OASE 103 Critical Regionalism Revisited

The English architect, historian, critic and educator Kenneth Frampton received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the latest Venice Biennale 2018. There is no architecture student that is not familiar with the book Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) of this renowned historian, nor with his essay ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism, Six Points of an Architecture of Resistance’ (1983). In this last text, Frampton searched for an alternative approach towards architecture by defining the specifics of topography, climate, light and tectonics as essential to the art of building. This issue of OASE examines the canonical role of Kenneth Frampton’s concept of ‘Critical Regionalism’, reaching beyond its traditional interpretation. It gathers contributions that propose a new genealogy of the text, critical re-readings and explorations by practicing architects and architecture theorists that evaluate the interest of Frampton’s ideas for contemporary architecture.