Critical regionalism is an architectural approach that emphasizes highlighting regional characteristics to combat placelessness. It seeks a middle ground between modernism and postmodernism. Kenneth Frampton's book "Towards A Critical Regionalism" discusses this approach. It argues modernism often ignores site topography, resulting in placelessness, while critical regionalism would embrace topography as a manifestation of a region's history. Frampton also emphasizes the importance of architecture being tectonic rather than just scenographic, and considers how materials and setting can be experienced through multiple senses beyond just sight. In summary, critical regionalism is about truly considering a site's surrounding context, history, and topography before modifying it in a way that replaces experience with information

1. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (AUGUST 2016) [10 MARKS]
NAME: Eunice Chan Yu Ming ID: 0315729
LECTURER: Mr Nazmi TUTORIAL TIME: 4pm-6pm
SYNOPSIS NO: 4 READER TITLE: Towards A Critical Regionalism
AUTHOR: Kenneth Frampton
Critical regionalism is an approach to architecture in the twentieth century which involves
highlighting regional site and environmental conditions as attempts to combatthe placelessness ofthe
universal and lack of identity of the international style architecture, it was a paradox between two
extreme movements: Modernism that return to the root of international style and a reaction to the
boringness: Post-Modernism. The basic goal was to find a middle ground between the two extremes.
Although Frampton seems to reject both movements as well as discard fanciful structure and
ornamentation ofpost-modernarchitecture,he seems to have more affinity towards modernprinciples.
In the book “Towards A Critical Regionalism”, Frampton stated under the fifth point “Culture
Versus Nature” that Modernism often adopts approach of tabula rasa to clear and flatten the
typography of site thus making way for the rational layout of building. However, the elimination of
topography is often a motion resulting in placelessness. Consequently, critical regionalism would
rather embrace the topography as a manifestation ofregions and agriculture history. With this in mind,
I could not agree more with the sentence “building the site” by Mario Botta as it refers to how the
building should restructure in various layers in supporting the idiosyncrasies to find their expression
without falling into sentimentality.
In addition,Frampton further emphasizes to validate the importance ofarchitecture as tectonic
rather than the reduction of the built environment to a series ofscenographic. It is apparent that the
uses of tactile surface has ability to make the whole building more legible with the example of Alvar
Aalto’s Saynatsalo Town Hall. As a matter of fact, the tactile is as much as the visual. It is conscious
that the setting can be experienced in various rather than sight alone. For instance, it is delicate to
complementary perceptions in few different stages of sensation and sounds given off by different
materials which cause the body to acknowledge instinctive vicissitudes in gait.
In a nutshell, it is important to truly consider the relationship of the site in response to the
contextsurrounding with not only the history, topography ofexisting landscape butalso the individual
and communities before trying to modify it. It should not be opposed to the tendency in an age
dominated by media to the replacement of experience by information.

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