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BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN

ARCHITECTURE

THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM

(ARC61303/ARC2224)

SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2017)

Name: Nor Syarianna Neo ID No.: 0318236

Lecturer: Mr. Prince Tutorial Time: 10-12pm

Reader/Text Title:
Synopsis No: 3 ( No.3 & 4 )
Critical Regionalism Author: Kenneth Frampton

Critical Regionalism is a proposition by Frampton that envision architecture as a critical practice of

arriere-garde position, which is a resistance practice, that distance oneself equally between
progressive impulses of the Enlighment and reactionary impulses of the architectonic forms of the
pre-industrial past. When Frampton wrote Critical Regionalism, it was written as an indirect
response to two events : the publication on Charles Jenckss The Language of Post-Modern
Architecture in 1977, and the anti-modern drive of the architecture section of the 1980 Venice
Biennale, whose theme was The Presence of the Past in which Frampton sees postmodernity as
the rise of a multinational capitalism phenomenon which left the world socially, culturally and
economically adrift.

Thus as a critical response, Frampton suggested Paul Ricouers concept of reconciliation between
universal civilisation and local culture as a basis, to which he proposed the method of double
mediation. First, critical regionalism has to destruct the generalisation of world culture which
postmodernism inherits. Secondly, a manifestation of universal civilisation beyond the
monotonous rationalization of technology proliferation. And to achieve self conscious synthesis of
universal civilisation and world culture is to re-visit regionalism in contemporary terms without the
semantics.

Here we look at critical context in terms of local and the general. If the particular ground is local
then the general engages the association beyond the immediate situation, and the interaction
between specific context yields understanding. Such a balance is essential in maintaining structure
of condition, cognition and meaning. However as societies are domineered by the modernising
eects of mass production and mass media due to globalisation, the balance between the general
and the particular is jeopardised. As technological changes, there is a tendency for the architecture
to fall into self hybridisation that denies control. Increasingly we face a world that is self-fulfilling
out of place and is generalised. In this context an emphasis of the meaning of dierentiation of the
creation of the particular becomes more crucial.

As in the current 21st century context, perhaps it is beneficial to re-evaluate the synthetic
relationship of technology and place, because contradiction between technology and place in this
era, is a contradiction to the era itself. Perhaps when done critically, there will be no contradiction
between technology and place because technology wasnt what it was back then. Building
technique has been transformed with new techniques and processes, today old regional materials
are revisited and transformed by modern techniques. Perhaps we could be seeing the potential of
new processes of critical regionalism.

Word Count: 390 Mark Grade

Assessed by: Date Page No. 3