile and reading the environment is introduced as a possible solution to resisting the domination of technological advances.

Global Modernism and the Postcolonial.

In this reading, the authors discuss the historiography of modernism and how it currently tells a very straight and simple version of the truth and does not include all the actualities that occurred to produce modernism. It dives deeply into why this has happened, including detailing colonization, decolonization, and post-colonization, as well as how the story of modernism was shaped by many different regions contexts, not just by the West. It also explains why historiographers have chosen to tell modernism’s story from the West’s viewpoint, in that it is tough to untangle that historiography web while also maintaining the ability to communicate it to people clearly. The authors discuss how shaping the history of modernism around the West has also affected the West and put them in a state of being shaped by that definition of modernism, and it’s hard to leave that box. It also mentions that this way of defining modernism history gives institutions control and power over this defining time. Overall, explaining how modernism came to be is an incredibly difficult task, as it is not a simple, straightforward path but a web of events, people, and things that led it to be what it is. However, as challenging as it might be to untangle that web, it is the necessary job of the historiographers so that the reality of the modern story is told versus the easy-to-communicate version that leaves out vital influences.

The Israeli ‘Place’ in East Jerusalem

The author, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, explains the architectural background of Israel after the 1967 war. She dives into the Zionists and the Sabra, two groups who shaped Israel’s architecture and cultural and political environment. Zionist architects were designing modern buildings without considering the space’s context. Then the Sabra, a new generation of architects, felt that “‘international architecture’ left no room for ‘culture.'” This idea took off, and the deep dive into the recreation of Palestinian architecture began. They believed that only the architecture of the place could get Israelis to where they wanted to be, which was to identify with the land and possess it. Instead of translating Palestinian architecture (primarily arab architecture) into a new adaptation, they would wholly recreate it from the bottom up. They believed they were authentic, sincere, and were rooting Israel to the land. Nitzan-Shiftan goes on to explain why Iraesli would do this. Why would they want to recreate historical architecture while trying to redefine themselves?  She explores three possible reasons: to biblicize the land, to think of it as an uncontaminated primitive origin of architecture, or simply just Mediterranean style. The last idea resulted in taking away any authority that Palestinians had over their rooted architecture since Israel just summed it into a broader concept. Overall, the reading talks about Israel inauthentically recreating Palestinian architecture for their own gain, how and why they would do that, and what that means for people’s sense of the traditional idea of place when that was a vital part of Israel’s reasoning for appropriating Palestinian architecture.

Application

In Japan, between 1868 and the 1930s, the West’s idea of modern architecture took over. It wasn’t until after the Second World War, when Japan needed to rebuild its identity, that the idea of injecting “Japan-ness” into their designs came about. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is an example of architects trying to embark on this new idea of “Japan-ness”  as it resembled the Shinto shrines at Ise. During the period before the world wars, architects were designed based on this idea of universal architecture, and it wasn’t at all thinking of the context of the space; this is what Frampton talked about in ‘Toward a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an architecture of resistance’ that rapid growth of technological advancements and the push to use them as well as this idea of a global modernism was hindering authentic and meaningful architecture, which is precisely what was happening in Japan before the world wars. Afterward, though, that idea changed as they wanted to reshape Japan’s identity. They also wanted to infuse “Japan-ness” into their work, a meaningful and rooted idea.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Critical Response

I have difficulty siding with Heidegger on his ideas of a dwelling and a sense of place needing to be bounded. He believed that only a built form could foster the kind of people that can withstand global modernization. A confusing idea in itself since standing up to institutionalized ideas does not necessarily mean you need a bounded space. I also believe that a sense of place can be found in many forms and is shaped by many other things than just an enclosed structure. Family, friends, and community can build a sense of place, and all of those factors would support making it easier to stand up to an institutionalized power, much more so than a built place, as he speaks of.

Key Take-Aways

• Constant push for new technology and the blind use of it is not always good
• When looking at the history of modernism remember that it is not telling the full story