Critical

Regionalism
Kenneth Frampton
Neo expressionism
International
• Organic Architecture
• Structural Expressionism Style
Expresionismo
Arquitectonico
Postmodernism Latemodern
Movimiento Moderno
• Historicist
• Pop
• Regionalist Vernacular
High Tech
Deconstruction
Neo
Critical
Regonalism
Rationalism
Parametric Minimal
Architecture
Blurring
Sustainable
Architecture Architecture
Critical Regionalism
• Critical regionalism is an
approach
to architecture that strives
to counter the
placelessness and lack of
identity of the International
Style, but also rejects the
whimsical individualism and
ornamentation
of Postmodern architecture.
• The stylings of critical
regionalism seeks to
provide an architecture
rooted in the modern
tradition, but tied to Centro para débiles visuales
geographical and cultural Oaxaca, Oaxaca. Arq. Mauricio
context. Rocha
Traditional wall building technique
• Think Global,
design Local.
• Buildings that concepts
allow the
immediate
topography,
region and culture
to influence the
design.
• Place, Identity,
colective memory,
culture…are
concepts that go
with critical
regionalism
Mauricio Rocha. Centro para débiles visuales,
Oaxaca.
Rocha employs vernacular building techniques
• Works as a sole
practitioner, primarily
designing environmentally
Glenn Murcutt
sensitive modern houses
that respond to their
Pritzker 2002
surroundings and climate,
as well as being
scrupulously energy
conscious, has been
named to receive the 2002
Pritzker Architecture
Prize.
•  His small, but exemplary
practice is well known for
its environmentally
sensitive designs with a
distinctive Australian
character. His architecture
has remained consistent
over time.
• The fact that all his
designs are tempered by
the land and climate of his
nativeAustralia, and have
the uniqueness that the
Prtizker Prize jury has
chosen to celebrate. 
The son of Simpson Lee House,
Australian
parents, was 1994
born in London
in 1936. He
grew up in the
Morobe district
of New Guinea,
where he
developed an
appreciation for
simple,
primitive
architecture
Murcutt studied
at the University
of New South
Wales,
graduating in
1961 with a
degree in
architecture.
After completing
• It is an economic and
sustainable prototype Marika-Alderton
sample serving the
Australian authorities to house
build comfortable spaces,
and adapted to the place,
where they can live the
aborigines.
• Built for Aboriginal artist,
Banduk Marika and her
partner, architect Glenn
Murcutt faced the
challenge of creating a
livable home in a tropical
climate where
temperatures never drop
below 25 º and can reach
40 º. Its design should
avoid methods “culturally
alien” as the air
conditioning mechanical
Marika-Alderton house
ttps://es.wikiarquitectura.com/edificio/casa-marika-
alderton/
• Fins
• The house is sheltered
from the sun by using
wide eaves. Rotating
tubes along the roof expel
warm air and vertical fins,
facing the ocean, capture,
slow speed and the
incoming fresh and
fragrant ocean breezes in
the interior spaces of the
house creating a more
comfortable environment.
 Renzo Piano, Jean Marie
Thibauld Cultural Center
• Piano
inspired
in the
vernacula
r
architectu
re of the
zone to
design a
monzoon
resistant
modern
structure
Renzo Piano, Jean Marie
Thibauld Cultural Center
• In the eighties, Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre
{1981} and Kenneth Frampton {1985} created the
term “critical regionalism” to describe a contemporary
architecture which could neither be branded as
internationalism nor as a folkloric or historical concept
of region and architecture. The architecture of critical
regionalism makes reference to the site, the “genius
loci” on a more abstract level. Rather than dealing
extensively with the region itself and a particular
regional style, Frampton’s concept of regionalism
mainly focuses on the relationship of a building to its
site and location in a sociological context. 
Soto de Moura, Casa das
Historias: Paula Rego Museum
Critical Regionalism
• It was seen as a way of becoming independent from the
capitalist {neo-liberal} mechanisms of media and economy,
which tend to dominate the world in a process of
globalization.
• According to Tzonis and Lefaivre, architecture should also
refer to the notion of self-reflection. It should be
independent of an emotional {therefore easy to
manipulate} view of a country’s way of looking at region,
tradition and history.
• Frampton’s “critical” attempt was to work against an ever-
increasing industrialized and standardized world-wide use of
building materials and construction methods which neglects
and destroys local building traditions and their transgression
into contemporary architecture. 
Critical Regionalism
• Jørn Utzon,
Bagsvaerd Church
(1973–6), Denmark;
combinations of
local culture and
universal
civilization.
Critical Regionalism
• Critical regionalism is not simply regionalism in the sense
of vernacular architecture. It is a progressive approach to
design that seeks to mediate between the global and the
local languages of architecture.
• The phrase "critical regionalism" was first used by the
architectural theorists Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre
and, with a slightly different meaning, by the historian-
theorist Kenneth Frampton.
• Is a concept created by Alex Tzonis and Kenneth Frampton
to name a new display of regionalism in architecture.
• It is an attitude against wordwide fashion that tries to
create an international western architecture,uniform for all
cultures, that imposses formal patterns and languages.
Ningbo Museum, by Wang
Shu
• In the 1990s, the concept of “Critical Regionalism” has become
the key theme of an intense and lasting debate on local,
modern architecture {see, among others, Axthelm 1990 and
Achleitner 1997}. In the process of the reflection on the “own”
and the “foreign” in contemporary architecture, the term
“critical regionalism” was also used as a theoretical basis to
describe “modern” architecture in developing countries. It was
taken up in many countries of the South to re-examine their
traditions in search of their "own" traditional values, principles
and national identity. This process has had an impact on
contemporary architecture and has eventually triggered an
intense discussion on how local "own-ness" should be created
without simply copying fragments from the past.
• Jonathan Budd.
 Critical Regionalism
• It is a new kind of regionalism.
• It is a critic to the destruction of structures
in contemporary architecture

The traditional chinese building technique called wa-pang is

displayed as decoration with ancient tiles and bricks in the Ningbo
Kenneth
Frampton
• In Towards a Critical
Regionalism: Six points for an
architecture of resistance,
Frampton recalls Paul Ricoeur’s
"how to become modern and to
return to sources; how to revive
an old, dormant civilization and
take part in universal
civilization".
• According to Frampton's
proposal, critical regionalism
should adopt modern
architecture, critically, for its
universal progressive qualities
but at the same time value
should be placed on the
geographical context of the
building.
Alvar Aalto, Saynatsaalo City
Hall
• Emphasis,
Critical
Frampton says, Regionalism
should be on
topography,
climate, light; on
tectonic form
rather than on
scenography and
should be on the
sense of touch
rather than visual
sense. Frampton
draws
on phenomenolog
Itzimna House, by Architect Salvador Reyes
y for his Ríos. Vernacular bioclimatic solutions and
argument. regional materials are mixed with modern
ones