A Regionalist Panorama for Architecture and Beyond

by Karla Britton, le 30/01/2013

Can architecture preserve local identities in a globalizing world? In their new book, Liane Lefaivre and
Alexander Tzonis present critical regionalism as a viable alternative to the standardization of contemporary
architecture and landscapes. They trace the history of this movement and highlight the social and
environmental challenges that it can help overcome.
Reviewed : Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis. 2012. Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization:
Peaks and Valleys in the Flat World, London and New York: Routledge.

How do we become modern and at the same time remain attached to cultural sources? How do we revive an old,
dormant civilization and at the same take part in an emerging universal civilization? These are the seminal questions
asked by Paul Ricur in his essay Universal Civilization and National Cultures, first published in 1955 inHistoire
et Vrit. They arose from what he understood as the problem created by certain civilizing drives of our modern
era: namely, that humankind is on the brink of a single world civilization which represents both immense progress
and an overwhelming challenge of adapting cultural heritage to a new universal condition. Although expressed more
than a half-century ago, Ricurs concern that a single world civilization creates an attrition of the cultural and
ethical resources of peoples around the globe remains prescient for current political, economic, social and
environmental debates.

Regionalism versus globalization

How to combat the flattening of the worlds natural and cultural diversity is, for example, the key question
addressed by Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis in their recent book,Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of
Globalization: Peaks and Valleys in the Flat World. As scholars of the built environment, Lefaivre and Tzonis
address this issue by calling our attention to the expansive history of regionalism and the ways in which the genius
loci has influenced architects and planners from the time of Augustus to our era. Reflecting more than three decades

of research and writing on the theme of regionalism and architecture, the book engages regionalism not only as a
concept, but also a worldview and architectural movement that stands in opposition to global forces. Regionalism,
the authors write, critically understood, presents a vital complementary alternative for the world to come.
Lefaivre and Tzonis argument is that, throughout history, there has been a regionally based allegiance to the
geography and identity of defined natural landscapes. While the concepts of region and regionalism shift over time
not unlike the amorphous words nation and nationalism they nonetheless emerge as a continuous process when
seen over long spans of time, standing in dynamic confrontation with the forces of globalization. Globalization has
tended to flatten obstacles to the interaction between places, transforming a world of barriers and insular regions
into a flat world. Regionalism, on the other hand, supports the singularity, autonomy and distinct identity of
regions, enhancing differences between them, nurturing diversity, and contributing to a world of peaks and
valleys. As the authors conclude, Regionalism always opposes centralization and universalization, and instead
supports decentralization and autonomy.

Critical regionalism: a progressist approach

Regionalist thought, of course, has had a long lineage of cultural and social influence beyond the discipline of
architecture. The current work discusses, for example, Johann Heinrich von Thnens The Isolated State (1826), in
which he imagined an ideal isolated state, or the geographer Walter Christallers twentieth-century models from
the 1930s of the multiplicity of scale of modern human settlements. These more geographically and territorially
oriented historical works, and the powerful influence they had on cultivating a sense of identity determined by
topography, are implicitly in the background of Lefaivre and Tzonis work. Yet we owe to them the application of
the word critical to the idea of regionalism, implying in the Kantian sense a movement of self-evaluation and
critique. Having emerged more than thirty years ago, the idea of critical regionalism immediately began to define a
movement in architectural thought and practice that sought a set of design methods grounded in local particularity.
The values evoked in the writings of Tzonis and Lefaivre became one of the most debated rhetorical stances in late
modern and contemporary architecture.
As the idea of regionalism was adapted by Kenneth Frampton (1983), it took on a more overt pattern of resistance to
the homogenizing influences of capitalistic techno-scientific culture. Drawing on Hannah Arendts distinction
between the instrumentality of labor and the immanent value of work, Frampton posited critical regionalism as a
mediating practice in which a local culture of architecture is consciously evolved to express opposition to the
domination of hegemonic power (Frampton 1988, p. 56). This more ontological reading which also draws on the
Heideggerian notion of a bounded place-form might be contrasted with that of Tzonis and Lefaivre, whose
approach tends to be more historically focused. Indeed, they have consciously distanced the criticality of their own
regionalist thinking from Heideggerian influence, arguing that his idea of the earth, the land and home are
inseparably linked with the idea of Volk, a closed human group linked through common ethnic identity, soil and

language (Lefaivre 2003, p. 35). Whereas in their reading Heidegger understood the loosening of these ties to lead
to decadence, they take the attitude (following Lewis Mumford) that it leads to progress.
In any case, it was the synthetic aspiration of critical regionalism that gained it international recognition, suggesting
for many architects and urbanists especially in developing regions such as India and Latin America a clear set of
principles that could provide a basis for a regionally inflected practice while also being committed to a secular,
modernist society and an abstract modernist vocabulary. For instance, such architects as Charles Correa and
B. V. Doshi, both Indian, understood Framptons critical regionalism as an affirmation of their own locally adapted
appropriation of Western modernism. The complexity of the questions raised by such a stance, however, perhaps
accounts for the criticism most often leveled against regionalist thinking: that it is unable to account for the blurring
of traditional tribal and geographic boundaries, artificially assuming an authentic ethnic homogeneity within
cultures. (One might observe in reference to the current work under review that, given these authentic scholarly
complexities, it is unfortunate that the format of the book, the imagery, and the editing, does not help to support the
seriousness of the overall project.)

A panorama of regionalist directions

Lefaivre and Tzoniss positivistic employment of the term regionalism exhibits their indebtedness to the American
historian and urbanist Lewis Mumford. In Technics and Civilization (1934), Mumford presents the idea of region
as an intellectual vehicle for thinking through his lasting concern for the future of the city; for the impact of the
machine on the individual and the collective; and for architectures role in addressing these societal issues. Drawing
inspiration from Mumfords work, Tzonis and Lefaivre in the late 1970s were among the first scholars to write about
a new generation of young European architects who sought to express a profound understanding of place through
their buildings. In deploying the term regionalism, Lefaivre and Tzonis engaged what they perceived as a movement
in architecture that reflected a careful evaluation of local identities that were resistant to more doctrinaire
approaches. For them, this movement was a continuation of a long succession of architects who opposed an
authoritarian standard and universal approach and sought alternative ways of making buildings, landscapes and
cities that reassured the particularity of a region, its unique environment and materials, the special character of its
culture, and the way of life of its people.
Positioned within the two great parameters of globalization and regionalism, the authors ofArchitecture of
Regionalism in the Age of Globalization weave together a number of ambitious agendas from their previous work.
This latest book is essentially a synoptic narrative of regionalism, touching upon an enormous span of historical
themes and case studies from Vitruvius to the garden-villas of the medieval popes; from the implications of the
Treaty of Westphalia to the landscapes of Louis XIV; from eighteenth-century English poetry and landscape design
to the French philosophes; or from Pugins theories of Gothic architecture to the moral regionalism of Ruskin. In

addition, the book touches upon more problematic understandings of regionalism, such as its shift away from an
objective concern for the division of the earths surface to issues of ethnic emancipation in the twentieth century.
The book also documents Lefaivre and Tzonis lasting concern with architects who approach design through a selfconscious rootedness in local context, as opposed to a mimicking of fashionable international models. The final two
chapters, for example, treat regionalism in more recent architectural history, looking at it in relation to the
International style and through a series of specific paradigms in such works as Alvar Aaltos Syntsalo Town Hall
(1952), which established alternative methods for dealing with technology and for embracing a buildings
relationship to its site. The authors are particularly interested in the social and environmental significance of Dimitris
Pikionis Pathway up the Acropolis and the Philopappos Hill (1953). Inspired by the Panathenaic Way, the project
overtly treated the natural landscape as an architectural component. It thereby demonstrated the affinities between
regionalism and garden design especially where the natural landscape is perceived as essential for forming and
preserving memory and identity indicating how topography became for Tzonis and Lefaivre an important
conceptual device for speaking about contemporary design issues.
The purpose of the authors in providing overviews of such projects is as comprehensive as it is broad: to offer a
panorama of regionalist directions in contemporary architecture, without unduly narrowing or codifying the scope of
the regionalist impulse. As an introduction to regionalism, the book maintains a strong binary opposition to
globalization and the claim that a flat, global world leads to a better life. Yet it also suggests the possibility that
the emerging concern for ecological complementarity could serve as a means of mediating this opposition.
Following that thread might lead one back to a more extensive engagement with the dilemma suggested by Ricur,
where the advantageous civilizing forces of global systems on traditional cultures make it increasingly difficult to
work within the fixed polarities of the global and local.
Bibliography

Christaller, Walter. 1933. Die zentralen Orte in Sddeutschland, Jena: Gustav Fischer.

Frampton, Kenneth. 1988. Place-Form and Cultural Identity, in John Thakara (ed.),Design After
Modernism, New York: Thames and Hudson.

Lefaivre, Liane. 2003. Critical Regionalism: A Facet of Modern Architecture since 1945, in Liane
Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis, Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World,
Munich: Prestel.

Mumford, Lewis. 1934. Technics and Civilization, New York: Harcourt.

Ricur Paul. 1965. Universal Civilization and National Cultures, in Charles A. Kelbley (ed.), History and
Truth, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Thnen, Johann Heinrich von. 1966. Isolated State, translated by Carla M. Wartenberg, Oxford: Pergamon
Press.

The role of Identity in Critical Regionalism

The notion of Critical Regionalism was introduced 25 years ago by Alexander Tzonis to draw attention to the
approach taken by a group of young German architects in Europe. This group was working on an alternative to the
postmodernism that, with few exceptions, had not really taken architecture, as it meant to do, out of a state of
stagnation and disrepute by the reintroduction of historical knowledge and cultural issues in design (Tzonis, Lefaivre
2003, p. 10).
The main task of Critical Regionalism is, according to Lefaivre and Tzonis, to rethink architecture through the
concept of region. Critical Regionalism differs from Regionalism because it does not support the emancipation of
a regional group nor does it set up one group against another (Tzonis, Lefaivre 1990, p. 31). Critical Regionalism is
critical of the products of globalization as much as it is of regionalism itself. Tzonis and Lefaivre in Tropical
Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization maintain: Critical regionalism should be seen as
complementary rather than contradictory to trends toward higher technology and a more global economy and
culture. It opposes only their undesirable, contingent by-products due to private interests and public mindlessness
(Tzonis and Lefaivre 2001, pp. 8-9).
For Critical Regionalists, region/place does not coincide with a nation or a territory of an ethnic group as in the
Heideggerian way of thinking. But it is mindful of local potentials. As Tzonis says in Critical Regionalism,
Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World, critical regionalists are opposed to mindlessly adopting the
narcissistic dogmas in the name of universality, leading to environments that are economically costly and
ecologically destructive to the human community (Tzonis, Lefaivre 2003, p. 20).
Considering that this critical position separates them from the picturesque and kitsch, we may say that for the critical
regionalists, places are being continuously reinvented, and this everyday reinventing of a place seems to be
linked to what Manuel Castells calls project identity, where the social agent is both critical of legitimizing
identity and critical of resistance identities; a project identity which critically refers to continuation (local potential)
and change (new technologies, new materials, products of the globalization); to the homely and unhomely.

_________________________________________________________________________
Defamiliarization
I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldnt remember whether or not I had
dusted it. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious, I could not remember and felt that it was impossible
to remember. If some conscious person had been watching, then the fact could be established. If, however, no one
was looking, or looking unconsciously, if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such
lives are as if they had never been. - Tolstoys diary of March 1st 1897, quoted by Shklovsky in 1965 (Tzonis and
Lefaivre 1986. p. 277).
Defamiliarization refers to the unfamiliar, the unheimlich, to Sigmund Freuds article The Uncanny (1919). As
Anthony Vidler argues in his The Architectural Uncanny, essays in the Modern Unhomely, For Freud,
unhomeliness was more than a simple sense of not belonging; it was a fundamental propensity of the familiar to
turn on its owners, suddenly to become defamiliarized, derealized, as if in a dream (Vidler 1992, p. 7).
Defamiliarization amounts to making the familiar seem strange. It is a term coined by the Russian critic Victor
Shklovsky and, as indicated by Lefaivre and Tzonis, is a term closely related to Brechts Verfremdung (Tzonis and
Lefaivre 1986, p. 278) as well as to Aristotles xenikon.
In Russian Formalist Criticism: four essays, Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis argue that for Victor Shklovsky, the
purpose of art is to force us to notice. They argue that for Shklovsky, perception is an end in itself, that the good
life is the life of a man fully aware of the world, whereby defamiliarization is the chief technique for promoting
such perception.
As Tzonis and Lefaivre argue, defamiliarization proved to be easily applied in architecture, where it helps
architecture to carry out its critical function (Tzonis and Lefaivre 1990, p.29). Via defamiliarization architects can
differentiate their work, and prick the consciousness of the dwellers/observers by provoking a dialog with them and
inviting them to identify the known from the unknown. The dweller remains alert to the changes, to the
disadvantages and advantages of modern society. Therefore, as in the cases illustrated by Hilde Heynen concerning
mimesis, defamiliarization is here also applied with a critical function[1]. How could that be used? Lemon and Reis
argue, It [defamiliarization] is not so much a device as a result obtainable by any number of devices (Lemon and
Reis 1965, pp. 4-5). So defamiliarization is not a set of procedures. Defamiliarization may occur through the use of
different strategies that are part of the architects knowledge, and it depends on the architects cognitive capability.
To speak about defamiliarization in architecture, one must first speak about the way architects recollect precedents.
Tzonis and Lefaivre in Classical Architecture, The Poetics of Order, show three kinds of approach: citationism,

syncretism, and the use of fragments in architectural metastatements (Tzonis and Lefaivre 1986, p. 281). Tzonis and
Lefaivre use these approaches in combination with classical architecture, but I will generalize them here for the
recollection of any (fragment of) precedent.
In their analysis of these approaches, they argue that citationism is the approach mostly taken in Kitsch architecture
as well as Post-Modern architecture. With this approach, the architect gives the viewer the sense of familiarity or
over-familiarity. It is an approach that, accordingly, alienates the dweller from the reality of living in current modern
societies, in particular in the metropolis. A citationist approach seems to alienate because it does not prick the
consciousness of the dweller/inhabitant. It avoids confrontation and tries to promote a sentimental embracing
between the building and the consumer, a relation that seems to be broken in modernity. If, relying on Shklovsky, we
believe that the good life is the life of a man who is fully aware of the world, then we need to awake the perception
of those who are living their lives in unawareness. It is maybe possible to defamiliarize the precedent by
paraphrasing it, by interpreting the precedent or by using it not literally but in figurative way,
Metastatements refer to the defamiliarization. In this approach, fragments of physical precedents or conceptual
precedents are brought to the target design. The intention is to provoke in the viewer a kind of dialog: it is about
meaning. By defamiliarization, the fragment may be, for example, recombined with different precedent elements
(syncretism) or transferred to a different domain producing a sense of estrangement.
We can illustrate the notion of defamiliarization with the project of the Jewish museum in Berlin by Libeskind and
his use of the Star of David by showing the actions that it involved. Hilde Heynen in herArchitecture and Modernity,
a critique called this recollection mimesis which seems to comprise three different events.
First, Libeskind made use of what Peter Eisenmann would call a graft (a motivation to start designing): he drew lines
connecting addresses of Jews who lived in Berlin prior to the Second World War. He arrived at what seemed to him
to be the Star of David, which obviously is not found in the map of Berlin: it is the result of the cognitive process
carried out by Libeskind alone. Looking at his invention, he saw that the star was intersected by the remains of the
wall and by a river, and with a mental leap the idea of the fragmented star was born.
In an autonomous moment, he recollected a piece of this fragmented star and gave form to his building. However, he
did not bring an over-familiarized piece of the star; the fragment is deformed, to preserve some trees of the site and it
becomes strange, unfamiliar. In summary, Libeskind comes to his design based on the use of a graft (drawing lines
to connect addresses), analogy (transference of a fragment of the star to the target design) and defamiliarization. It is
used as a metastatement and has without doubt a critical function. Belonging to Libeskinds autonomous moment,
you only perceive the idea because you are informed by literature, and not by experience.
Lefaivre and Tzonis do not provide a checklist or a method to design a proper architecture. However, they suggest
the use of the modernist technique of defamiliarization to deal with an often over-familiarized idea of home and
place.
They argue: Defamiliarization is at the heart of what distinguishes critical regionalism from other forms of
regionalism and its capability to create a renewed versus an atavistic, sense of place in our time [] The critical
approach of contemporary regionalist architecture reacts against this explosion of regionalist counterfeit setting [as
used in Romantic regionalism] by employing defamiliarization. Critical regionalism is interested in specific elements
from the region, those that have acted as agents of contact and community, the place-defining elements, and
incorporates them strangely, rather than familiarly, it makes them appear strange, distant, difficult even disturbing.
It disrupts the sentimental embracing between buildings and their consumers and instead makes an attempt at
pricking the conscience (Tzonis and Lefaivre 2001, pp. 8-9).
In summary, defamiliarization is a device which makes the familiar strange and makes the recollection of a
precedent critical rather than a picturesque manifestation of the past. One may recollect a precedent in a syncretist
mode, in a citationist mode and as a meta-statement (Tzonis 1986). The citationist mode is the closest to the
picturesque and the kitsch. The syncretist mode is the putting together of all kinds of objects in a new combination,
while the meta-statement mode is purely used to make a point and to communicate it to others. However, with
defamiliarization, the margins of these three modes of recollection becomes a little blurred.
Identities are the source of meaning (Castells 1997); the critical regionalist approach reintroduces meaning in
addition to feeling in peoples view of the world (Tzonis and Lefaivre 2001, pp. 8-9) by defamiliarizing the design
precedents.

References
Castells, Manuel. 2004. The Power of Identity. In: The Information Age, Economy, Society, and Culture. Volume II.

Frampton, Kenneth. 1983. Towards a Critical Regionalism, Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance. In: The
Anti-Aesthetic, Essays on Postmodern Culture. Edited by: Hal Foster. Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press
Heynen, Hilda. 1999. Architecture and Modernity, a critique. Cambridge, Massachusets: The MIT Press
Holland, John. 1995. Hidden Order, How Adaptation Builds Complexity. Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus Books
Koolhaas, Rem; Bruce Mau; Hans Werlemann. 1998. The Generic City. In: S,M,L,XL. Monacelli Press
Moraes Zarzar, K. 2003. Use & Adaptation of Precedents in Architectural Design: Toward an Evolutionary Design
Model. Delft: Delft UniversityPress
Panicker, Shaji K. Implicit Metastatements, Domestic signs in the architecture of Mathew and Ghosh
Archits, India. Http://www.layermag.com/shaji.pdf
Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. 1986. Classical Architecture, The Poetics of
Order. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Tzonis, A., and Lefaivre, L. (co-author). 1988. Metafora, memoria e modernit. L'Arca. March 1988, pp. 4-12
Case study on the use of analogical thinking and metaphor in design.
Tzonis, A., and Lefaivre, L. (co-author). 1990. Why Critical Regionalism Today? A & U. no.5 (236). May
1990. pp. 23-33
Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. 1996. Critical Regionalism. In: The Critical Landscape. Edited by: A.
Graafland and Jasper de Haan. The Stylos Series. Rotterdam: OIO Publishers
Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. 2001. Chapter 1: Tropical Critical Regionalism: Introductory Comments.
In: 2001. Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization. Edited by: Alexander Tzonis,
Liane Lefaivre and Bruno Stagno. Wiley-Academy.
Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. 2003. Critical Regionalism, Architecture and Identity in a Globalized
World. Munich; Berlin; London; New York: Prestel.