Critical Regionalism and Civic Architecture-a way of twenty one century of the world

Critical Regionalism and Civic Architecture-a Way of Twenty-One Century of the World

Anqi Yang

Originally published on July 25, 2013

Directed by Dr. Patrick Haughey

In the UIA 20th World Congress of Architects of 1999, Bei Jing Charter was proposed and generated the regulations of contemporary sustainable architecture and Generalized Architecture. Unfortunately, until now more and more damages have done to the environment and society by architecture activities; nearly seventy percent of people of the world still have not received the benefits from modern architectural development. Forests and farmlands have been unrecoverable seriously destroyed by the architecture activities in many countries many places in the world, which constantly threatened the biological system on the earth. Following the main ideas of the two papers “Some Reflections on Architecture and Construction”, by Eladio Dieste, and “Design for Life Informality and Reflexivity in a Second Modernity”, by Robert Cowherd, this essay will give a relative full visual for the path of the modern architecture in the twenty-first century.


Design theory and practice

  “It is the most elemental kind of structure and often a simplistic solution that does not distribute loads in the most efficient way”, Eladio Dieste argued that some architects usually employed their familiar methods to design the structures without any examination of some other types of construction techniques’ possibilities. The practice is extremely important and architects need to go to the construction workplaces and try any types of methods of construction. A good idea does not come from the papers or models; instead, it comes from the practicing of construction. “The great risk of computation is that laziness and the mechanical work of programming the machine will distance us from the substance of the real.” “Besides, models are more expensive and time-consuming than computation, and are useful only at a final stage in the design of very complex structures.” Any types of renderings and expressions methods should be criticized if they are just in theory. Designers need to think more and take more practical processes. Christopher Wolfgang Alexander used explained in his book “A Pattern Language” that an architecture’s form shall be formed in the people’s imaginations, experiences, and events, rather from any intuitional media.

Why should engineers and architects use similar construction systems in those projects? Why couldn’t architects explore and test the diversity of materials and techniques for their projects? For instance, almost all the temporary residential projects in China are concrete frame structures or concrete frame shear wall structures. Because of the decreasing of forests, the woods were prohibited for structures materials. Also, based on the national earthquake safety code, the masonry structures are totally illegal for urban projects. As a result, concrete frames are the main form of structures for architecture.

I used to work in the construction companies and insisted on making the budget table of the construction project and eighteen-floor urban tower residential building. I became to understand that how much it is important to decrease the budget of the construction. Actually, all the companies, institutes, and governments which attended or had a relationship with the project would get many profits. The construction cost per meter square for the project which our company worked on was cheap. Personally, I would rather improve the techniques of construction, the management, and materials, than to exchanging the structure types. After all, this is a quite normal project, unlike the project which could be designed and built by a group of people who are designated by an architect. However, nowadays architects still need to do more effects on exploring various forms of structures and forms. Just like Eladio Dieste pointed that, “[s]patial conception, form, and materials must constitute a whole.” Indeed there is a gap between architecture forms and structure forms; architects cannot transfer their ideas ideally into engineering forms. Both the architects and engineers could not unify the forms, materials, and structures in the best way.

Why should we pay attention to the theory of Civic Architecture?

What is the second modernity of architecture? In Robert Cowherd’s paper, he mentioned the term “reflexivity” to discuss his idea. “The common-sense understanding of reflexivity comes from its root ‘reflex’ meaning an action performed in response to a stimulus without conscious thought,” as he added.

“In each case, the act of architecture is a small thing relative to the scale of the forces that are released. This is evidence that suggests an attitude characteristic of metis: design as an instrument of ‘cunning intelligence’; architecture that turns seemingly intractable conflicts into new opportunities; the strategic deployment of fairly modest means in ways that release the multiplier effects of reflexive social and economic forces.”

“Reflex” design refers to any occasional events that could create the design target.  There is no dogma and no default program. Architecture shall be divided into the events which happened every day; architecture needs to be integrated into the people’s lives. Finally, there is no project existing but people and events.

Luxury architecture is widely studied in Academic schools by students; those kinds of projects are full of architecture history and art history classes. Professors would seldom mention the civic architectures. Here is a metaphor about luxury architecture and civic architecture. The civic architecture is similar to the fundamentalism, which has a large group of disciples and existed since the birth of architecture until now; luxury architecture is similar to the secularization, which has small group disciples and has a not long history. Unfortunately, many famous and architectures are not designed and built by architects, and a huge number of architecture works were built by the craftsmen. Architects were trained for servicing for the nomenclatures since the Renaissance. Nomenclatures controlled the academies, controlled the system of architecture speculating, design, and construction. Architecture is an important money machine, so it is kind of significant commodity (In utopian theory, architecture is not a commodity). Consequently, the real estate market appears and it is a part of the financial market. Nowadays residential projects in those developed and some developing countries are excess, architects might not have many chances in residential projects. On the other side, seventy percent of people in the world are still living in slums or makeshift. The disaster occurred frequently, and some of them are huge disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes. In the past ten years, more than 450000 people lost their lives in natural disasters, which include Si Chuan China, Japan, Off West Coast of Northern Sumatra, Haiti, and Pakistan. Countless buildings were destroyed in those countries. In fact, because of the war, disease, desertification, and global climate exchanges, many more people are dying, and more buildings and habitats have been destroyed around the world. On the one side, architecture students have a huge competition in design fields, and recent year’s architecture major has a low employment rate. On the other hand, more and more habitats are destroyed and disappearing and more and more buildings are serious aging.


Perhaps architects need to redefine their social positions and responsibilities. If someday the financial system is totally collapsed, or the nation is bankrupt (Finland was used to be the boundary of the bankrupt in the great depress several years ago), what shall those architects do? Shall they continue the struggle for their careers or totally change their careers? How much have our architects' done effects on the architecture of environmental improving? How many effects have our architects' done effects on sustainable architecture or civic architecture? Why have so many people died of the poor structures of architecture during the earthquakes? Have we done any effects on that?

Moreover, there is not enough and convince evidence could prove modernism is dead. After all, it is indeed dead in America last century, some other countries, but absolutely not in China. Modernism is totally misunderstood by many architects and scholars, in fact, a large number of buildings are far behind modern architecture standards. What they need to do is improving and developing modern architecture practically, and the architecture design processes will still follow the basic principles of modern architecture. Based on the strong economic foundation, the material basis, technological strength, high quality, and rigid standards, most of the American architecture projects are beyond the entire of the world countries’. Compared with the developing countries of the world, the vast majorities of citizens of America, in fact, live and work in the relatively high standard architecture projects. Academic and techniques exchanges are necessary between the developing and developed countries.