The Israeli ‘Place’ in East Jerusalem
The article, The Israeli ‘Place’ in East Jerusalem by Alona Nitzan-Shiftan covers the challenges of Architectural design in East Jerusalem. The primary issue that brought this into question was the need to identify a particular style or guidelines that wasn’t associated with the past colonial modernism. To evolve from ‘international modernism’, or past colonial modernism, Israeli architects decided that design needed to be more vernacular. However, what wasn’t considered was that their idea of ‘vernacular’ came with its own baggage and had been an existing style for some time. Some of these challenges included reusing previously discarded design features from previous cultures and utopian idealism. This essentially was coined as sabra, which used a bottom-up vernacularism. These concepts became more of a reality post 67 Israeli war with the change in control of East Jerusalem. The result of the change of power was the pressure on Israeli planners to provide a ‘unified city’. However, other than the desire to create a ‘unified image’ there wasn’t a clear message as to how to accomplish ‘unification’. The result of this mission was symbolism of heroic design with assimilation into local architecture.
A Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance
The article, A Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance primarily focuses on the challenges of retaining localized design while conforming to new modernism. There are two sides to this issue, one is the challenge for locations that have an extensive network of modernism to find areas for vernacularism. On the other side is locations that are looking to modernism as a mode of interest and investment while retaining their vernacular design. To expand, the specific modern challenges faced by each environment would have limitations such as ‘high tech’ approach and ‘compensatory façade’. In turn these limitations would apply to the most modern environments of a city space such as downtowns. However, the alternatives to ‘high modernism’ was looking at design nostalgically such as the movements of Arts & Crafts, Gothic revival, and Art Nouveau. The key to achieving balance is for one to distance themselves from both nostalgia and ‘high tech approaches. In essence, this is Critical Regionalism, that is to mediate the impacts of universal civilization while maintaining specific elements of that particular place.
Global Modernism and Postcolonial
The article, Global Modernism and Postcolonial calls into question the mechanics and origin of ideas that we base modernism around. To be able to question these mechanics or ideas, design must first be examined through a decolonialized history, where an honest assessment can be conducted. However, removing colonialization from modern architectural history is a complex and often baffling task that is still being examined. While this is a worthy goal, the real goal of the reading was to understand the mentality of use of ‘unity’, or ‘standardization’ in modern design. To expand, the idea of unity can be derived from works that we consider to be a ‘model’. In essence, the locations that we consider the ‘model’ environments pushes other places to be like the ‘model’ that we are picturing. This can be told in a variety of ways, such as maps, diagrams, and artwork that can express a specific ideology behind their narrative. Essentially this ideology is determined by the designer or some of the parties involved such as Le Corbusier Door, Mehretu’s map, and others like them.
Critical Response
There were several aspects of the reading, Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance, that I felt were often conflicting with the overall message of Frampton on Critical Regionalism. For example, Frampton often views cityscapes in a negative fashion. These included referring to regional downtowns as Burolandschaft or victory of universal civilization over locally infected culture. Another example is later where Frampton refers to urban planning as a state of crisis and a tendency to reduce planning to land allocation or logistical distribution. While these thoughts may or may not be true, it would contradict and distract from the overall message of Critical Regionalism, which is defined as an attempt to mediate the impacts of universal civilization with elements derived from the uniqueness of certain environments. However, what I feel is lacking from all of these thoughts is the idea that people attach positive and negative ideas towards particular styles. For example, people might have a positive or negative opinion on ‘high modernism’ or alternatively local vernacularism. Opinions can directly affect a person’s critical thinking of regional architecture where individuals may have a variety of views on various adaptations of Critical Regionalism. However, if I tie this back to my theory on Frampton’s opinions on downtown cityscapes, we can see him thinking of cityscapes as high urbanism with little local culture. This is something that I would also fundamentally disagree with, as there are numerous examples regionally, as well as nationally or globally that are culturally iconic and unrepeatable.
Application and Interpretation
My Research country, Brazil also had numerous connections to many of the issues posed in the readings. However, the one that seemed to fit the topics presented was Lina Bo Bardi, SESC building, in Sao Paolo. This building was at one time an unused factory and was repurposed into a center for living as well as leisure. For one, it is an excellent example of decolonization, as it was a series of 1920’s factories that were built during Brazil’s colonial days. Second, rather than erasing its colonial past image, Bo Bardi, decided visually to acknowledge it. Also, this came at a time where Brazil, like Israel, was experimenting as to how to design post-colonially in a thoughtful manner. It also follows Frampton’s thoughts on Critical regionalism such as technology combined with vernacularism. In essence, it is a rather unique structure that would likely not fall into the trap of unity as described in Global Modernism and the Postcolonial, while meeting the needs of the present.
Takeaway
- How designers’ combination modernism or high modernism with local traits
- How is something considered vernacular or is it authentic
I found your application and interpretation very interesting. Particularly the different uses of the building, and how Brazil wasn’t afraid to show its colonial past. It seems like this is a much better way to experiment post-colonially than how Israel ended up trying to establish their sense of belonging in Jerusalem. I also really liked how you incorporated an aspect of every reading into this application, as I usually only am able to connect to one or two.
I think you bring up a great point in your critique of “Toward a Critical Regionalism”. It has been noted elsewhere, as well, that Frampton’s framework has many good points in it, but people have inherit biases and preferences that ultimately will affect the way they interact with and view urbanity, nature, and so on. And this even applies to Frampton, who to your point, seems to view the urban city-scape as devoid of culture. For some it might already be bustling with culture and the addition of a deconstructed and secularized form from somewhere else might be the real oppression.
I really like how you expand upon “model” environments in “Global Modernism and Postcolonial.” I was able to envision how the map Mehretu creates could almost be seen as different variations of models intertwining together, getting lost in all the replications that are pushed to be “modeled” after the original.