History and Theory of Architecture IX: Climates of Regionalism

Abstract

The lecture course discusses architectural regionalisms along global readings on architecture in view of climate change and changing political climates.

Objective

The course provides tools to critically asses the discourse on architectural regionalisms in Western and non-Western architecture to date.

Content

Even at the close of the 20th century, a Swiss architect still ventured to claim that "conditions can be counted among the constant factors in the long term". Only "the reaction to the climate", he continued, "and the meaning attributed to it is subject to change". However, climate and change are undeniably two intertwined components of what constitutes today a global environmental change. Regional differentiations in architecture once associated with diverging local climates may proof obsolete.—The lecture course discusses whether climate and climate change are to be understood as one of Lewis Mumford’s 1930s "universal agencies" that "does not wipe out the realities of regional life", but "merely unites them to a greater whole". The range is meant to be global: Since in the post-Second World War era a renewed interest in architectural regionalism was tied to lessons from the tropics, i.e. from former Western colonies, the issue of dependencies of an architecture of independence in a global field of tension will be discussed in its various radiations that touch on regionalist considerations in general.—Topics discussed include "the hot and the cool" in the discourse of architectural regionalism, from the vernacular revival to the search for nature and its construction, climate determinism, and the narratives of recovery and justice. What if an "An Experiment in Modern Regional Architecture in the Tropics" (Minnette de Silva) were to become a model for a more than regional architecture? Or if it turns out that experiments in Arctic architecture (Ralph Erskine) are not limited to the northernmost geographic zones, but spread to other territories?

Resources