CHAPTER 4 ART, BUILT-FORM AND THE ESSENCE OF PLACE
4.2 CRITICAL REGIONALISM
4.2.2 Critical Regionalism and the Nature of Locale
According to Frampton (1983), the primary agenda of Critical Regionalism is to mediate and filter the impact of global universal civilisation with elements derived indirectly from the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of a particular place. “Every building is built for a specific use, in a specific place and for a specific society” (Zumthor, 2010: 27).
Frampton (1983) and Tzonis & Lefaivre (1996) agree that the implementation of Critical Regionalism would thus involve the partial celebration and partial rejection of the regional.
Through this the potential exists for architecture to provide a sense of local identity whilst at the same time expressing the idea of common humanity, “explicitly free of racial or tribal or ethnic dimensions” (Tzonis & Lefaivre, 1996: 486).
By definition, Critical Regionalist works are self-reflective and self-referential, containing what Tzonis & Lefaivre (ibid.) describe as explicit statements and implicit metastatements that highlight the artificiality and commonality of a viewer’s observation of the world by challenging the established but moreover, by challenging the legitimacy of possible world views as interpreted by the mind (ibid.). This indicates that a critical regionalist work is
66 critical in two senses. Firstly, it contrasts the anomic, atopic and misanthropic common in built-form and secondly, it questions the validity of the very regionalist tradition to which it belongs (ibid.), leading back to the notion of partial acceptance and partial rejection of regional elements upon which Critical Regionalism is built.
The selection of which elements to retain and which to discard may be as complicated or as simple as finding inspiration in the range and quality of local light, in a tectonic derived from a structural system or from the topography of a given site (Frampton, 1983). However, this list is not definite and depends on the given context (social, cultural and historical). As every architectural intervention intrudes on the environment it is critical that it embraces qualities that can enter into a meaningful dialogue with that specific context. However, in order for an intervention to find its place, it must make one see the existing in a new light (Zumthor, 2010). Thus, this selection of elements depends on their potential to encourage personal and collective engagement of individuals with the built. Elements that enable this constitute
“place defining elements” (Tzonis & Lefaivre, 1996: 489) and are often seen to be incorporated in an unfamiliar way.
Figure 4.1: A cultural landmark inspired by the quality of local light and the spiritual content it engenders was the conceptual crux of Tadao Ando’s Church of light. The result is a form that is profoundly linked to place without being sentimental but rather progressive in the sense that critical local conditions are dove-tailed with equally relevant global ones.
(source: Jeonado at http://pixel-samurai.blogspot.com/2009/11/cg-reconstruction-tadao-ando-church-of.html, accessed: 23- 05-2012)
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Fig ure 4.2:Although the masonry dome is not a common form in the South African vernacular, at the Mapungubwe Visitors Centre, Peter Rich was able to design an intensely place-bound architectural tectonic through the evaluation of the local vernacular Sotho dry stone-packing techniques. This technique was simply extended upward and o ver in the construction of
the domes that are further bound to place through various symbolic meanings. (source: Baan, I. at http://www.archdaily.com/57106/mapungubwe-interpretation-centre-peter-rich-architects/, accessed: 23-05-2012)
Figure 4 .3 : Through considering climate and topography, architect Nina Maritz designed a building that is not only a product of the landscape but serves to augment it at Visitors' Centre for Twyfelfontein World Heritage Rock Art Site.
(source: SBD at http://sbd2050.org/project/visitors-centre-for-twyfelfontein-world-heritage-rock-art-site-44/, accessed: 22- 05-2012)
68 By displacing the familiar, the sense of sentimentality is exchanged for a de-automatising of perception in which the built-form is enabled to enter into an imagined dialogue with a viewer (ibid.). Thus, through appropriately chosen elemental devices, Critical Regionalism resists over-familiarisation and leads the viewer to a metacognitive state in which a perceived expressive depth enables the conjuring up of “a forum of possible worlds” (ibid.).
Although concerned with the establishment of an expressive depth and resonance in an architecture of resistance, equally important in the agenda of Critical Regionalism is the provision of a place-form (Frampton, 1983). Through this, perceptions of the built environment can be challenged through the tactile. “In doing so, it endeavours to balance the priority accorded to the image and to counter the Western tendency to interpret the environment in exclusively perspectival terms…” (Frampton, 1983: 100)
Through the development of this place-form, Critical Regionalism attempts to address the forces of technocracy and bureaucracy that perpetuate anomie and atopy (Tzonis & Lefaivre, 1996). In other words Critical Regionalism counteracts the global trend of faceless, placeless architecture by forming an identity of the local inspired by the global but resistant to its excess. Through this, Critical Regionalism can be seen as a material explanation of culture in which the artistic potential of the region is condensed while external influences are reinterpreted (Frampton, 1996).
Fig ure 4.4: Constitutional Hill, Johannesburg, by OMM Design Workshop crafts an identity of a healing South African culture through the celebration of local factors in relation to global, retaining those which identify the local and promoting a
forward looking view bound to the global. (source: Buckland, A. at http://www.constructionweekonline.com/article-4116- a_beacon_of_light/, accessed: 23-05-2012)
69 The celebration of the region opens local craft to interpretation and implementation in both form and space (ibid.). Emphasis of local methods of construction draws to light issues of local materiality. Zumthor (2010) feels that materiality and construction methods should be born of place, contextually bound, however, within the realm of Critical Regionalism, these need to be considered and evaluated before being implemented. If co-ordinated correctly, these can enrich a work beyond its inherent geometric order and in so doing the visual and graphic is supressed in favour of the patently tactile which opposes the scenographic and shifts the emphasis away from the visual, towards the experiential (ibid.).
Furthermore, the “inescapable materiality of building” (Frampton, 1996: 474) generates a tectonic feeling of built-form with the capacity to transform the surface of the earth: “it is there that the history of our involvement with the earth is stored” (Zumthor, 2010: 95). The oneiric essence of site together with the built has the potential to produce a sensual and earthbound architecture sensitive to the specificity of place by referring indirectly to the local (Frampton, 1996). Set against the topography of earth and the openness of sky, built-form can construct the site by asserting itself as a primary form with due cognisance to the grain of local context and topographical configurations.
Within the realm of Critical Regionalism, however, Frampton (2005) argues that critically resistant architecture could similarly be construed to be totally opposed to the rendition of a free-standing architectural object which is at risk of entertaining the scenographic. He feels that this can only be offset by prioritising landscape as both a literal and metaphorical element in which the structure of the building becomes “integrated into the landscape and vice versa” (Frampton, 2005: 195).
Of all these elements, there exists only one central principle of Critical Regionalism: the commitment to place rather than space (Frampton, 1996).