Prospects for a Critical Regionalism

Kenneth Frampton

Perspecta, Vol. 20. (1983), pp. 147-162.

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http://www.jstor.org Wed Dec 12 11:36:13 2007 Kenneth Frampton 147

Prospects for a Critical Regionalism

Luis Barragan, Las Arboledas, 1961.

Perspecta: The Yale ArchitecturalJoud Volume 20 0079-0958/83/20147-016S3.W/0 Q 1983 by Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, Inc., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kenneth Frampton 148

The phenomenon of universalization, tural past which has been the raison d'etre while being an advancement of mankind, of a nation? . . . Whence the paradox: on at the same time constitutes a sort of sub- the one hand, it has to root itself in the tle destruction, not only of traditional cul- soil of its past, forge a national spirit, and tures, which might not be an irreparable unfurl this spiritual and cultural revindica- wrong, but also of what I shall call for the tion before the colonialist's personality. time being the creative nucleus of great But in order to take part in modern civi- civilizations and great cultures, that nu- lization, it is necessary at the same time cleus on the basis of which we interpret to take part in scientific, technical, and po- life, what I shall call in advance the ethical litical rationality, something which very and mythical nucleus of mankind. The often requires the pure and simple aban- conflict springs up from there. We have don of a whole cultural past. It is a fact: the feeling that this single world civiliza- every culture cannot sustain and absorb tion at the same time exerts a sort of attri- the shock of modern civilization. There is tion or wearing away at the expense of the paradox: how to become modern and the cultural resources which have made to return to sources; how to revive an old, the great civilizations of the past. This dormant civilization and take part in uni- threat is expressed, among other disturb- versal civilization. . . . ing effects, by the spreading before our eyes of a mediocre civilization which is No one can say what will become of our the absurd counterpart of what I was just civilization when it has really met dif- calling elementary culture. Everywhere ferent civilizations by means other than throughout the world, one finds the same the shock of conquest and domination. bad movie, the same slot machines, the But we have to admit that this encounter same plastic or aluminum atrocities, the has not yet taken place at the level of an same twisting of language by propa- authentic dialogue. That is why we are in ganda, etc. It seems as if mankind, by ap- a kind of lull or interregnum in which we proaching en masse a basic consumer can no longer practice the dogmatism of culture, were also stopped en masse at a a single truth and in which we are not yet subcultural level. Thus we come to the capable of conquering the skepticism into crucial problem confronting nations just which we have stepped. We are in a tun- 1 rising from underdeve'opment' In order nel, at the twilight of dogmatism and the Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Cultures", History and Truth (Evanston, Illinois: to get on to the road toward moderniza- dawn of real dialogues. Northwestern University Press, 1961) pp. 276,283. tion, is it necessary to jettison the old cul- Paul Ricoeur

The term critical regionalism is not in- The philosopher Paul Ricoeur has ad- tended to denote the vernacular, as this vanced the thesis that a hybrid "world was once spontaneously produced by the culture" will only come into being combined interaction of climate, culture, through a cross-fertilization between myth and craft, but rather to identify rooted culture on the one hand and uni- those recent regional "schools" whose versal civilization on the other. This para- aim has been to represent and serve, in a doxical proposition, that regional culture critical sense, the limited constituencies in must also be a form of world culture, is which they are grounded. Such a region- predicated on the notion that develop- alism depends, by definition, on a con- ment in se will, of necessity, transform the nection between the political conscious- basis of rooted culture. In his essay "Uni- ness of a society and the profession. versal Civilization and National Cultures" Among the pre-conditions for the emer- of 1961, Ricoeur implied that everything gence of critical regional expression is not will depend in the last analysis on the ca- only sufficient prosperity but also a pacity of regional culture to recreate a strong desire for realising an identity. One rooted tradition while appropriating for- of the mainsprings of regionalist culture eign influences at the level of both culture is an anti-centrist sentiment-an aspira- and civilization. Such a process of cross- tion for some kind of cultural, economic fertilization and reinterpretation is impure and political independence. by definition. This much is at once evi- Kenneth Frampton 149

dent, say, in the work of the Portugese only result in consumerist iconography architect Alvaro Siza y Viera. In Siza's ar- masquerading as culture. chitecture Aalto's collage approach to building form finds itself mediated by nor- It is my contention that Critical Regional- mative typologies drawn from the work of ism continues to flourish sporadically the Italian Neo-rationalists. within the cultural fissures that articulate in unexpected ways the continents of Eu- It is necessary to distinguish at the outset rope and America. These borderline between critical regionalism and the sim- manifestations may be characterized, plistic evocation of a sentimental or ironic after Abraham Moles, as the "interstices 3 vernacular. I am referring, of course, to of freed~m."~Their existence is proof that Abraham Moles, "The Three Cities", Directions in Art, that nostalgia for the vernacular which is the model of the hegemonic center sur- Theory and Aesthetics, ed. Anthony Hill (London: currently being conceived as an overdue rounded by dependent satellites is an in- Faber and Faber, Limited, 19681, p. 191. return to the ethos of a popular culture; adequate and demagogic description of for unless such a distinction is made one our cultural potential. will end by confusing the resistant capac- ity of Regionalism with the demagogic Exemplary of an explicitly anti-centrist re- tendencies of Populism. In contradistinc- gionalism was the Catalonian nationalist tion to Regionalism, the primary goal of revival which first emerged with the foun- Populism is to function as a communica- dation of the Group R in the early Fifties. 2 tive or instrumental sign.' Such a sign This group, led by J. M. Sostres and Oriol Jan Mukaiovskv, Structure, Sign and Function (New seeks to evoke not a critical perception of Bohigas, found itself caught from the be- Haven: Yale University Press, 19701, p. 228. Perhaps I reality, but rather the sublimation of a de- ginning in a complex cultural situation. am overstating the case. However, Mukarovsky writes: "The artistic sign, unlike the communicative sire for direct experience through the pro- On the one hand, it was obliged to revive sign, is not serving, that is, not an instrument." vision of information. Its tactical aim is to the Rationalist, anti-Fascist values and attain, as economically as possible, a pre- procedures of GATEPAC (the pre-war conceived level of gratification in behav- Spanish wing of C.I.A.M.); on the other, it ioristic terms. In this regard, the strong remained aware of the political responsi- affinities of Populism for the rhetorical bility to evoke a realistic regionalism; a techniques and imagery of advertising is regionalism which would be accessible to hardly accidental. the general populace. This double-headed program was first publicly announced by On the other hand, Critical Regionalism Bohigas in his essay, "Possibilities for a 4 is a dialectical expression. It self- Barcelona Ar~hitecture,"~published in 0. Bohigas. "Posibilidades de una arquitectura consciously seeks to deconstruct univer- 1951. The various impulses that went to Barcelona", Destino (Barcelona, 1951). See also sal modernism in terms of values and make up the heterogeneous form of Cata- 0. Bohigas. "Disenar para un publico o contra un publico", in Seix Barral, Contra una arquitectura images which are locally cultivated, while lonian Regionalism exemplify, in retro- adjetivida (Barcelona, 1969). at the same time adulterating these au- spect, the essentially hybrid nature of an tochthonous elements with paradigms authentic modern culture. First, there was drawn from alien sources. After the dis- the Catalonian brick tradition which evi- junctive cultural approach practised by dently dates back to the heroic period of 5 Adolf Loos, Critical Regionalism recog- the Modernismo; then there was the influ- See lgnazio Gardella's Casa Borsalino Apartments nizes that no living tradition remains ence of Neoplasticism, an impulse which built in Alexandria in 1951. available to modern man other than the was directly inspired by Bruno Zevi's La subtle procedures of synthetic contradic- poetica della architettura neoplastica of tion. Any attempt to circumvent the dia- 1953 and, finally, there was the revisionist lectics of this creative process through the style of Italian Neo-Realism-as exempli- eclectic procedures of can fied above all in the work of lgnazio Ga~della.~

The career of the Barcelona architect J. A. Coderch has been typically Regionalist in- asmuch as it has oscillated, until recent date, between a mediterraneanized, mod- ern brick vernacular-Venetian in evoca- tion-apparent, say, in his eight-storey brick apartment block built in Barcelona in the Paseo Nacional in 1952- 54 (a mass ar- ticulated by full-height shutters and over- hanging cornices), and the avant-gardist, 1 2 Neoplastic composition of his Casa Cata- J. A. Coderch and Jesus Sanz. Casa Catasus, exterior. sus completed at Sitges in 1957. The work Casa Catasus. Sitges. Barcelona. 1958. plan. of Martorell, Bohigas and Mackay has Kenneth FramDton 150

tended to oscillate between comparable Nothing could be further from Bofill's in- poles; between, on the one hand, an as- tentions than the architecture of the Por- sumed brick vernacular close to the work tugese master Alvaro Siza y Viera, whose of Coderch and Gardellas and, on the career, beginning with his swimming pool other, their Neo-Brutalist public manner; at Quinta de Conceicad, completed in this last being best exemplified in the 1965, has been anything but photogenic. technical rationalism of their Thau School This much can be discerned not only from built in the suburbs of Barcelona in 1975. the fragmentary evasive nature of the published images but also from a text The recent deliquescence of Catalonian written in 1979: Regionalism finds its most extreme mani- festation in the work of Ricardo Bofill and Most of my works were never pub- the Taller de Arquitectura. For where the lished; some of the things I did were early work of Bofill (for example, the Calle only carried out in part, others were Nicaragua apartments of 1964) displayed profoundly changed or destroyed. evident affinity for the re-interpreted brick That's only to be expected. An archi- vernacular of Coderch, the Taller was to tectonic proposition whose aim is to adopt a more exaggerated rhetoric in the go deep . . . a proposition that in- Seventies. With their Xanadu complex tends to be more than a passive ma- built in Calpe (1967), they entered into a terialisation, refuses to reduce that flambovant romanticism. This castellated same reality, analysing each of its syntax reached its apotheosis in their he- aspects, one by one; that proposi- roic, but ostentatious, tile-faced Walden 7 tion can't find support in a fixed im- complex at Saint-Just Desvern (1975). age, can't follow a linear evolu- With its twelve-storey voids, underlit liv- tion. . . . Each design must catch, ing rooms, miniscule balconies and its with the utmost rigour, a precise now disintegrating tile cladding, Walden 7 moment of the flittering image, in denotes that delicate boundary where an all its shades, and the better you can initially sound impulse degenerates into recognize that flittering quality of an ineffective Populism-a Populism reality, the clearer your design will whose ultimate aim is not to provide a be. . . . That may be the reason why liveable and significant environment but only marginal works (a quiet dwell- rather to achieve a highly photogenic ing, a holiday house miles away) form of scenography. In the last analysis, have been kept as they were origi- despite its passing homage to Gaudi, Wal- nally designed. But something re- den 7 is devoted to a form of adrnass se- mains. Pieces are kept here and 3 duction. It is architecture of narcissism there, inside ourselves, perhaps fa- Ricardo Bofill, Walden 7. Saint- thered by someone, leaving marks Just Desvern (near Barcelona). par excellence, for the formal rhetoric ad- 1975. dresses itself mainly to high fashion, and on space and people, melting into a to the marketing of Bofill's flamboyant process of total tran~formation.~ 6 personality. The Mediterranean hedonistic A. Siza, "To Catch a Precise Moment of Flittering utopia to which it pretends collapses on It could be argued that this hyper- Images in All its Shades", Architecture and closer inspection, above all at the level of sensitivity toward the fluid and yet spe- Urbanism, Tokyo, no. 123, December 1980, p. 9. the roofscape where a potentially sen- cific nature of reality renders Siza's work suous environment has not been borne more layered and rooted than the eclectic out by the reality of its occupation. tendencies of the Barcelona School for, by

4 Alvaro Siza y Viera, Quinta de Conceicad, Matosinhos. Portugal, 1958.65. plan. Kenneth Frampton 151

5 Siza y Viera, Bires House, Povoa do Varzim, 1976, elevation.

6 Bires House, plan.

taking Aalto as his point of departure, he a particular kind of filtration and penetra- seems to have been able to ground his tion. Like Aalto's Jyvaskyla University building in the configuration of a given (1957), or his Saynatsalo City Hall (1949), topography and in the fine-grained specif- all of Siza's buildings are delicately lay- icity of the local context. To this end his ered and inlaid into their sites. His ap- pieces are tight responses to the urban proach is patently tactile and materialist, fabric and marinescape of the Porto re- rather than visual and graphic, from his gion. Other important factors are his ex- Bires House built at Povoa do Varzim in traordinary sensitivity towards local 1976 to his Bouca Resident's Association materials, craft work, and, above all, to Housing of 1977. Even his small bank the subtleties of local light-his sense for buildings, of which the best is probably

7 Siza y Viera, Bouca Residents Association Housing. Porto, 1977, sketches. Kenneth Frarnpton 152

9 Raimund Abraham. House with Three Walls, project, 1972-75.

the Pinto branch bank built at Oliveira de My earliest childhood memories are Azemeis in 1974, are topographically con- related to a ranch my family owned ceived and structured. near the village of Mazamitla. It was a pueblo with hills, formed by The theoretical work of the New York- houses with tile roofs and immense based Austrian architect Raimund eaves to shield passersby from the Abraham may also be seen as having la- heavy rains which fall in that area. tent regionalist connotations inasmuch as Even the earth's color was interest- this architect has always stressed place ing because it was red earth. In this creation and the topographic aspects of village, the water distribution sys- the built environment. The House with tem consisted of great gutted logs, Three Walls (1972) and the House with in the form of troughs, which ran on Flower Walls (1973) are typical ontological a support structure of tree forks, 5 works of the early Seventies, wherein the meters high, above the roofs. This project evokes the oneiric essence of the aqueduct crossed over the town, site, together with the inescapable materi- reaching the patios, where there ality of building. This feeling for the tec- were great stone fountains to re- tonic nature of built form and for its ceive the water. The patios housed capacity to transform the surface of the with stables, with cows and chick- earth has been carried over into Abra- ens, all together. Outside, in the ham's recent designs made for Interna- street, there were iron rings to tie 8 tional Bauausstellung in Berlin, above all the horses. The channeled logs, cov- Siza y Viera. Pinta Branch Bank. his recent projects for South Friedrich- ered with moss, dripped water all Oliveira de Azemeis, 1974. stadt, designed in 1981. over town, of course. It gave this vil- lage the ambience of a fairy tale. An equally tactile but more specifically re- gionalist approach is obtained in the case No, there are no photographs. I 7 of the veteran Mexican architect Luis have only its memory.' Emilio Ambasz, The Architecture of Luis Barragan Barragan, whose finest houses (many of (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 19761 p. 9. which have been erected in the suburb of This remembrance has surely been fil- Pedregal) are nothing if not topographic. tered through Barragan's life-long in- As much a landscape designer as an ar- volvement with . chitect, Barragan has always sought a Similar feelings and concerns are evident sensual and earthbound architecture; an in his opposition to the invasion of pri- architecture compounded out of en- vacy in the modern world and in his closures, stelae, fountains, water courses, criticism of the subtle erosion of na- color saturation; an architecture laid into ture which has accompanied postwar volcanic rock and lush vegetation; an ar- civilization: chitecture that refers only indirectly to the Mexican colonial estancia. Of Barragan's Everyday life is becoming much too feeling for mythic and rooted beginnings public. Radio, T.V., telephone all in- it is sufficient to cite his memories of the vade privacy. Gardens should there- apocryphal pueblo of his youth: fore be enclosed, not open to public Kenneth Frampton 153

10 Raimund Abraham, Universal Corner Building for a City Block, International Building gaze. . . . Architects, are forgetting in the 1940s, in the early work of Oscar Exhibition, Berlin, 1984, competition proiect, 1980-81, the need of human beings for half- Niemeyer and Alfonso Reidy; in Argen- model. light, the sort of light that imposes a tina in the work of Amancio Williams- tranquility, in their living rooms as above all in Williams' bridge house in well as in their bedrooms. About Mar del Plata of 1945 and more recently half the glass that is used in so perhaps in Clorindo Testa's Bank of Lon- many buildings- homes as well as don and South America, built in Buenos offices-would have to be removed Aires in 1959; in Venezuela, in the Ciudad in order to obtain the quality of light Universitaria built to the designs of Carlos that enables one to live and work in Raoul Villanueva between 1945 and 1960; a more concentrated manner. . . in the West Coast of the United States, Before the machine age, even in the first in Los Angeles in the late 1920s in middle of cities, Nature was every- the work of Neutra, Schindler, Weber and body's trusted companion. . . . Now- Gill, and then in the so-called Area adays, the situation is reversed. and Southern California schools founded Man does not meet with Nature, by William Wurster and Hamilton Harwell even when he leaves the city to Harris respectively. No-one has perhaps commune with her. Enclosed in his expressed the idea of a Critical Regional- shiny automobile, his spirit stamped ism more discretely than Harwell Harris in with the mark of the world whence his address, "Regionalism and National- the automobile emerged, he is, ism" which he gave to the North West within Nature, a foreign body. A bill- Regional Council of the AIA, in Eugene, board is sufficient to stifle the voice Oregon, in 1954: of Nature. Nature becomes a scrap 8 of Nature and man a scrap of man.' Opposed to the Regionalism of Re- C. Banford-Smith, Builders in the Sun: Five Mexican striction is another type of regional- Architects (New York: Architectural Book Publishing By the time of his first house and studio ism; the Regionalism of Liberation. Co., 1967) p. 74. built in Tacubaya, Mexico D.F. in 1947, This is the manifestation of a region Barragan had already made a subtle that is especially in tune with the move away from the universal syntax of emerging thought of the time. We the so-called International Style. And yet call such a manifestation "regional" his work has always remained committed only because it has not yet emerged to that abstract form which has so charac- elsewhere. It is the genius of this re- terized the art of our era. Barragan's pen- gion to be more than ordinarily 11 chant for large, almost inscrutable aware and more than ordinarily Luis Barragan with Mathias Goertiz. Satellite City Towers. abstract planes set in the landscape is free. Its virtue is that its manifesta- 1967. perhaps at its most intense in his garden tion has significance for the world for Las Arboledas of 1961 and his freeway outside itself. To express this region- monument, Satellite City Towers, de- alism architecturally it is necessary signed with Mathias Goertiz in 1967. that there be building,-preferably a lot of building-at one time. Only so Regionalism has, of course, manifested it- can the expression be sufficiently self in other parts of the Americas; in Brazil general, sufficiently varied, suffi- Kenneth Frampton 154 Kenneth Frampton 155

12 ciently forceful to capture people's that if one were to follow a 26 degree Wolf Associates, Fort Lauderdale Riverfront Plaza. imaginations and provide a friendly latitudinal line around the globe, cornpetltlon entry, 1982, site plan and elevat~on. climate long enough for a new one would find Fort Lauderdale in school of design to develop. the company of Ancient Thebes-the throne of the Egyptian sun god, Ra. San Francisco was made for Further to the East, one would find Maybeck. Pasadena was made for Jaipur, India, where heretofore, the Greene and Greene. Neither could largest equinoctal sundial in the have accomplished what he did in world was built 110 years prior to any other place or time. Each used the founding of Fort Lauderdale. the materials of the place; but it is not the materials that distinguish Mindful of these magnificent histor- the work. . . . ical precedents, we sought a symbol that would speak of the past, pres- A region may develop ideas. A re- ent and future of Fort Lauderdale. gion may accept ideas. Imaginations . . . To capture the sun in symbol a and intelligence are necessary for great sundial is incised on the Plaza both. In California in the late Twen- site and the gnomon of the sundial ties and Thirties modern European bisects the site on its north-south ideas met a still developing region- axis. The gnomon of the double alism. In New England, on the other blade rises from the south at 26 de- hand, European Modernism met a grees 5 minutes parallel to Fort rigid and restrictive regionalism that Lauderdale's latitude. . . . at first resisted and then surren- dered. New England accepted Euro- Each of (the) significant dates in Fort pean Modernism whole because its Lauderdale's history is recorded in own regionalism had been reduced the great blade of the sundial. With 9 to a collection of restrictions.' careful calculation the sun angles Harwell H. Harris, "Regionalism and Nationalism", are perfectly aligned with penetra- Student Publication of the School of Design, North Despite an apparent freedom of expres- Carolina State of the University of North Carolina at tions through the two blades to cast Raleigh, Volume 14, No. 5. sion, such a level of liberative regionalism brilliant circles of light, landing on is difficult to sustain in North America to- the otherwise shadowy side of the day. Within the current proliferation of sundial. These shafts of light illu- highly individualistic forms of narciss- minate an appropriate historical ism-a body of work which is ultimately marker serving as annual historical cynical, patronising and self-indulgent reminders. rather than rooted-only two firms today display any consistent,sensitivity towards Etched into the eastern side of the the evolution of a regional culture which plaza, an enlarged map of the City is both specific and critical. shows the New River as it meets the harbor. The eastern edge of the The first example would be the simple, building is eroded in the shape of site-responsive houses designed by An- the river and introduces light into drew Batey and Mark Mack for the Napa the offices beneath the Plaza along Valley area in California; the second its path. would be the work of the architect Harry Wolf, whose work, which has so far been The River continues until it meets largely restricted to North Carolina, is de- the semicircle of the water court signed out of Charlotte. Wolf's sensitivity where the river path creates a wall to the specificity of place has perhaps of water even with the level of the been most intensely demonstrated in his Plaza, providing a sixteen foot cas- recent competition entry for the Fort cade into the pool below. The map Lauderdale Riverfront Plaza. The descrip- follows the river upstream until it tion of this work at once displays both a reaches the gnomon where, at map feeling for the specificity of the place and scale, the juncture of the blade and a self-conscious reflection on the locus of the river coincide exactly with the Fort Lauderdale in history. site on which the blade stands.'' Description submitted by Harry Wolf Associates on September 3, 1982 for the Fort Lauderdale Riverfront Plaza Competition. The worship of the sun and the In Europe the work of the Italian architect measurement of time from its light Gino Valle may also be classified as criti- reach back to the earliest recorded cal and regionalist inasmuch as his entire history of man. It is interesting to career has been centered around the city note in the case of Fort Lauderdale of Udine, in Italy. From here Valle was to Kenneth Frampton 156

make one of the earliest post-war rein- Corbusian, vaulted villa at Campione terpretations of the Italian Lombardy ver- d'ltalia on the Italo-Swiss frontier (1960) nacular in the Casa Quaglia built at Sutrio may be seen as initiating the resistance of in 1956. Throughout the Fifties, Valle dedi- Swiss regional culture to the rule of inter- cated himself to the evolution of an indus- national Miesianism. This resistance trial format for the Lombardy region. This found its echo almost immediately in development reached its zenith in his other parts of Switzerland, in Aurelio Zanussi Rex factory built at Pordenone in Galfetti's equally Corbusian Rotalini 1961. Aside from this, he was to extend House, in Bellinzona and in the Atelier 5 his capacity for a more richly-textured version of the Corbusian b&ton brut man- and inflected regional expression in his ner, as this appeared in private houses thermal baths, built at Arta in 1964 and in at Motier and Flamatt and in Siedlung his project for the Udine Civic Theatre Halen, built outside Bern in 1960. Today's submitted one year before. Regionalism, Ticinese Regionalism has its ultimate as we have seen, is often not so much a origins not only in this pioneering work collective effort as it is the output of of Schnebli, Galfetti and Atelier 5, but a talented individual working with com- also in the Neo-Wrightian work of Tita mitment towards some sort of rooted Carloni. expression. The strength of provincial culture surely Apart from the Western United States, Re- resides in its capacity to condense the ar- gionalism first became manifest in the tistic potential of the region while rein- post-war world in the vestigial city-states terpreting cultural influences coming of the European continent. A number of from the outside. The work of Mario Botta regional architects seem to have had their is typical in this respect, with its con- origins in this middle ground in the first centration on issues which relate directly decade after the war. Among those of the to a specific place and with its adaptation pre-war generation who have somehow of various Rationalist methods drawn remained committed to this regional in- from the outside. Apprenticed to Carloni flection one may count such architects and later educated under Carlo Scarpa in as Ernst Gisel in Zurich, Jarn Utzon in Venice, Botta was fortunate enough to Copenhagen, Vittorio Gregotti in Milan, work, however briefly, for both Kahn and Gino Valle in Udine, Peter Celsing in Le Corbusier during the short time that Stockholm, Mathias Ungers in Cologne, they each projected monuments for that in Oslo, Aris Konstantinides city. Evidently influenced by these men, in Athens, Ludwig Leo in Berlin, and the Botta has since appropriated the meth- late Carlo Scarpa in Venice. Louis Kahn odology of the Italian Neo-Rationalists as 13 may also be considered to be a region- his own, while simultaneously retaining, G~noValle. Casa Quagl~a. ally-oriented architect inasmuch as he through his apprenticeship with Scarpa, Sutrio. 1956, section was to remain committed to Philadelphia, an uncanny capacity for the craft enrich- both as myth and reality, throughout his ment of both form and space. Perhaps the 14 Casa Quaglia, plan life. It is symptomatic of his concern for most striking example of this last occurs preserving the urban qualities of down- in his application of intonocare lucido town Philadelphia that he should show (polished plaster) to the fireplace sur- the central city area as a citadel; as a sec- rounds of a converted farmhouse that tor walled in like Carcassonne by an auto- was built to his designs at Ligrignano in route instead of a bastion and studded on 1979. its perimeter with cylindrical parking silos instead of castellated towers. Two other primary traits in Botta's work may be seen as testifying to his Regional- Switzerland, with its intricate linguistic ism; on the one hand, his constant preoc- and cultural boundaries and its tradition cupation with what he terms building the of cosmopolitanism, has always dis- site, and, on the other, his deep conviction played strong regionalistic tendencies; that the loss of the historical city can only ones which have often assumed a critical now be compensated for on a fragmen- nature. The subtle cantonal combination tary basis. His largest work to date, of admission and exclusion has always fa- namely his school at Morbio Inferiore, as- vored the cultivation of extremely dense serts itself as a micro-urban realm; as a forms of expression in quite limited areas, cultural compensation for the evident loss and yet, while the cantonal system serves of urbanity in Chiasso, the nearest large to sustain local culture, the Helvetic Feder- city. Primary references to the culture of ation facilitates the penetration and as- the Ticino landscape are also sometimes similation of foreign ideas. Dolf Schnebli's evoked by Botta at a typical level. An ex- Kenneth Frampton 157

15 Mario Bona, Farmhouse at Ligrignano, 197E79.

16 Mario Bona, Casa Rotunda, Stabio, 1981.

ample of this would be the house at Riva in the two large-scale proposals which he San Vitale, which refers obliquely to the designed in collaborative with Luigi traditional country summer house or Snozzi. Both of these are "viaduct" build- rocoli which was once endemic to the ings and as such are certainly influenced region. to some degree by Kahn's Venice Con- gress Hall project of 1968 and by Rossi's Aside from this specific reference, Botta's first sketches for Galaratese of 1970. The houses often appear as markers in the first of these projects, their Centro Di- landscape, either as points or as bound- rezionale di Perugia of 1971, is projected aries. The house in Ligornetto, for exam- as a "city within a city" and the wider im- ple, establishes the frontier where the plications of this design clearly stem from village ends and the agrarian system be- its potential applicability to many Mega- gins. The visual acoustics of its plan stem lopolitan situations throughout the world. from the gun-sight aperture of the house Had it been realized, this regional center, which turns away from the fields and to- built as an arcaded galleria, would have wards the village. Botta's houses are in- been capable of signaling its presence to variably treated in this way, as bunker- the urban region without compromising belvederes, where the fenestration opens the historic city or fusing with the chaos towards selected views in the landscape, of the surrounding suburban develop- thereby screening out, with stoic pathos, ment. A comparable clarity and appropri- the rapacious suburban development that ateness was obtained in their Zurich has taken place in the Ticino region over Station proposal of 1978. The advantages the past twenty years. Finally, his houses of the urban strategy adopted in this in- are never layered into the contours of a stance are so remarkable as to merit brief 11 given site, but rather "build the site"" by enumeration. This multileveled bridge Vittorio Gregotti, L'Architettura come territoria. declaring themselves as primary forms, structure would have not only provided Botta took his notion of building thesite from the Set the topography and the sky. four separate concourse levels to accom- thesis that Gregotti advanced in this book. Their surprising capacity to harmonize modate shops, offices, restaurants, etc., with the still partially agricultural nature but would have also constituted a new of the region stems directly from their head building at the end of the covered analogical form and finish; that is to say, platforms. At the same time it would have from the fair-faced. concrete block of their emphasized an indistinct urban boundary structure and from the silo or barn-like without compromising the historic profile shell forms in which they are housed, of the existing terminus. these last alluding to the traditional ag- ricultural structures from which the In the case of the Ticino, one can lay form derives. claim to the actual presence of a Region- alist School in the sense that, after the Despite this demonstration of a convinc- late 1950s, this area produced a body of ing, modern, domestic sensibility, the remarkable buildings, many of which most critical aspect of Botta's achieve- were collectively achieved. This much is ment does not reside in his houses, but clear, not only from the diversity of rather in his public projects; in particular Botta's own collaborators but also from Kenneth Frampton 158

associations which took place without his individual lifestyles and regional dif- participation. Once again credit is due to ferentiation. But it seems difficult to the older generation such as Galfetti, me to attempt to express the sen- Carloni, and Schnebli, who frequently col- sibilities, customs, aesthetic aware- laborated with younger architects. There ness, distinctive culture, and social is no room here to list all the architects traditions of a given race by means involved, but some idea of the scope of of an open, internationalist vocabu- 12 this endeavor may be obtained from the lary of Modernism . . .I2 , "From Self-Enclosed Modern fact that the Ticinese "school" comprised Architecture Toward Universality", The Japan well over twenty architects who were As Ando's argument unfolds we realize Architect, no. 301, May 1982, pp. 8-12. variously to build some forty buildings of that for him an Enclosed Modern Architec- note between 1960 and 1975. ture has two meanings. On the one hand he means quite literally the creation of en- It is hardly surprising that Tadao Ando, claves or, to be specific, court-houses by who is one of the most regionally con- virtue of which man is able to recover scious architects in Japan should be and sustain some vestige of that time- based in Osaka rather than Tokyo and that honoured triad,-man, nature, culture- his theoretical writings should formulate against the obliterating onslaught of more clearly than any other architect of Megalopolitan development. Thus Ando his generation a set of precepts which writes: come close to the idea of Critical Region- alism. This is most evident in the tension After World War II, when Japan that he perceives as obtaining between launched on a course of rapid eco- the process of universal modernization nomic growth, the people's value and the idiosyncrasy of rooted culture. criteria changed. The old fundamen- Thus we find him writing in an essay en- tally feudal family system collapsed. titled, "From Self-Enclosed Modern Archi- Such social alterations as concentra- tecture toward Universality," tion of information and places of work in cities led to overpopulation Born and bred in Japan, I do my ar- of agricultural and fishing villages chitectural work here. And I suppose and towns (as was probably true in it would be possible to say that the other parts of the world as well); method I have selected is to apply overly dense urban and suburban 17 Mario Bona and LUI~ISnozzi. the vocabulary and techniques de- populations made it impossible to New Adrnin~strativeCenter at veloped by an open, universalist preserve a feature that was formerly Perugia, competition entry, 1971. sketch. Modernism in an enclosed realm of most characteristic of Japanese resi- Kenneth Frarnpton 159

known. Still they are capable of stimulating recollection of their own innermost forms and stimulating new discoveries. This is the aim of what I call closed modern architec- ture. Architecture of this kind is likely to alter with the region in which it sends out roots and to grow in vari- ous distinctive individual ways, still, though closed, I feel convinced that as a methodology it is open in the direction of universality.15

What Ando has in mind is the develop- ment of a trans-optical architecture where the richness of the work lies beyond the initial perception of its geometric order. The tactile value of the tectonic compo- nents are crucial to this changing spatial revelation, for as he was to write of his Koshino Residence in 1981:

Light changes expressions with time. I believe that the architectural materials do not end with wood and concrete that have tangible forms but go beyond to include light and dential architecture; intimate con- wind which appeal to our senses. nection with nature and openness to . . . Detail exists as the most impor- 15 the natural world. What I refer to as tant element in expressing identity. Tadao AndB, The Japan Architect. an Enclosed is . . . Thus to me, the detail is an ele- a restoration of the Unity between ment which achieves the physical 16 house and nature that Japanese composition of architecture, but at Tadao AndB, The Japan Architect. houses have lost in the process of the same time, it is a generator of 13 modernization.13 an image of architecture.'" Tadao Ando, The Japan Architect. In his small courtyard block houses, often That this opposition between universal set within dense urban fabric, Ando em- civilization and autochthonous culture ploys concrete in such a way as to stress can have strong political connotations has the taut homogeneity of its surface rather been remarked on by Alex Tzonis in his than its weight, since for him it "is the article on the work of the Greek architects most suitable material for realizing sur- Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis, en- faces created by rays of sunlight. . . titled, "The Grid and Pathway," in which (where).. . walls become abstract, are he demonstrates the ambiguous role negated, and approach the ultimate limit played by the universality of the of space. Their actuality is lost, and only Schinkelschuler in the founding of the the space they enclose gives a sense of Greek state. Thus we find Tzonis writing:

really existing." l4 14 Tadao AndB, The Japan Architect. In Greece, historicist regionalism in While the cardinal importance of light is its neo-classical version had already present in theoretical writings of-Louis met with opposition before the ar- Kahn and Le Corbusier, Ando sees the rival of the Welfare State and of paradox of spatial limpidity emerging out modern architecture. It is due to a of light as being peculiarly pertinent to very peculiar crisis which explodes the Japanese character and with this he around the end of the nineteenth makes explicit the second and broader century. Historicist regionalism here meaning which he attributes to the con- had grown not only out of a war of cept of a self-enclosed modernity. He liberation; it had emerged out of in- writes: terests to develop an urban elite set apart from the peasant world and its

18 Spaces of this kind are overlooked rural "backwardness" and to create Bona and Snozzi, Zur~ch in utilitarian affairs of everyday liv- a dominance of town over country: Railway Stat~on,competltlon entry. 1978. ing and rarely make themselves hence the special appeal of histor- Kenneth Frarnpton 160

19 Tadeo And6, Koshino Residence, 1981, plan projection.

20 Koshino Residence, courtyard.

21 Koshino Residence, interior.

22 Koshino Residence, living room. Kenneth Frampton 161

icist regionalism, based on the book materialized, an ordering of "places rather than experience, with its made for the occasion," unfolding monumentality recalling another around the hill for solitary contem- distant and forlorn elite. Historical plation, for intimate discussion, for a regionalism had united people but it small gathering, for a vast assembly. 17 had also divided them." Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, "The Grid and To weave this extraordinary braid of the Pathway: An Introduction to the Work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis, with Prolegomena to a While the various reactions which fol- niches and passages and situations, History of the Culture of Modern Greek Architecture", lowed the nineteenth-century triumph of Pikionis identifies appropriate com- Architecture in Greece, no. 15, 1981, pp. 164-78. the Greek Nationalist, Neo-classical style ponents from the lived-in spaces of varied from vernacular historicism in the folk architecture, but in this project Twenties to a more thorough-going mod- the link with the regional is not ernist approach which, immediately be- made out of tender emotion. In fore and after the Second World War, first a completely different attitude, proclaimed modernity as an ideal and these envelopes of concrete events then directly attempted to participate in are studied with a cold empirical the modernization of Greek society. method, as if documented by an ar- chaeologist. Neither is their selec- As Tzonis points out, critical regionalism tion and their positioning carried only began in Greece with the thirties out to stir easy superficial emotion. projects of Dimitri Pikionis and Aris Kon- They are platforms to be used in an stantinidis, above all in the latter's Eleusis everyday sense but to supply that house of 1938 and his garden exhibition which, in the context of contempo- built in Kifissia in 1940. It then manifested rary architecture, everyday life does itself with great force in the pedestrian not. The investigation of the local zone that Dimitri Pikionis designed for the is the condition for reaching the Philopappus Hill, in 1957, on a site imme- concrete and the real, and for re- 18 diately adjacent to the Acropolis in humanizing architecture.'' Tzonis and Lefaivre, Architecture in Greece Athens. In this work, as Tzonis points out: Unlike Pikionis, Konstantinidis, as his ca- Pikionis proceeds to make a work of reer unfolded, moved closer to the ration- architecture free from technological ality of the universal grid and it is this exhibitionism and compositional affinity that now leads Tzonis to regard conceit (so typical of the main- the work of Antonakakis as lying some- stream of architecture of the 1950s) where between the autochthonous path- a stark naked object almost de- way of Pikionis and universal grid of

23 Dlm~tr~Pikionls and Arls Konstantinides, Garden Exhlbition. Klfissia, 1940. plan and axonometric. Kenneth Frampton 162

Konstantinidis. Are we justified in seeing more general terms, recognition should this dualism as yet a further manifestation be given to the development of Bologna of the interaction between culture and in the Seventies. In this instance, an ap- civilization, and if so, what are the gen- praisal was made of the fundamental eral consequences? Tzonis writes of morphology and typology of the city fab- Antonakakis' work and of critical regional- ric, and socialist legislation was intro- ism in general that: ". . . (it) is a bridge duced to maintain this fabric in both old over which any humanistic architecture of and new development. The conditions un- the future must pass, even if the path may der which such a plan is feasible must of 19 lead to a completely different direction."lg necessity be restricted to those surviving Tzonis and Lef aivre, Architecture in Greece. traditional cities which have remained Perhaps the one work of Antonakakis subject to responsible forms of political which expresses this conjunction of grid control. Where these cultural and political and the pathway more succinctly than conditions are absent, the formulation of any other is the Benakis Street apartment a creative cultural strategy becomes more building completed to their designs in difficult. The universal Megalopolis is pa- Athens in 1975; a building wherein a con- tently antipathetic to a dense differentia- cept of labyrinthine path-movement, tion of culture. It intends, in fact, the drawn from the islands of Hydra, is reduction of the environment to nothing woven into the structural fabric of a ra- but commodity. As an abacus of develop- tionalist grid-the ABA concrete frame ment, it consists of little more than a hal- which sustains the form of the building. lucinatory landscape in which nature fuses into instrument and vice versa. Criti- If any central principle of critical regional- cal Regionalism would seem to offer the ism can be isolated, then it is surely a sole possibility of resisting the rapacity of commitment to place rather than space, this tendency. Its salient cultural precept or, in Heideggerian terminology, to the is 'place' creation; the general model to nearness of raum, rather than the dis- be employed in all future development is tance of spatiurn. This stress on place the enclave-that is to say, the bounded may also be construed as affording the fragment against which the ceaseless political space of public appearance as for- inundation of a place-less, alienating con- mulated by Hannah Arendt. Such a con- sumerism will find itself momentarily junction between the cultural and the checked. political is difficult to achieve in late capi- talist society. Among the occasions in the last decade on which it has appeared on