Critical History of Modern Architecture Chapter 5

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modern a rchitecture A CRITICAL HISTORYKenneth Frampton

A useful and wide-ranging work of superior architectural scholarship,this ambitious publication contains many chapters that stand on theirown as perceptive essays; it is marked throughout by a consistentlymature critical intelligence. - ewYork Review q BooksOne of the most important works on modern architecture we

have today. - rchitectural DesignA compelling text and an excellent reference source.

- Library JournalThis acclaimed survey of modern architecture and itsorigins has become a classic since it first appeared in 1980For the fourth edition Kenneth Frampton has added a majornew chapter that explores the effects of globalization onarchitecture in recent years, the rise of the celebrity architectand the way in which practices worldwide have addressedsuch issues as sustainability and habitat. The bibliographyhas been updated and expanded, making this volume morecomplete and indispensable than ever.Fourth edition

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Chapterritical Regionalism

modern architecture and cultural identity

The phenomenon of universalization. while beingan advancement of mankind. at the same timeconstitutes a sort of subtle destruction. not only oftraditional cultures. which might not be anmeparable wrong. but also of what I shall call forthe time being the creative nucleus of greatcivilizations and great culture. that nucleus on thebasis of which we interpret life. what I shall call inadvance the ethical and mythical nucleus ofmankind. The conflict springs up from there Wehave the feeling that this single world civilizationat the same time exerts a sort of attrition or wearingaway at the expense of the cultural resourceswhich have made the great civilizations of the past.This threat is expressed. among other disturbingeffects. by the spreading before our eyes of amediocre civilization which is the absurd counterpart of what I was just calli ng elementary culture.Everywhere throughout the world. one finds thesame bad movie. the same slot machines. the sameplastic or aluminum atrocities. the same twistingof language by propaganda. etc. It seems as ifmankind. by approaching en m sse a basicconsumer culture. were also stopped en m sse at asubcultural level. Thus we come to the crucialproblem confronting nations just rising fromunderdevelopment. In order to get on to the roadtoward modernization. is it necessary to jettisonthe old cultural past which has been the r isond etre of a nat1on? . . . Whence the paradox: on theone hand. it (the nation) has to root itself in thesoil of its past. forge a national spirit. and unfurlthis spiritual and cultural revendication before thecolonialist s personality. But in order to take part inmodern civilization. it s necessary at the same timeto take part in scientific. technical. and politicalrationality. something which very often requiresthe pure and simple abandon of a whole culturalpast. It is a fact: every culture cannot sustain and314

absorb the shock of modern civilization. There isthe paradox: how to become modern and to returnto sources; how to revive an old. dormantcivilization and take part in universal civilization ..No one can say what will become of ourcivilization when it has really met differentcivilizations by means other than the shock ofconquest and domination. But we have to admitthat this encounter has not yet taken place at thelevel of an authentic dialogue. That is why we arein a kind of lull or interregnum in which we can nolonger practice the dogmatism of a single truthand in which we are not yet capable of conqueringthe scepticism into which we have stepped. Weare in a tunnel. at the twilight of dogmatism andthe dawn of real dialogues.

Paul R1coeurUniversal Civilization andNational Cultures. 1961

The term Critical Regionalism is not i ntended todenote the vernacular as this was once spontaneously produced by the combined interactionof climate, culture, myth and craft, but rather toidentify those recent regional schools whoseprimary aim has been to reflect and serve thelimited constituencies in which they are grounded. Among other factors contributing to theemergence of a regionalism of this order is notonly a certain prosperity but also some kind ofanti-centrist consensus an aspiration at least tosome form of cultural, economic and politicalindependence.The concept of a local or national culture is aparadoxical proposition not only because of thepresent obvious antithesis between rooted cultureand universal civilization but also because allcultures, both ancient and modern, seem to have

320 Utzon, Bagsvaerd Church, near Copenhagen, 97 longitudinal section.depended for their intrinsic development on acertain cross-fertilization with other cultures. AsRicoeur seems to imply in the passage quotedabove regional or national cultures must today,more than ever, be ultimately constituted as locallyinflected manifestations of world culture . It issurely no accident that this paradoxical proposition arises at a time when global modernization continues to undermine, with ever increasing force, all forms of traditional, agrarian-based,autochthonous culture. From the point of view ofcritical theory see the Introduction, p.9) we haveto regard regional culture not as something givenand relatively immutable but rather as somethingwhich has, at least today, to be self-consciouslycultivated. Ricoeur suggests that sustaining anykind of authentic culture in the future will dependultimately on our capacity to generate vital formsof regional culture while appropriating alieninfluences at the level of both culture andcivilization.

Such a process of assimilation and reinterpretation seems to be evident in the work of theDanish master Jorn Utzon, above all in hisBagsvaerd Church, completed in a suburb outsideCopenhagen in 1976, wherein pre-cast concreteinfill elements of standardized dimensions arecombined, in a particular ly articulate way, with insitu reinforced concrete shell vaults which spanthe principal public volumes. And while thiscombination of modular assembly and in-situcasting may appear at first to be nothing more thanan appropriate integration of the full range ofconcrete techniques which are now at ourdisposal, the case can be made that the way inwhich these techniques are combined alludes to anumber of dialogically opposed values.

At one level, we may claim that prefabricatedmodular assembly not only accords with the

values of universal civilization but also representsits capacity for normative application, whereas anin situ shell vault is a one-off structural inventionbuilt into a unique site . It may be argued, in thelight of Ricoeur, that where the one affirms thenorms of universal civilization, the other proclaimsthe values of idiosyncratic culture. Similarly, wemay construe these different forms of concreteconstructionas setting the rationality of normativetechnique against the arationality of symbolicstructure.

Yet another dialogue is evoked as soon as onepasses from the economically optimum modularcladding of the exterior (be it the concrete panelsor the patent glazing in the roof) to the far fromoptimum in-situ frame and shell vault spanningthe nave. Such vaulting, a relatively uneconomicmode of construction when compared sayto steeltrusswork, has been deliberately selected for itssymbolic capacity: the vault si gnifies the sacred inWestern culture. And yet the highly configuratedsection adopted in this instance can hardly beregarded as Western. Indeed the only precedentfor such a section in a sacred contex t is Eastern -the Chinese pagoda roof, cited by Utzon in hisseminal essay of 1962, Platforms and Plateaus:Ideas of a Danish Architect .

The subtle and contrary allusions incorporatedinto this folded concrete shell r oof have far greaterconsequence than the seeming perversity ofreinterpreting an Oriental timber form in Occidental concrete technology; for while the main vaultover the nave suggests by its scale and topillumination the presence of a religious space, itdoes so in such a way as to preclude an exclusivelyOccidental or Oriental reading of the form bywhich it is constituted . A similar Occidental /Oriental interpenetration also occurs in thewooden fenestration and slatted partitions which

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seem to allude both to the Nordic vernacular of thestave church and to the fretted traditionaltimberwork of China and Japan. The intentionbehind these procedures of deconstruction andre-synthesis seems to be as follows: first, torevitalize certain devalued Occidental formsthrough an Oriental re-casting of their essentialnature; and second to indicate the secularizationof the institutions represented by these forms. Thisis arguably a more appropriate way to render achurch in a secular age, where traditionalecclesiastical iconography always risks degenerating into kitsch.This revitalization of Occidental elements withOriental profiles and vice versa by no meansexhausts the ways in whic h the Bagsvaerd Churchis inflected with regard to its situation in time andplace. Utzon has also given it a barn-like form,using an agricultural metaphor as a way of givingpublic expression to a sacred institution. But thissomewhat cryptic metaphor, associating religionwith agrarian culture, may well change somewhatwith the passage of time, for when the surrounding saplings have matured the church will for thefirst time appear within its own proper boundaries.This natural temenos, established by a veil of trees.will no doubt encourage a future reading of thebuilding as a temple rather than a barn.

Exemplary of an explicitly anti-centrist re-gionalism was the Catalan nationalist movementwhic h first emergedwith the foundation of Grup Rin Barcelona in 1952. This group, led by J.M.Sostres and Oriel Bohigas, found itself caughtfrom the beginning in a complex cultural situation.On the one hand, it was obliged to revive theRationalist. anti-Fascist values and procedures ofGATE PAC (the pre-war Spanish wing of ClAM);on the other. it remained aware of the politicalresponsibility to evoke a realistic regionalism,accessible to the populace at large. This doubleheaded programme was first publicly announcedby Bohigas in his essay, Possibilities for aBarcelona Architecture , published in 1951. Thevarious cultural impulses that made up thisheterogeneous Regionalism tend to confirm theunavoidably hybrid nature of modern regionalculture. In the first place, there was the Catalanbrick tradition which dated back to the period ofModernismo ; then there was the inf luence ofNeutra and Neo-Piasticism the latter indubita bly316

321, 322 Coderch, ISM apartment block, Barcelona,1951: view and typical floor plan323 Coderch, Casa Catasus Sitges, 1 956: groundplan.

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stimulated by Bruno Zevi s a Poeticadell architettura neoplastica of 1953. There followed the influential Nee-Realist style of theItalian architect lgnazio Gardella, who employedtraditional shutters, narrow windows and wideoverhanging eaves in his Casa Borsalino atAlessandria, Italy 1951-53) . To this niust beadded. particularly for the practice of Mackay,Bohigas and Martorell, the influence of BritishNew Brutalism see their Paseo de Ia Bonanovaapartments in Barcelona of 1973).

The career of the Barcelona architect J.A.coderch has been typically regionalist inasmuchs it has oscillated, until recent date, between a

Mediterraneanized, modern brick vernacular firstformulated in his eight-storey ISM apartmentblock built in Barcelona in the Paseo Nacional in1951 ( traditi onally articulated like the CasaBorsalino with full-height shutters and thinoverhanging cornices) and the avant-gardist,Neo-Plastic cum Miesian composit ion of his CasaCatasus completed at Sitges in 1956.

The more recent deliquescence of CatalanRegionalism is possibly most evident in the workof Ricardo Bofill and the Taller de Arquitectura.For where Bofill s Calle Nicaragua apartments of1964 displayed an affinity for the reinterpretedbrick vernacular of Coderch, the Taller was toadopt an overtly Gesamtkunstwerk approach inthe late 1960s. With their Xanadu complex buil t inCalpe in 1967, they indulged in a form of kitschromanticism. This obsession with castle imagesreached its apotheosis in their heroic, butostentatious, tile -faced Walden 7 complex at SantJust Desvern, Barcelona 1970-75). With itstwelve-storey voids, underlit living rooms, minuscule balconies and its now disintegrating tilecladding, Walden 7 marks that unfortunateboundary where what was initially a criticalimpulse degenerates into highly photogenicscenography. In the last analysis, despite itspassing homage to Gaudi, Walden 7 displays anaffinity for admass seduction. It is an architectureof narcissism par excellence. for the formal rhetoricaddresses itself to high fashion and to themystique of Bofill s flamboyant personality. TheMediterranean hedonistic utopia to which Walden 7 pretends collapses on closer inspection,above all at the level of the roofscape where apotentially sensuous environment has not been

realized in occupation (cf. Le Corbusier s United Habitation at Marseilles).

Nothing could be further from Bofill s intentionsthan the architecture of the Portuguese masterAlvaro Siza Vieira, whose career, beginning withhis swimming pool at the Quinta da Concei9ao.Matosinhos 1958-65), has been anything butphotogenic. This much can be discerned notonly from the fragmentary evasive nature of thepublished images but also from a text written in1979:Most of my works were never published: some ofthe things I did were only carried out in part. otherswere profoundly changed or destroyed. That sonly to be expected. An architectonic propositionwhose aim is to go deep a proposition thatintends to be more than a passive materialization .refuses to reduce that same reality. analysing eachof its aspects. one by one: that proposition can tftnd support in a fixed image. can t follow a linearevolution Each design must catch. with theutmost rigour. a precise moment of the flittering1mage. in all its shades. and the better you canrecognize that flittering quality of reality. theclearer your design will be That may be thereason why only marginal works a quietdwelling. a holiday house miles away) have beenkept as they were originally designed. Butsomething remains. Pieces are kept here and there.ins1de ourselves. perhaps fathered by someune.leaving marks on space and people. melting into aprocess of t otal transformation.This hypersensitivity to the transformation of afluid and yet specific reality renders Siza s workmore layered and rooted than the eclectictendencies of the Barcelona School for, by takingAalto as his point of departure, he has groundedhis buildings in the configuration of a specifictopography and in the fine-grained texture of thelocal fabric. To this end his pieces are tightresponses to the urban, land and marinescape ofthe Porto region. Other important factors are hisdeference towards local material, craft work, andthe subtleties of local light; a deference which issustained without falling into the sentimentality ofexcluding rational form and modern technique.Like Aaltos Siiyniitsalo Town Hall. all of Siza sbuildings are delicately laid into the topography oftheir sites. His approach is patently tactile and

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324 - 326 Siza, Beires House, P6voa de Varzim,1973 77: view, and plans of the upper floor (below)and ground floor (bottom).

tectonic, rather than visual and graphic, from hisBe res HousebuiltatP6voadeVarzim n 1973-77to his Bouca Residents Association Housing inPorto 197J- 77). Even his small urban buildings,of which the best is probably the Pinto branchbank built at Oliveira de Azemeis in 1974, aretopographically structured.The projected work of the New York-basedAustrian architect Raimund Abraham seems to beinformed by similar concerns, inasmuch as this318

architect has always stressed place creation andthe topographic aspects of built form. The Housewith Three Walls (1972) and the House withFlower Walls (1973) are typical of his pieces ofthe early 1970s, wherein the project evokes anoneiric image while insisting on the inescapablemateriality of building. This concern for tectonicform and for its capacity to transform the surface ofthe earth has been carried over into Abraham srecent designs made for the International BuildingExhibition in Berlin, above all into his recentproject for South Friedrichstadt designed in1981.An equally tactile attitude obtains in the work ofthe veteran Mexican architect Luis Barraganwhose finest houses (many of which have beenerected in Mexico City, in the suburb of Pedregal)assume a topographic form. As much a landscapedesigner as an architect. Barragan has alwayssought a sensual and eart hbound architecture; anarchitecture compounded of enclosures, stelaefountains and water courses; an architecture laidinto volcanic rock and lush vegetation ; anarchitecture that refers indirectly to the Mexicanestancia Of Barragan s feeli ng for mythic androoted beginnings it is sufficient to cite hismemories of the apocryphal pue lo of his youth:My earliest childhood memories are related to aranch my family owned near the village ofMazamitla. It was a pue lo with hills. forme d byhouseswith tile roofs and immense eaves to shieldpassersby from the heavy rains which fall in thatarea. Even the earth s color was interestingbecause it was red earth. In this village. the waterdtstributton system consisted of great gutted logs.tn the form of troughs. which ran on a supportstructure of tree forks. 5 meters high. above theroofs. This aqueduct crossed over the town.reaching the patios. where there were great stonefountains to receive the water. The patios housedthe stables. with cows and chickens. all together.Outside. in the street. there were iron rings to tiethe horses. The channeled logs. covered withmoss. dripped water all over town. of course. Itgave this village the ambience of a fairy tale. No.there are no photographs I have only its memory.This remembrance was surely influenced byBarragan s life- long involvement with Islamic

327 Abraham, project for South Friedrichstadt, Berlin, 1981 : detail showing half the site.

architecture. Similar feelings and concerns areev dent in his opposition to the invasion of privacyin the modern world and in his criticism of thesubtl e erosion of nature which has accompaniedpost-war civilization:Everyday life is becoming much too public . Rad io.TV . telephone all invade privacy. Gardens shouldthe refore be enclosed . not open to public gaze . .Arc hitects are forgetting the need of humanbei ngs for half-light. the sort of light that imposesa ra nQui lity, n their living rooms as well as in theirbed roo ms. About half the glass that is used in soman y bu ildings- homes as well as offices wouldhave to be removed in order to obtain the q ualityof light that enables one to live and work in a moreconcentrated manner .

Before the machine age. even in the middle ofcities . Na ture was everybody s. trusted companion . Nowadays. the situation is reversed . Mandoes not meet with Nature. even when he leavesthe city to commune with her. Enclosed in hisshiny au to mobile. his spirit stamped wit h the markof the world whence the automobi le emerged. heis. within Nature. a fore ign body. A billboard is

sufficient to st f e the voice of Nature Naturebecomes a scrap of Nature and man a scrap ofman.By the time of his first house and studio builtaround an enclosed court in Tacubaya, MexicoD. F., in 1947, Barragan had already moved awayfrom the syntax of the International Style. And yethis work has always remained committed to thatabstract form which has characterized the art ofour era . Barragan s penchant fo r large, almostinscrutable abstract planes set int o the landscapeis perhaps at its most intense in his gardens for theresidential districts of Las Arboleadas 1958-61)and Los Clubes 1961-64) and in his freewaymonument. Satellite City Towers, designed withMathias Goeritz in 1957.

Regionalism has , of course. manifested itself inother parts of the Americas; in Brazil in the 1940sin the early work of Oscar Niemeyer and AlfonsoReidy; in Argentina in the work of AmancioWilliams, above all in Williams s bridge house inMar del Plata of 1943-45 and more recentlyperhaps in Clorin da Testa s Bank of London andSouth America. Buenos Aires (1959) ; in Ven-

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328 Barragan and Goeritz. Satellite City Towers.Mexico City 1957.ezuela, in the Ciudad Universitaria built to thedesigns of Carlos Raul Villanueva between 1945and 1960; on the West Coast of the United States,first in Los Angeles from the late 1920s in the workof Neutra, Schindler. Weber and Gill, and then inthe Bay Area school founded by William Wursterand in the Southern California work of HarwellHamilton Harris. No-one has perhaps expressedthe idea of a Critical Regionalism more forcefullythan Harris, in Regionalism and Nationalism , an

Regional Council of the AlA in Eugene, Oregon, in1954. This was the occasion when he firstadvanced his felicitous distinction betweenrestricted and liberated regionalism:Opposed to the Regionalism of Restnct1on isanother type of regionalism; the Reg1onalism ofLiberation. This is the manifestation of a regionthat is especially in tune with the emergingthought of the time We call such a manifestationregional ontv because it has not vet emergedelsewhere It is the genius of this reg1on to be morethan ordinarily aware and more than ordinarilyfree. Its virtue is that ts man1festat1on hassignificance for the worl outside tself To expressthis regionalism architecturally it s necessary thatthere be building- preferably a lot of buil ding -atone time. Only so can the expression besufficientl y general. suff1c1ently varied. sufficientlyforceful to capture people s Imaginations andprovide a friendly climate long enough for a newschool of design to develop

San Francisco was made for Maybeck. Pas-adena was made for Greene and Greene. Ne1thercould have accomplished what he d1d in any otherplace or time. Each used the matenals of the place;but it is not the materials that distinguish the work.

. A region may develop 1deas. A region mayaccept ideas. Imaginations and intelligence arenecessary for both. In California in the lateTwenties and Thirties modern European ideas meta still developmg regionalism. In New England. onthe other hand. European Modernism met a rigidand restrictive regionalism that at first resisted andthen surrendered. New England accepted Euro-pean Modernism whole because its own re-gionalism had been reduced to a collection ofrestrictions.

address which he first gave to the North West 329 Williams bridge house Mar del Plata 1943 45.320

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330 Wolf model for the Fort Lauderdale RiverfrontPlaza. 1982.Despite an apparent freedom of expression, such alevel of liberative regionalism is difficultto achievein North America today. Within the currentproliferation of highly individualistic forms ofexpression (work which is often patronizing andself-indulgent rather than critical) only a few firmstoday display any profound commitment to theunsentimental cultivation of a rooted Americanculture. An atypical example of current regionalwork in North America is the sensitively sitedhouses designed by Andrew Batey and MarkMack for the Napa Valley area in California;another is the work of the architect Harry Wolf.whose activity has been largely restricted to NorthCarolina. Wolf s metaphorical approach to placemaking was polemically demonstrated in his 1982competition entry for the Fort Lauderdale Riverfront Plaza. As his description indicates, theintention was to inscribe the city s history into thesite through the incidence of light.The worship of the sun and the measurement oftime from its light reach back to the earliestrecorded history of man. It is 1nterest1ng to note inthe case of Fort Lauderdale that if one were tofollow a 26 1atltudmalline around the globe. onewould find Fort Lauderdale in the company ofAncient Thebes - the throne of the Egypt1an sungod. Ra. Further to the East. one would findJa1pur. India. where heretofore. the largestequinoctial sund1al n the world was built 110years prior to the found1ng of Fort Lauderdale.

Mindful of these magnificent histoncal pre-

the past. present and future of Fort Lauderdale .To capture the sun in symbol a great sundial isincised on the Plaza site and the gnomon of thesundial bisects the site on its nort h-south axis. Thegnomon of the double blade rises from the southat 26 5 parallel to Fort Lauderdale s latitude.

Each of the significant dates in FortLauderdale s his tory is recorded in the great bladeof the sundial. With careful calculation the sunangles are perfectly aligned with penetrationsthrough the two blades to cast brilliant circles oflight. landing on the otherwise shadowy side ofthe sundial. These shafts of light illuminate anappropriate historical marker serving as annualhistorical reminders.

In Europe the work of the architect Gino Vallemay be considered regional inasmuch as his careerhas always been centred on the city of Udine.Aside from his concern for the city, Valle made oneof the earlest post-war reinterpretations of therural vernacular of Lombardy in his Casa Quaglia,built at Sutrio in 1954-56.

It s surely understandable that in Europe, wherethe vestigial city-state was still very much alive,such a regionalist impulse would emerge sp ontaneously after the Second World War when anumber of significant architects were able tocontribute to the culture of their native cities.Among those of the post-war generation whoremained committed to a regional inflection onemay count Ernst Gisel in Zurich, J0rn Utzon inCopenhagen, Vittorio Gregotti in Milan, SverreFehn in Oslo, Aris Konstantinidis in Athens, andlast but by no means least Carlo Scarpa in Venice.

Switzerland, with its intricate linguistic boundaries and its tradition of cosmopolitanism, has

cedents. we sought a symbol that would speak of 33 Valle Casa Quaglia. Sutrio, 1954 56.321


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332 Scarpa, Querini Stampalia Gallery, Venice.1961 - 63.always displayed strong regionalist tendencies.The cantonal principle of admission and exclusionhas always favoured extremely dense forms ofexpression, with the canton favouring localculture and the Federation facilitating the penetration and assimilation of foreign ideas. DollSchnebli's Neo-Corbusian vaulted villa at Campione d'ltalia on the ltalo-Swiss frontier 11960)may be seen as initiat ing the resistanceof Ticinesearchitecture to the influence of commercialized

333 Schnebli, Castioli House. Campione d' ltalia.1960.322

modernism. This resistance found an echoimmediately in other parts of Switzerland, inAurelio Galletti's equally Corbusian RotalintiHouse in Bellinzona (1961) and in Atelier 5 sassumption of the Corbusian eton brut manner,as this appeared in Siedlung Halen, bui lt outsideBerne in 1960 (fig . 362) .

Today's Ticinese Regionalism has its ultimateorigins in the pre-war protagonists of the ItalianRationalist movement in Switzerland, above allthe work of the Italian Alberto Sartoris and theTicinese Rino Tami. Sartoris's main realizationswere in the Valais. most notably a church atLourtier (1932) and two small concrete-framedhouses, built in association with viticulture andunder construction between 1934 and 1939, ofwhich the most renowned is the Morand-Pasteurresidence at Saillon (1935). Of the compatibilitybetween Rationalism and rural architecture Sar-toris wrote: 'Rural architecture, wi th its essentiallyregional features, is perfectly at home with today'srationalism. In fact it embodies in practice all thosetunctional criteria on which modern buildingmethods are essentially based.' Where Sartoriswas primarily a polemicist keeping the Rationalistprecepts alive throughout the Second World Warand its aftermath, Tami was mainly a builder. andthe Ticinese architects of the 1960s were able totake his Cantonal Library at Lugano (1936-40 ) asan exemplary Rationalist work.Ticinese practice in the mid-1950s, with theexception of Galletti, was oriented towards thework of Frank Lloyd Wright rather than. the pre-war Italian Rationalists. Of this period Tita Carloniwrote: 'We naively set ourselves the objective ofan organ ic Ticino. in which the values ofmodern culture were to be interwoven in a naturalway with local tradition.' Of Ticinese Nee-Rationalism in the early 1970s we find himwriting:The old Wrightian schemata were superseded. thechapter of 'big commissions for the State. withgood reformist intentions. was closed. It all had tobe begun all over again. from the ground upwards:housing. schools. minor didactic restorations.competition entries as an opportunity to investigate and critically assess the contents andforms of architecture. In the meantime culturalconfrontation in Italy. political commitment. and

the exacting confrontation w ith our own nativeintellectuals . especi ally Virg ilio Gilard oni. meantthat hi story books started to appear on our desks.and above all face d us wi th the challenge ofcritica lly reap praisi ng the whole evolution ofmodernism. mos t especially that of the 1920s and1930s.

As Carloni suggests, the strength of provincialculture resides in its capacity to condense theartistic and critical potential of the region whileassimilating and reinterpreting outside influences.The work of Carloni's prime pupil, Mario Botta, istypical in this respect. with its concentration onissues which relate directly to the specific placewh1le adapting methods and approaches drawnfrom outside. Formally educated under Scarpa,Botta was fortunate enough to work. howeverbriefly, for both Kahn and Le Corbusier during theshort period when they projected civic works forVen1ce. Evidently influenced by these men, Bottawent on to appropriate the Italian Nee-Rationalistmethodology as his own. while simultaneouslyretaming. through Scarpa, an unusual capacity forthe craft enrichment of his form. One of the mostexotic examples of this occurs in his application ofintonaco Iucido (polished plaster) to the fireplacesurrounds of a converted farmhouse at Ligrignanoin 1 l79.

Two other traits in Botta's work may be seen ascriucal: on the one hand. his constant preoccupation with what he terms 'building the site',and on the other, his convicti on thatthe loss of thehistorical city can only be compensated for by'cities in miniature'. Thus Botta's school at Morb iolnferiore is interpreted as a micro-urban realm- asa cultural compensation for the evident loss ofcivic life in Chiasso, the nearest large city. Primaryreferences to the culture of the Ticino landscapeare also evoked by Botta at a typological level.such as the house at Riva San Vitale, which refersobliquely to the traditional tower-like countrysummer houses or 'rocoli' which were onceplentiful in the region .Aside from these references, Botta's housesserve as markers in the landscape- as indicators oflimits or boundaries. The house in Ligornetto, forexample, establishes the frontier where the villageends and the agrarian syste.m begins: its mainaperture (a large cut-out opening) turns away

334 Botta, house at Riva San Vitale, 1972-73.from the fields and towards the village. Botta'shouses are often treated as bunker/belvederes.where the fenestration opens onto choice v iews inthe landscape, concealing the rapacious suburbandevelopment that has taken place in the Ticinosince 1960. Instead of being terraced into the site.they 'build the site', after the thesis advanced byVittorio Gregotti in territorio del/ architettura(1966) . They declare themselves as primary forms.set against the topography and the sky. Theircapacity to harmonize with the partially agricultural nature of the region stems directly from theiranalogicalform and finish; that is to say, from thefair-faced concrete block of their structure andfrom the silo or barn-like shells in which they arehoused. these last alluding to the traditionalagricultural structures from which they arederived.

Despite this feeling for a domestic sensibilitywhich is at once modern and traditional, the mostcritical aspect of Botta's achievement resides in hispublic projects; in particular in the two large-scaleproposals which he designed in collaborationwith Luigi Snozzi. Both of these are 'viaduct'buildings and as such owe something to Kahn'sVenice Congress Hall project of 1968 and toRossi's first sketches for Gallaratese. The 1971Botta/Snozzi project for the Centro Direzionale.Perugia, is projected as a 'city within a city', andthe wider implications of this design clearly stemfrom its potential applicability to many megalopolitan situations throughout the world. Had itbeen realized, this centre, conceived as a 'viaductmegastructure', could have established 1ts presence in the urban region without compromising

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335 Botta and Snozzi, project for the alteration ofZurich Station, 1978: the original station buildingbottom) and bridge across the tracks.

the historic city or fusing with the chaos of thesurrounding suburban development. A comparable clarity and appropriateness obtained in theirZurich Station proposal of 1978, where a multilevel bridge concourse would not only haveaccommodated shops, offices, restaurants andparking but would also have constituted a newhead building whi le some of the original functi onswere retained in the existing terminus.

It s no accident that Tadao Ando, who is one ofthe most regionally conscious architects in Japan,should be based at Osaka rather than Tokyo andthat his theoretical writings should formulate moreclearly than any other architect of his generation aset of precepts which come close to the idea ofCritical Regionalism. This is most evident in thetension that he perceives as obtaining betweenuniversal modernization and the idiosyncrasy ofrooted culture. Thus we find him writing in anessay entitled From Self-Enclosed ModernArchitecture toward Universality :Born and bred in Japan. I do my architecturalwork here. And I suppose it would be possible tosay that the method I have selected is to apply thevocabulary and techniques developed by an open.universalist Modernism in an enclosed realm ofindividual lifestyles and regional differentiation.But it seems difficult to me to attempt to expressthe sensibilities. customs. aesthetic awareness.distinctive culture. and social traditions of a given324

race by means of an open. internationalistvocabulary of Modernism .By enclosed modern architecture Ando intendsthe literal creation of walled enclaves by virtue ofwhich man is able to recover and sustain somevestige of his former intimacy with both natureand culture. Thus he writes:After World War II. when Japan launched on acourse of rapid economic growth. the people svalue criteria changed. The old fundamentallyfeudal family system collapsed. Such socialalterations as concentration of information andplaces of work in cities led to overpopulation ofagricultural and fishing villages and towns as wasprobably true in other parts of the world as well).Overly dense urban and suburban populationsmade it impossible to preserve a feature that wasformerly most characteristic of Japanese re-sidential architecture; intimate connection withnature and openness to the natural world. What 1refer to as an enclosed Modern Architecture is arestoration of the unity between house and naturethat Japanese houses have lost in the process ofmodernization.

In his small courtyard houses, often set withindense urban fabric, Ando employs concrete insuch a way as to stress the taut homogeneity of itssurface rather than its weight, since for him it s themost suitable material for realizing surfacescreated by rays of sunlight [where] wallsbecome abstract. are negated, and approach theultimate limit of space. Their actuality is lost, andonly the space they enclose gives a sense of reallyexisting.

While the cardinal importance of light isstressed in theoretical writings of both Kahn andLe Corbusier, Ando sees the paradox of spatiallimpidity emerging out of light as being peculiarlypertinent to the Japanese character and with thishe makes explicit the broader meaning which heattributes to the concept of a self-enclosedmodernity:Spaces of this kind are overlooked in utilitarianaffairs of everyday and rarely make themselvesknown. Still they are capable of stimulatingrecollection of their own innermost forms andstimulating new discoveries. This is the aim ofwhat I call closed modern architecture. Architec-

ture of this kind is likely to alter with the reg1on 1nwh1ch it sends out roots and to grow in vanousdistinctive individual ways. Still. though closed. Ifeel convinced that as a methodology it is open 1nthe direction of universality.What Ando has in mind is the development of anarchitecture where the tactility of the worktranscends the initial perception of its geometricorder. Precision and density of detail are bothcrucial to the revelatory quality of his forms underlight. Thus he wrote of his Koshino House of1981:Light changes expressions with time. I believe thatthe architectural materials do not end with woodand concrete that have tangible forms but gobeyond to include light and wind which appeal toour senses Detail exists as the most importantelement in expressing identity Thus to me. thedetail is an ele ment which achieves the physicalcomposition of architecture. but at the same time.

t s a generator of an image of architecture.In their article on the Critical Regionalism of the

Greek architects Dimitris and Susana Anto-nakakis, entitled The Grid and the PathwayArchitecture in Greece, 1981 ), Alex Tzonis and

Liane Lefaivre demonstrate the ambiguous roleplayed by the Schinkelschiiler in the building ofAthens and the founding of the Greek state:In Greece historicist regionalism in its neoclassical version had already met with oppositionbefore the arri val of the Welfare State and ofmodern architecture. It is due to a very peculiarcrisis which explodes around tlie end of thenineteenth century. Historicist regionalism herehad grown not only out of a war of liberation; ithad emerged out of interests to develop an urbanelite set apart from the peasant world and its rura lbackwardness and to create a dominance oftown over country: hence the spe cia l appeal ofhistoricist regiona lism. ba sed on the book ratherthan experienc e. w ith its monumentality recall inganother distant and forlorn eli te . Historicalregionalism ha d united pe ople but it had alsodivided them.The various reactions which followed the proliferation of the 19th-century Greek NationalistNeo-Classical style varied from the vernacular

336, 337 Ando , Koshino House, Osaka, 1981: viewand ground plan.

historicism of the 1920s to the committedmodernism of the 1930s as this became manifestin the work of such architects as Stamo Papadakiand J.G. Despotopoulos. As Tzonis points out, a

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338 Pikionis, park paving on the Philopappus Hill,Athens 1957

consciously regionalist modernism emerged inGreece with the earliest works of Aris Konstantinidis (his Eleusis house of 1938 and his Kifissiagarden exhibition of 1940), and this line wasdeveloped further by Konstantinidis in the 1950s,in various low cost housing schemes and in thehotels he designed for the Xenia national touristorganization between 1956 and 1966. In all ofKonstantinidis s publ ic w ork a tension appearsbetween the universal rationality of the trabeatedreinforced concrete frame and the autochthon oustactility of the native stone and blockwork whichis used as infill. A much less equivocal regionalistspirit permeates the park and promenade thatDimitris Pikionis designed for the Philopappus Hillin 1957. on a site adjacent to the Acropolis inAthens. In this archaic landscape. as Tzonis andLefaivre point out,Pikionis proceeds to make a work of architecturefree from technological exhibitiOnism and compositional conceit (so typical of the mainstream ofarchitecture of the 1950s). a stark naked objectalmost dematerialized. an ordering of places madefor the occasion. unfolding around the hill forsolitary contemplation. for intimate discussion. fora small gathering. for a vast assembly ... To weavethis extraordinary braid of niches and passagesand situations. Pikionis identifies appropriatecomponents from the lived-in spaces of folkarchitecture. but in this project the link with theregional is not made out of tender emotion . In acompletely different attitude. these envelopes ofconcrete events are studied with a cold empiricalmethod. as if documented by an archaeologist.326

Neither is their selection and their positioningcarried out to stir easy superficial emotion. The\are platforms to be used in an everyday sense butto supply that which. in the context of contemporary architecture. everyday life does not. Theinvestigation of the local is the condition for

339 340 Antonakakis apartment building in BenakiStreet Athens 1975 Transverse section and view.

reachmg the concrete and the real. and forrehumanizing architecture.Tzonis sees the work of the Antonakakispartnership as combining the topographic path ofPikionis with the universal grid of Konstantinidis.This dialectical opposition seems to reflect onceagain that split between culture and civilizationremarked on by Ricoeur. Perhaps no workexpresses this duality more directly than theirBenaki Street apartments built in Athens in 1975.a layered structure wherein a labyrinthine routedrawn from the Greek island vernacular is woveninto the regular grid of the supporting concreteframe.As with the largely over lapping categories usedin the previous chapter. Critical Regionalism is notso much a style as it is a critical category orientedtowards certain common features, which maynot always be present in the examples cited here.These features, or rather attitudes, may perhapsbe best summarized as follows.

1) Critical Regionalism has to be understoodas a marginal practice, one which, while it iscritical of modernization, nonetheless still refusesto abandon the emancipatory and progressiveaspects of the modern architectural legacy. At thesame time, Critical Regionalism s fragmentary andmarginal nature serves to distance it both fromnormative optimization and from the naiveutopianism of the early Modern Movement. Incontrast to the l ine that runs from Haussmann toLe Corbusier. it favours the small rather than thebig plan.

2) In this regard Critical Regionalism manifestsitself as a consciously bounded architecture, onewhich rather than emphasizing the building as afree-standing object places the stress on theterritory to be established by the structure erectedon the site. This place-fo rm means that thearchitect must recognize the physical boundary ofhis work as a kind of temporal l imit the point atwhich the present act of building stops.

3) Critical Regionalism favours the realizationof architecture as a te toni fact rather than thereduction of the built environment to a series of illassorted scenographic episodes.

4) It may be claimed-that Critical Regionalismis regional to the degree that it invariably stresses

certain site-specific factors. ranging from thetopography, considered as a three-dimensionalmatrix into which the structure is fitted, to thevarying play of local light across the structure.Light is invariably understood as the primary agentby which the volume and the tectonic value of thework are revealed. An articulate response toclimatic conditions is a necessary corollary to this.Hence Critical Regionalism is opposed to thetendency of universal civili zation to optimize theuse of air-conditioning, etc. It tends to treat allopenings as delicate transitional zones with acapacity to respond to the specific conditionsimposed by the site, the climate and the light.

5) Critical Regionalism emphasizes the tactileas much as the visual. It is aware that theenvironment can be experienced in terms otherthan sight alone. It is sensitive to such complementary perceptions as varying levels ofillumination, ambient sensations of heat, cold,humidity and air movement, varying aromas andsounds given off by different materials in differentvolumes, and even the varying sensations inducedby floor finishes, which cause the body toexperience involuntary changes in posture. gait,etc. It is opposed to the tendency in an agedominated by media to the replacement ofexperience by information.

6) While opposed to the sentimental simulation of local vernacular, Critical Regionalismwill, on occasion, insert reinterpreted vernacularelements as disjunctive episodes within thewhole. It will moreover occasionally derive suchelements from foreign sources. In other words itwill endeavour to cultivate a contemporary placeoriented culture without becoming unduly hermetic, either at the level of formal reference or atthe level of technology. In this regard, it tendstowards the paradoxical creation of a regionallybased world culture , almost as though thi s were aprecondition for achieving a relevant form ofcontemporary practice.

7) Critical Regionalism tends to flourish inthose cultural interstices which in one way oranother are able to escape the optimizing thrus t ofuniversal civilization. Its appearance suggests thatthe received noti on of the dominant cultural centresurrounded by dependent, dominated satellites isultimately an inadequate model by which toassess the present state of modern architecture.

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Critical History of Modern Architecture Chapter 5