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Placing Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism

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Placing Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism
Author(s): Keith L. Eggener
Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 55, No. 4 (May, 2002), pp. 228-237
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
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 Placing Resistance:
A Critique of Critical Regionalism

KEITH L. EGGENER, University ofMissouri-Columbia

Critical regionalism emerged as an architectural concept during the early regionalism is itself a construct most often imposed from outside,
1980s. For leading theorists such as Kenneth Frampton, critical regionalism
was an "architecture of resistance" seeking "to mediate the impact of universal
from positions of authority. The assumptions and implications it
civilization" and "to reflect and serve the limited constituencies" in which it was bears have undermined its own constructive message and con-
grounded. This paper examines critical regionalist rhetoric, particularly its founded the architecture it upholds.
emphasis on resistance, as a theoretical construct that inadvertently marginal-
ized and conflated the diverse architectural tendencies it championed. The
The case of the Mexican architect Luis Barragain is revealing
reception of Mexican architect Luis Barragan as a critical regionalist is high- in this respect. Barragain's mature work-from the Gardens of El
lighted to analyze some of critical regionalism's most problematic assumptions, Pedregal, begun in Mexico City in 1945, to late houses such as the
implications, and effects.
Casa Gilardi of 1975-1977-has frequently been upheld as critical
regionalist. (See Figure 1.) However well intentioned and beneficial
Introduction to his reputation, this designation of Barragin's work is an appro-
priation, a form of colonization along the lines that Jacobs describes.
The term critical regionalism first appeared in print during the early To fit it into the critical regionalist paradigm, writers have neglected
1980s, in essays by Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre, and, a littleor distorted much of the architecture's primary content and char-
later, Kenneth Frampton. These described a type of recent archi- acter. This essay, arguably another variety of appropriation, uses the
tecture that engaged its particular geographical and cultural circum- reception of Barragain's work as a lens through which we might
stances in deliberate, subtle, and vaguely politicized ways. In observe some of critical regionalism's more dubious implications
and effects.4
making this engagement, critical regionalist architecture was said to
eschew both the placeless homogeneity of much mainstream mod-
ernism and the superficial historicism of so much postmodern work.
"The fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism," FramptonDefining Critical Regionalism
wrote, "is to mediate the impact of universal civilization with ele-
ments derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place." As an idea, critical regionalism's roots run deep. When Vitruvius,
Critical regionalism thus aimed "to reflect and serve the limitedin the first century B.C.E., discussed regional variations in architec-
constituencies" in which it was grounded and "cultivate a contem-ture, he touched on a theme that would occupy countless architects
porary place-oriented culture." In this role, it was said to mark aand architectural writers ever since. For Vitruvius, architectural
form of resistance-a decided reaction to normative, universal stan- forms-like the physical, intellectual, and behavioral characteristics
dards, practices, forms, and technological and economic conditions. of the people that made them-were determined and essentially
If critical regionalism was found difficult to define much beyondfixed by geography.5 The "romantic regionalism" and "nationalist
this and to be lacking in stylistic unity, this was because it was aromanticism" propounded by architects and theorists worldwide
method or process rather than a product, and the process variedduring the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries grew from sim-
widely according to individual situations.' ilarly determinist notions of culture and geography.6 It was this sort
Critical regionalism has been an influential architectural con- of "blood and soil" regionalism, and its perversion by the Nazis,
cept whose application remains widespread.2 Yet as an intellectualthat Lewis Mumford cautioned against in his book, The South in
construct it can be highly problematic. When applied, as it has oftenArchitecture (1941). Culture and identity, Mumford realized, were
been, to the architecture of developing, postcolonial nations, the more mutable and conditional than the romanticists and nation-
term critical regionalism exemplifies a phenomenon described by thealists supposed, and so must be their architectural expression. "Re-
urban historian Jane M. Jacobs: "Just as postcolonialist tendencies gionalism," he wrote, "is not a matter of using the most available
have always been produced by colonialism, so colonialist tendencies local material, or of copying some simple form of construction that
necessarily inhabit often optimistically designated postcolonial for-our ancestors used, for want of anything better, a century or two
mations."' Critical regionalism is such a formation. Identifying anago. Regional forms are those which most closely meet the actual
architecture that purportedly reflects and serves its locality, but- conditions of life and which most fully succeed in making a people
tressed by a framework of liberative, empowering rhetoric, critical feel at home in their environment: they do not merely utilize the
soil but they reflect the current conditions of culture in the region."'7
Journal ofArchitectural Education, pp. 228-237 Mumford's was a modern, self-reflexive regionalism that shunned
? 2002 ACSA, Inc. revivalist pastiche and cheap nostalgia. Forty years later, in 1981,

May 2002 JAE 55/4 228

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Tzonis and Lefaivre took up this thread in their essay "The Grid
and the Pathway."8 The term critical regionalism was born here, and
its use quickly spread. By 1983, in his first of many articles on
the topic, Frampton would argue that critical regionalism offered
something well beyond comfort, accommodation, and reflective ex-
pression. It was also a powerful medium of resistance. Critical re-
gionalism, in its emphasis on place, "seem[ed] to offer the sole
possibility of resisting" the alienating and dehumanizing assault of
the placeless, consumption-driven "universal Megalopolis."9
No one has written of critical regionalism more often or with
greater effect than Frampton.'o His definition is the best known,
the most complex and astute, and the one most often adopted by
other writers and architects. Frampton began three of his earliest
and most widely read papers on critical regionalism by recalling
Paul Ricoeur's 1955 essay, "Universal Civilization and National
Cultures." Ricoeur had warned of the "phenomenon of universal-
ization," a tendency "constitut[ing] a sort of subtle destruction" of
not only "traditional cultures," but of "the creative nucleus of great
cultures ... the ethical and mythical nucleus of mankind."" Fol-
lowing Ricoeur's lead, Frampton described critical regionalism's
emergence as a self-conscious reaction to the "global modernization
[that] continues to undermine, with ever increasing force, all forms
of traditional, agrarian-based, autochthonous culture."'2 The new
regionalist architecture-beginning in the late 1940s and contin-
uing into the present-proceeded from an awareness of, and an
effort to subvert, the "universal technological norm," the effects of
global capitalism, international style architecture, and the sense of
placelessness that these fostered. As such, it should be considered
an "architecture of resistance," fueled by "not only a certain pros-
perity but also some kind of anti-centrist consensus."'3 The ex-
amples of critical regionalist practice Frampton cited were for the
most part limited and localized, small-scale projects (houses, gar-
dens, churches) "consciously bounded" in space and time. Archi-
tects identified by him included Jorn Utzon (Denmark), Mario
Botta (Ticinese Switzerland), J.A. Coderch (Catalonia), Alvaro Siza
(Portugal), Gino Valle (Udine, Italy), Dimitris and Susana Anto-
nakakis (Greece), Tadao Ando (Japan), Oscar Neimeyer (Brazil),
and Luis Barragain (Mexico).'4 Their products were both "border-
line manifestations" operating in "the interstices of freedom," and
"locally inflected manifestations of 'world culture.' 15
Frampton insisted that the critical regionalism of these ar-
chitects be regarded as not a style-"a received set of aesthetic
preferences"-but a process, applicable to a range of situations and
more or less independently realized in a variety of locations. And,
as a process, critical regionalism was inherently dialectical and con-
229 Eggener
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1. Luis Barrag6n, Gilardi House, Mexico City, 1975-1977
(author photo).
tradictory. It depended on, and to some degree sympathized with,
universal modernism, even as it worked against it. As Frampton
bleakly opined, "no living tradition remains to modern man other
than the subtle procedures of synthetic contradiction."'6 So critical
regionalist architecture necessarily, discriminatingly, identified, ab-
stracted, and melded local physical and cultural characteristics with
more ubiquitous modern practices, technologies, and economic and
material conditions. To be regional and modern involved an ex-
tremely delicate balance.
If critical regionalism's relationship with modernism was
complex and uneasy, its associations with postmodernism were no
less so. Postmodern architecture, Frampton said, had reduced itself
to "pure technique or pure scenography," pure commodity. "The
so-called postmodern architects are merely feeding the media-
society with gratuitous, quietistic images rather proffering, as they
claim, a creative rappel d ordre after the supposedly proven bank-
ruptcy of the liberative modern project.""7 Yet despite Frampton's
evident desire for distance, critical regionalism can hardly be un-
derstood apart from postmodernism, whether as its antithesis or
accompaniment. On the one hand, critical regionalism was reactive,
directly rejecting postmodernism's widely perceived banality, su-
perficiality, and cynicism in favor of a formal rigor and serious,
social purpose akin to modern architecture at its best. On the other,
it endorsed postmodern pluralism, its recognition of diverse sub-
jectivities, and its assault on modernism's leveling, global sweep.
The 1980s was an era of aggressive foreign intervention by
the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and of
resurgent nationalism worldwide. Critical regionalism might also
be seen in part as a quasi-radical, intellectual reaction to both of
these movements. Its proponents opposed the domination of heg-
emonic power and reactionary populism, rampant globalization and
superficial nationalism.18 Although, or because, "the practice of ar-
chitecture [was] more global than at any time before," said Tzonis
and Lefaivre, it was important to consider regionalism because it
alerted people to "the loss of place and community." Yet, like
Frampton, they warned against "counterfeit settings" and the easy
"sentimental embracing" of the past. Unlike romantic regionalist
works that attempted to arouse "affinity" in the viewer via familiar
imagery, critical regionalist works "prick[ed] the conscience" into
thought and action through an effect of "defamiliarization," chal-
lenging "not only the established actual world but the legitimacy
of the possible world view in the minds of the people.""19 Both
Frampton and Tzonis and Lefaivre supported their assertions of
critical regionalism's criticality, its subversive challenge to the status
quo, with references to Jiirgen Habermas and the neo-Marxist
Frankfurt School, whose ideas Frampton called "the only valid basis
upon which to develop a valid form of (post) modern critical cul-
ture."20 Although Frampton, Tzonis, and Lefaivre were all careful
to indicate architectural regionalism's historical relation to a broad
spectrum of political and cultural agendas (republican, absolutist,
totalitarian, antifascist), the new, critical regionalism they out-
lined--resistant, reformist, conscience-pricking, Frankfurt School-
fueled-implied a distinctly progressive, confrontational, even
radicalized project.
Region and Resistance
What effects have these ideas of critical regionalism had on architec-
tural discourse during the past two decades? Since World War II,
a great many architects worldwide have endeavored, for a variety of
reasons and in a variety of ways, to situate modernism. They did
this to foster a sense of place, to humanize the machine . habiter,
to address issues of personal and cultural identity, and to serve local
constituencies and political interests. Critical regionalism has pro-
vided a powerful tool for studying some aspects of some of these
architects' work. The idea of a "critical regionalism" has raised sig-
nificant questions about modernity, tradition, cultural identity, and
place. It has helped bring much-deserved attention to otherwise
neglected architectural activity, and it has provided a sophisticated
interpretative apparatus through which to approach this activity. It
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also has operated as a lens that can flatten, distort, or marginalize
the cultural practices it surveys.
The major targets of critical regionalism's critique--universal
modernism, placelessness, reactionary populism, the capitalist cul-
ture of consumption--have already been identified. But where did
critical regionalism stand with regard to the regions it referenced?
We might begin by raising a series of questions that are often asked
by scholars of nationalism and postcolonialism: What are the con-
stituents of cultural (or regional or national) identity? How are these
to be represented and utilized? How and by whom are the answers
to these questions decided? What are the implications of these de-
cisions having been made?21 If so-called critical regionalist designs
exemplified an "architecture of resistance," it is ironic that writers
discussing the places where these designs appeared so often empha-
sized one architect's interpretation of the region over all others:
Tadao Ando for Japan, Oscar Niemeyer for Brazil, Charles Correa
for India, and Luis Barragin for Mexico. In other words, a single
correct regional style was implied, or imposed, sometimes from
inside, more often from outside "the region."22
Barragain's case provides persuasive evidence of this inclina-
tion. By the mid-1970s, Barragin's work was largely unappreciated,
if not actually dismissed, inside Mexico and unknown outside
of it. Yet, if his architecture remained suspect in some Mexican
circles-on account of its elitism and idiosyncrasy, its aloof dis-
tance from the more pragmatic, socially oriented concerns of
other prominent architects operating in that nation-it was
soon validated internationally for its formal and poetic qualities.
In 1976, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened
a well-received exhibition of Barragain's postwar work. The lavishly
illustrated, sparely worded catalogue by the Argentine-born, New
York-based architect and curator Emilio Ambasz, sold more than
fifty thousand copies worldwide and made Barragin famous.23 Four
years later, in Washington, DC, a jury composed of American, En-
glish, and Japanese representatives awarded Barragain the prestigious
Pritzker Prize, the "Nobel Prize of architecture."24 (He remains the
only Mexican to have received this prize.) Internationally, Barragain
was now the most celebrated of Mexican architects; for all practical
purposes, he was at that time the only Mexican architect recognized
outside of Mexico. As much as anything, his work was applauded
for appearing so very Mexican, or Mexican at least in a sense that
people in places like New York, London, and Tokyo could readily
understand and appreciate. Its elegantly minimal cubic forms,
rough-textured walls and stark voids, brilliant saturated colors, sub-
tle evocations of Spanish Colonial convents and haciendas, and
splashes of water and Mexican handicrafts were swathed in a rheto-
ric of memory, sensuality, and Roman Catholic mysticism. In the
MoMA catalogue Ambasz praised Barragin's buildings and gardens
as essentially modern yet "deeply rooted in [Mexico's] cultural and
religious traditions. It is through the haunting beauty of his hieratic
constructions," wrote Ambasz, "that we have come to conceive of
the passions of Mexico's architecture."25 (See Figure 2.)
Success at home followed success abroad. Soon after the

MoMA exhibition Barragmn-whose fame had peaked during the

early 1950s and languished thereafter-was awarded various Mex-
ican prizes and honors, including the coveted Premio Nacional des
Artes and an honorary doctorate from the University of Guadala-
jara. Mexican authors began discussing his work with renewed fre-
quency and appreciation. Many of these, implicitly or explicitly,
utilized critical regionalist language. Echoing Frampton's essays of
the early 1980s, Mexican architect and historian Anibal Figueroa
2. Luis Barraghn, Tlalpan Chapel, Mexico City, 1953-1960
claimed in 1985 that Barragin had "sought an authentic expression (author photo).
of his culture devoid of both the artifice of intentional fashion and
of 'folkloric' quaintness. He has sought a genuine contemporary
expression."26 Barraga'n's work, which architect Juan O'Gorman
ments that people have come to expect of Mexican modern archi-
once described as "exactly what Mexican architecture shouldn't be,"
tecture. That is to say, his buildings look a great deal like those of
now came for many in Mexico to represent that country's architec-
his mentor Barragin.29 (See Figure 3.) Meanwhile, the other re-
ture at its best and most distinctive. According to Figueroa, Bar-
gionalisms and antiregionalisms of Barragin's postwar Mexican
ragan's oeuvre offered "a timeless expression of Mexican culture."27
contemporaries-the pre-Colombian-inspired "plastic integra-
For critic Jorge Alberto Manrique, it was an expression without
parallel: tion" of O'Gorman, the "fusion" of "las dos raices de Mixico" (the
European and the American) of Alberto Arai, the fervent antire-
There is no relation between the architecture of Luis Barragain gionalist modernism of Mauricio G6mez Mayorga-have largely
and other [Mexican] architectonic nationalisms. There is faded from public memory.30
nothing within his work of their revivals of traditional forms Barragan's architecture has been characterized as both highly
(nothing of pastiche, nothing of decorative elements), nor personal and representative of modern Mexican culture. Can it be
of their utilization of characteristic materials nor of their in- both? Should it? As historian Ella Shohat put it, the key questions
clusion of forms or figures that transmit a vague prehispanic for any critical analysis of identity, regional or otherwise, should be
past.... There is instead [in Barragin's work] the idea that "who is mobilizing what in the articulation of the past, developing
to create architecture is to create an ambience, an atmosphere, what identities, identifications and representations, and in the name
to make a place to be.... [T]he architecture of Luis Barra- of what political vision and goals?"31 These questions have yet to
gin, without nationalistic program, is the most clearly Mex- receive their due in the literature on critical regionalism in general
ican.28 or on Barragin in particular. In 1994, Mexican author and Nobel
laureate Octavio Paz went so far as to suggest that "Mexican poli-
The situation of architect Ricardo Legorreta provides further ticians and educators should follow" in the footsteps of those who,
evidence of Barragin's enduring influence on both national and like Barragin, "employ our popular tradition with intelligence."
international perceptions of what Mexican architecture is and Barragin's work, he suggested, made effective and appropriate use
should be. If Legorreta is the best-known Mexican architect alive of a Mexican "political and moral legacy." To be truly modern, Paz
today, this seems due in part to the fact that his widely published concluded, we must, like Barragin, "come to terms with our tra-
museums, libraries, hotels, and office complexes, whether sited in dition."32 Yet we would do well to remember that where one image
Mexico, the United States, or elsewhere, incorporate all the ele- of a nation's culture prevails, others have been submerged or sup-

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3. Ricardo Legorreta, Hotel Camino Real, Mexico City,
1967-1968 (author photo).
pressed. When one individual's image of identity is projected onto
the nation, it is important to scrutinize the background, beliefs, and
aspirations of that individual and his or her advocates. Built form
does not simply reflect culture; it shapes it, and therein lies much
of its power. If work like Barragin's began, on some level, as an
architecture of resistance, it might very well be seen today as an
architecture to resist.
Center and Periphery
Revisiting the topic of critical regionalism in 1991, Tzonis and
Lefaivre defended it as "a reaction to a global problem ... most
urgent in superdeveloped parts of the world and not an expression
of identity for so-called 'peripheral' regions."33 The fact, however,
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is that up until that time much of the writing on critical regionalism
involved Western European and North American urbanites dis-
cussing architecture from developing nations in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, or from the less developed regions of their own
countries or continents. The major cities of Europe and the United
States were for these writers the centers that made possible critical
regionalism's "anti-centrist consensus." Based in New York, Framp-
ton used the term peripheral nodes when speaking of the sites of
critical regionalism's emergence-Mar del Plata, Mexico City,
Udine, P6voa de Varzim, and Athens among them.34 Writing from
Boston in 1982, the critic and historian William Curtis began his
essay, "The Problem of Regional Identity," by calling the "modern
movement ... the intellectual property of certain countries in West-
ern Europe, of the United States, and of some parts of the Soviet
Union.... But by around 1960, transformations, deviations and
devaluations of modern architecture had found their way to many
other areas of the world" [my emphasis]. Curtis then turned directly
to Mexico and Barragin's "vital immediate post-war experiments"
there."35 That which lies beyond the center is by definition periph-
eral. No matter how vital, the peripheral is other than, deviant from,
and lesser than the center, the norm.
This kind of center/periphery thinking carries with it some
unsavory implications. In July 1947, Architectural Recordpublished
an article on recent architectural activity in Mexico City. The New
York-based author, Ann Binkley Horn, wrote of the "visual hys-
teria," "impulsiveness," and lack of analysis or reflection that was
characteristic of the work she had seen there.36 Few responsible
critics or journals today would use such biased and sweeping terms,
but a related, if more circumspect, vocabulary has often been ap-
plied to contemporary regionalist architecture. Writing about Bar-
rag~n's work, for instance, has concentrated on form over polemics
or pragmatism, on sensuality and emotion over intellect, on mystery
over analysis, and on an implied primitivism, however noble.
Frampton characterized Barragain's as a "sensual and earthbound"
architecture, imbued with "feeling for mythic and rooted begin-
nings." Curtis emphasized its "sense of ancient values" and "gen-
uinely archetypical mood." Ambasz wrote of Barragin's "animistic
feeling for matter" and (inaccurately) of his lack of a formal archi-
tectural education.37 While himself romanticizing Mexican village
life and appropriating its forms and colors, the well-read, well-
traveled, well-heeled, institutionally educated architect Barragin
was likewise romanticized by European and North American-based
writers. He was made to seem more an innocent or a shaman than
the highly successful professional designer and real estate developer
that he was. He remains to this day better known for his other-
worldliness and his spicy Latin talk of God and death and beauty, a development parallel to contemporary architecture in the indus-
than for his cultural sophistication, his shrewd business sense, or trialized West.
his aspirations to participate as an equal in an international avant-
garde.38
A Reluctant Revolutionary
"Regional or national cultures," Frampton wrote in 1985,
"must today, more than ever, be ultimately constituted as locally
How did Luis Barragain see his own work operating? Is it apt, given
inflected manifestations of 'world culture."39 The vague universal-
the definition of critical regionalism laid out here, to speak of Bar-
ity implied by the phrase world culture makes it sound suspiciously
ragin as a critical regionalist?
like another phrase that Frampton treated more skeptically: the
The case can certainly be made that Barragain's best work after
international style.40 In fact, both phrases absorb culturally and
World War II, which he described as "placed in and ... a part of
geographically situated activities within an overarching, Euro-
Mexico," resisted and critiqued placelessness and globalization.44
American-generated discourse, one bearing relatively little interest
The houses and gardens he built around 1950 at the Gardens of El
in local perspectives on local culture. This kind of absorption has
Pedregal, for instance, emphasized the peculiar vegetation and vol-
on more than one occasion led to an interpretative flattening of
canic rock indigenous to the site, and made discreet references to
diverse cultural materials, and a misunderstanding or devaluation Mexican vernacular and historic architecture. These references were
of their founding intentions and most immediate meanings.4' The
"defamiliarizing" in relation to by-then mainstream notions of
same might be said of critical regionalism. In his writings on the
modernist internationalism and ahistoricism. Subtle and austere,
topic, Frampton cautiously emphasized process over product. He
Barragin's Pedregal buildings also stood in marked contrast to
pointed to the diversity of forms resulting from an equivalent di-
more obvious, exuberant, populist notions of modern Mexican
versity of circumstances. The term did not, he insisted, imply a
architectural identity-the neocolonial, the neo-prehispanic, the
style. And yet, in a way it did. Critical regionalism, as Frampton
mural-clad--found elsewhere in Mexico City, especially at the
and others described it, denied formal style while presuming a style
contemporaneous University City complex. (See Figure 4.)
of thought and approach. Among other things, critical regionalist
Yet there is much about Barragin and his work that is strik-
architects were said to favor "the small rather than the big plan."
ingly discordant with the critical regionalism that Frampton and
They viewed "the realization of architecture as a tectonic fact." They
understood light as "the primary agent by which the volume and the
tectonic value of the work are revealed." Above all, they practiced
architecture as a form of resistance, an expression of an "anti-
centrist consensus," "critical of modernization" and the placeless-
ness it promoted.42
That some so-called critical regionalists might understand
their work as operating in ways fundamentally different from this
was not taken into account. As Argentine architect and theorist
Marina Waisman wrote, "the Latin American version [of regional-
ism] is quite different from that proposed by Kenneth Frampton,
or Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre." Contemporary regionalist
architecture in Latin America should be understood, she said, as
"divergence," rather than "resistance." Such architecture is less a
rejection of the West or modernity-which was, in any event
"never fully achieved in Latin America"-than an affirmation of
local culture within "the general movement of history."43 In other
words, contemporary Latin American architecture of a regionalist 4. National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), with Main
character is not primarily a reaction to the West, or to "world cul- Library (by Juan O'Gorman, Gustavo Saavedra, and Juan Martinez
de Velasco) in the foreground and Humanities Tower (by Enrique
ture," as the word resistance would imply, but a response to local de la Mora, Manuel de la Colina, and Enrique Landa) in the
circumstances. It should be seen not as a marginal practice, but as background, Mexico City, 1950-1953 (author photo).

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Tzonis and Lefaivre outlined. First, there is probably no major mod- talgia, and loss. While his colleagues advocated architecture's role
ern architect of the twentieth century who was more given to "sen- in their country's attainment of economic, political, and cultural
timental embracing" than Barragin. He insisted that "the architect autonomy, Barragin made condescending remarks about the col-
must listen and heed his nostalgic revelations." He called his own orful lives of Mexico's poor and the "bad taste" of its middle
architecture "autobiographical" and with the help of several sym- classes.48 If indeed Barragan's projects of the 1950s and 1960s
pathetic critics, he wrapped around it a highly selective and not sought to counter an emerging and still ill-defined globalism, they
entirely genuine tissue of memories and lore. Tales of his distant, fought more stridently still against the erosion of privilege and pri-
privileged, pre-Revolutionary boyhood on the Barragin family vate life in a technologically driven, popularly oriented (the archi-
ranch in Mazamitla (the ancien regime, in effect), and of his youth- tect might have said "unappealingly democratized") modern age.
ful voyages around the Mediterranean (a privileged provincial re- His elegant walled compounds, elite subdivisions, and equestrian
turning reverently to the source), took on an almost fetishistic enclaves may, as Frampton suggested, mark a kind of critique, but
presence in post-1976 accounts of his mature work.45 His best- it is worth keeping in mind just what sort of critique this was: hardly
known works would seem to pulse with a bittersweet remembrance radical or progressive, but romantic and reactionary.
of things past.
At the same time, Barragin's architecture was far more inter-
national in its scope, and rather less autochthonous, than is gen- Resisting Regionalism
erally supposed. Formally and conceptually, it was directly informed
by the work of Le Corbusier, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright, Insufficiently recognized is the fact that critical regionalism is, at
and other Europeans and North Americans, as much or more than heart, a postcolonialist concept. This is worth noting because it
it was by any Mexican vernacular examples.46 Economically, a provides a broader intellectual basis than otherwise exists for
project such as El Pedregal was tightly bound, through its elab- understanding critical regionalist language and ideas. Like post-
orate financing and its extensive advertising campaign, to an in- colonialist discourse in general, critical regionalist writing regularly
ternational web of capital. Even before its first houses were built, engages in monumental binary oppositions: East/West, traditional/
El Pedregal was promoted to potential clients in the United modern, natural/cultural, core/periphery, self/other, space/place.49
States. Here the question emerges as to how much of the pro- Frampton made evident the postcolonial underpinnings of his work
ject's "sense of place" was generated by local concerns and con- via his frequent references to Ricoeur's "Universal Civilization and
ditions, and how much of it was intended to appeal to foreign National Cultures" essay. Like the postcolonialist project Ricoeur
(mis)conceptions of Mexico. described, Frampton's version of critical regionalism revolved
Finally, in a place with post-Revolutionary Mexico's stagger- around a central paradox, a binary opposition: "how to become
ing social, environmental, and economic problems, what architec- modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old dormant
tural action could be less conscience-pricking, less opposed to civilization and take part in universal civilization.'"50 It is the tension
hegemonic power, than building exclusionary subdivisions and arising from this problem-the struggle to resolve it more than its
walled gardens and villas for the rich, that is, Barragin's very stock eventual resolution-that fuels critical regionalist discourse. This
in trade? Lending support to his notion of critical regionalism as fact underlies Frampton's emphasis on issues of resistance and pro-
an essentially radical project, Frampton argued that Barragin "had cess over product.
both the desire and the will to go beyond the elite that he had Critical regionalism's fault lines stand most clearly exposed
served throughout his life.'"47 There is little evidence to support this in these emphases. "It is," Jacobs writes, "a revisionary form of
assertion and much to counter it. While Mexican modernist con- imperialist nostalgia that defines the colonized as always engaged in
temporaries such as Juan O'Gorman, Jose Villagrin Garcia, andconscious work against the 'core.''"51 In stressing place, identity, and
Mario Pani built the low-cost, utilitarian schools, housing, hospi-resistance over all other architectural and extra-architectural consid-
tals, offices, and factories that were so badly needed in their devel-erations, critical regionalist rhetoric exemplifies the "revisionary
oping and recently war-torn nation, the aristocratic, elitist, form of imperialist nostalgia" described by Jacobs. It makes para-
aggressively capitalistic Barragin speculated in real estate. He built mount a struggle where no struggle might otherwise have been said
private refuges in which privileged people of means and sophisti-to exist. It routes to the margins an architecture that might not
cation might share in his Proustian meditations on memory, nos-otherwise be imagined standing there.

May 2002 JAE 55/4 234

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 In that ur-text of critical regionalism, The South in Architec-
ture (1941), Lewis Mumford urged readers to be cautious with
labels: "People think that a slogan, a catchword, a formula will, if
we are lucky enough to find the right one, solve our problems."52
This, despite the best intentions of its leading theorists, is how
critical regionalism too often came to function: as a fashionable
formula,53 as a catchword to describe a range of difficult and diverse
architectures arising from markedly different circumstances. Even
so subtle and sophisticated a label as "critical regionalism" could
not help but devolve into a relatively facile and misleading mech-
anism. As architectural historian Anthony King has warned, "these
global theories ... enable those who produce or adopt them to
view the world of others from one particular place, from one point
of authority, from one particular social and cultural position. They
produce a totalizing vision or overview which is likely to be at odds
with the meanings which the inhabitants ... place on the buildings
themselves. In looking for ways in which to think about buildings
'internationally' we need to be sure that we're not creating a new
intellectual imperialism."54
Although critical regionalism's conceptual contradictions
were openly acknowledged, the case of Luis Barragin raises signifi-
cant questions about the term's ultimate value. Has its application
to his and others' work done more harm than good? As an inter-
pretative strategy, how do we weigh its insights versus it distortions?
More generally, does a system bearing so many exceptions and con-
tradictory impulses, a system bracketing such a diversity of local
examples within such a broad, universal framework, tell us much
of anything? Or does it collapse under the weight of its own in-
congruities? As a concept, critical regionalism sought to be both
general and particular. It ended by reinforcing the former at the
expense of the latter; that is, it became a general theory of the par-
ticular. Perhaps it was but another symptom, or victim, of the in-
evitable universalizing tendencies it warned against.
The North American architect Harwell Hamilton Harris,
whom Frampton quoted in his discussions of critical regionalism,
wrote in 1958 that regionalism is "a state of mind."55 Yet it is
attention to this aspect-to the particular intellectual and cultural
landscapes from which its sometimes reluctant individual exemplars
emerged--that has been most lacking in the literature of critical
regionalism. By attending more directly to these "states of mind,"
by heeding the voices of those responsible for building particular
cultures, architects among many others, rather than imposing for-
mulas upon them, we might come to understand better the richness
of internal, local discourses in their full range and complexity.
235 Eggener
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Acknowledgments
For their insightful comments, I would like to thank Luis Carranza,
Richard Ingersoll, and an anonymous reader at JAE. An earlier ver-
sion of this paper was presented at the symposium "Self, Place, and
Imagination: Cross-Cultural Thinking in Architecture," The Cen-
tre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture, Univ. of Adelaide
(Australia), Jan. 22, 1999. Thanks to Samer Akkach, Stanislaus
Fung, and Peter Scriver, who organized this excellent event and
provided many helpful suggestions regarding my original paper.
Among the other presenters there were Alexander Tzonis and Liane
Lefaivre; I am grateful to them for the thoughtful, gracious com-
ments they provided on my work and their own.
Notes
1. Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an
Architecture of Resistance," in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-
Modern Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), p. 21; "Prospects for a Critical Region-
alism," Perspecta 20 (1983): 148; and Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 2nd
ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), p. 327. See also Alexander Tzonis and
Liane Lefaivre, "The Grid and the Pathway," Architecture in Greece 15 (1981): 164-
78; and William J. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1982), pp. 331-343. Although Curtis wrote here of "modern re-
gionalism," this was essentially the same phenomenon that Frampton, Tzonis, and
Lefaivre called "critical regionalism." See also Curtis's "Towards an Authentic Re-
gionalism," Mimar: Architecture in Development 19 (Jan./March 1986): 24-31.
2. For texts on regionalism and critical regionalism in architecture published
before 1988, see Michael Steiner and Clarence Mondale, Region and Regionalism in
the United States: A Source Book for the Humanities and Social Sciences (New York:
Garland, 1988), pp. 9-78. Major symposia on regionalist architecture were held in
Seville, Spain, in 1985, in Pomona, California, in 1989, in Delft, The Netherlands,
in 1990, and in Milan, Italy, in 1991. Of these, only the proceedings of the Pomona
meeting have been published; see Spyros Amourgis, ed., Critical Regionalism: The
Pomona Meeting, Proceedings (Pomona: College of Environmental Design, CSP
Univ., 1991). When entered, on Oct. 10, 2001, into the online search engine Google
(www.google.com), the term critical regionalism received 740 hits.
3. Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London:
Routledge, 1996), p. 14.
4. The reception of critical regionalism until now has been largely uncritical.
Most of the publications discussing it have centered on explication, elaboration, or
illustration of its concepts. Among the few previous essays to question these concepts
directly are Alan Colquhoun, "Critique of Regionalism," Casabella 630-631
(Jan./Feb. 1996): 51-55; "The Concept of Regionalism," in Giilsiim Baydar Nal-
bantoglu and Wong Chong Thai, eds., Postcolonial Space(s) (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1997), pp. 13-23; Mary McLeod, "Architecture and Politics in
the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism," Assemblage 8 (Feb.
1989): 36; and Richard Ingersoll, "Conference Review: Context and Modernity,"
Journal ofArchitectural Education 44/2 (Feb. 1991): 124-125. Ingersoll notes that,
at this conference, held at Delft Technical Univ., June 12-15, 1990, substantial
critiques of critical regionalism were raised by Fredrick Jameson, Marshall Berman,
Ingersoll himself, and others; the proceedings of this event have never been pub-
lished.
Worth noting is the fact that, as a concept, critical regionalism has often
proven more agreeable to critics than to the designers said to be its representatives.
Architect Luis Fernaindez-Galiano, for instance, recalled that, at a conference on the
subject held in Spain in 1985, "the architects [in attendance] felt insulted when ...
described [as regionalists]." Luis Fernaindez-Galiano, "Ten Aphorisms on Regional-
ism," in Amourgis, ed., Critical Regionalism, p. 31. According to one American
editorial published a few years later, "architects who seriously regard themselves as
regionalists now resent the very word." Deborah K. Dietsch, "Regionalism Lost and
Found," Architecture 80 (Aug. 1991): 13.
5. "Since, then, it is climate which causes the variety in different countries,
and the dispositions of the inhabitants, their stature and qualities are naturally dis-
similar, there can be no doubt that the arrangement of buildings should be suitable
to the qualities of the nations and people, as nature herself wisely and clearly indi-
cates." Vitruvius, De Architectura (online version edited by Bill Thayer: www
.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/ Vitruvius/6.html),
book VI, chapter 1, paragraph 12. For a historical overview of regionalist writings,
see Tzonis and Lefaivre, "Critical Regionalism," in Amourgis, ed., Critical Region-
alism, pp. 2-23.
6. See, for example, Barbara Miller Lane, National Romanticism and Modern
Architecture in Germany and the Scandanavian Countries (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
7. Lewis Mumford, The South in Architecture (New York: Harcourt, Brace
and Company, 1941), p. 30.
8. Tzonis and Lefaivre, "The Grid and the Pathway," pp. 164-178.
9. Frampton, "Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," p. 162
10. Since the early 1980s, Frampton has discussed the topic in numerous
published essays and interviews. In addition to those already noted, see "El Region-
alismo Critico: Arquitectura Moderna e Identidad Cultural," Proa 354 (Sept. 1986):
20-23; "Ten Points on an Architecture of Regionalism: A Provisional Polemic,"
Center 3: The New Regionalism (1987): 20-27; "Place-Form and Cultural Identity,"
in John Thackara, ed., Design After Modernism: Beyond the Object (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1988), pp. 51-66; "Some Reflections on Postmodernism and Archi-
tecture," in Lisa Appignanesi, ed., Postmodernism: ICA Documents (London: Free
Association Books, 1989), pp. 75-87; "Critical Regionalism Revisited," in Amour-
gis, ed., Critical Regionalism, pp. 34-39; and "Universalism and/or Regionalism:
Untimely Reflections on the Future of the New," Domus 782 (May 1996): 4-8.
11. Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," in History
and Truth, Charles A. Kelbley, trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1965), p. 276. The essays quoting Ricoeur are those appearing in TheAnti-Aesthetic,
edited by Hal Foster, Perspecta, and Frampton's Modern Architecture.
12. Frampton, Modern Architecture, p. 315.
13. Ibid, p. 314; "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Archi-
tecture of Resistance," pp. 16-30.
14. Frampton, Modern Architecture, pp. 314-327.
15. Frampton, "Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," p. 149, and Modern
Architecture, p. 315.
16. Frampton, "Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," p. 149.
17. Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architec-
ture of Resistance," p. 19. For related critiques of postmodern architecture in the
1980s, see McLeod, "Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Post-
modernism to Deconstructivism," pp. 22-59, and Diane Ghirardo, "The Deceit of
May 2002 JAE 55/4 236
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Postmodern Architecture," in Gary Shapiro, ed., After the Future: Postmodern Times
and Places (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 231-252.
18. Frampton, "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architec-
ture of Resistance," p. 21, and "Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," p. 149.
19. Tzonis and Lefaivre: "Critical Regionalism," in Amourgis, ed., Critical
Regionalism, pp. 3, 20-21, and "Why Critical Regionalism Today?" A + U 236
(May 1990): 31.
20. Frampton, "Place-Form and Cultural Identity," pp. 63-65, and Tzonis
and Lefaivre, "Critical Regionalism," in Amourgis, ed., Critical Regionalism, p. 20.
21. Classic texts posing these sorts of questions include Edward Said, Ori-
entalism (New York, Vintage, 1978); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); and
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1983). A related book focusing on architecture is Lawrence J. Vale's Architecture,
Power, and National Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
22. Curtis, for instance, in setting up his laudatory remarks on Barragain's
work, rather lightly dismissed designs by Barragain's compatriots Carlos Lazo and
Juan O'Gorman. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, p. 333. His discussion of
Mexican architecture was expanded after the book's first editing. See also Vale,
Architecture, Power, and National Identity, p. 54.
23. Emilio Ambasz, Architecture of Luis Barragdn (New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1976). Sales figures come from a telephone interview with Kim Tyner
of MoMA's Office of Publications, Oct. 1, 1993.
24. The jury's citation emphasized Barragain's "commitment to architecture
as a sublime act of the poetic imagination." It used words and phrases like haunting
beauty, metaphysical landscapes, meditation, solitude, passion, desire, and faith. My
thanks to Bill Lacy, executive director of the Pritzker Prize jury, for sending me a
copy of this citation.
25. Ambasz, Architecture ofLuis Barragdn, p. 5.
26. Anibol Figueroa, "The Context of Luis Barragin's Mexican Architec-
ture," Center: The New Regionalism, 3 (1987): 48
27. Figueroa, "The Context of Luis Barragin's Mexican Architecture,"
p. 46. O'Gorman's remarks about Barragin and El Pedregal are recorded in Seldon
Rodman, Mexican Journal: The Conquerors Conquered (Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1958), pp. 21, 84.
28. Jorge Alberto Manrique, "Luis Barragain ?Arquitectura Nacionalista?"
La Semana de Bellas Artes (July 6, 1980): 6-7.
29. Legorreta speaking about Barragin's influence on his work: "I am proud
to be copying him." James Steele, "Interview: Ricardo Legorreta," Mimar: Architec-
ture in Development 12/43 (June 1992): 62.
30. For more on postwar architectural diversity in Mexico, see Fernando
Gonzilez Gortizar, ed., La Arquitectura Mexicana del Siglo XX (Mexico: Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994), and Keith Eggener, "Contrasting Images
of Identity in the Post-War Mexican Architecture of Luis Barragain and Juan
O'Gorman," Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 9/1 (March 2000): 27-45.
31. Quoted by Alberto Moreiras, "Afterword," in Amaryll Chanady, ed.,
Latin American Identity and Constructions of Difference (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994), p. 208. Also see Vale, Architecture, Power, and National
Identity, pp. 272-293.
32. Octavio Paz, "The Uses of Tradition," Artes de MIxico 23, New Series
(spring 1994): 92.
33. Tzonis and Lefaivre, "Critical Regionalism," in Amourgis, ed., Critical
Regionalism, p. 23.
34. Frampton, "Place-Form and Cultural Identity," p. 55.
 35. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, pp. 331-333.
36. Ann Binkley Horn, "Modern Mexico," Architectural Record 102 (July
1947): 70, 72.
37. Frampton, "Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," pp. 152-153; Curtis,
Modern Architecture Since 1900, p. 333, and Ambasz, Architecture ofLuis Barragdn,
pp. 105, 107. Barragin took his civil engineer's diploma from Guadalajara's Escuela
Libre de Ingenieros on Dec. 13, 1923. In a 1962 interview, he recalled that civil
engineering graduates needed only to take a few more classes--drawing, composi-
tion, and art history-and submit a thesis to receive an architectural degree. He
remembered completing his coursework, submitting his thesis, and gaining his men-
tor's approval. The Escuela Libre, however, closed while Barragain was traveling in
Europe, and so he did not receive the diploma he deserved. See Alejandro Ramirez
Ugarte, "Entrevista con El Arq. Luis Barragin," in Enrique de Anda, ed., Luis Bar-
ragrn: C14sico del Silencio (Bogatai, 1989), p. 221.
38. For a view of Barragain as both artist and entrepreneur, see Keith Eg-
gener, Luis Barragan's Gardens ofEl Pedregal (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2001).
39. Frampton, Modern Architecture, p. 315. Frampton's use and discussion
of the term world culture proceeds directly from Ricoeur's essay "Universal Civili-
zation and National Cultures," p. 271.
40. Frampton, Modern Architecture, p. 248.
41. Anthony D. King, "Vernacular, Transnational, Post-Colonial," Casabella
630-631 (Jan./Feb. 1996): 71.
42. Frampton, Modern Architecture, pp. 314-315, 327.
43. Marina Waisman, "An Architectural Theory for Latin America," Rich-
ard Ingersoll, trans., Design Book Review 32-33 (spring/summer 1994): 28. An
earlier version of these ideas appeared in Waisman's "Cuesti6n de 'Divergencia':
Sobre el Regionalismo Critico," Arquitectura Viva 12 (May/June 1990): 43. See also
Zeynip ?elik, "Cultural Intersections: Re-Visioning Architecture and the City in
the Twentieth Century," in Russell Ferguson, ed., At the End of the Century: One
Hundred Years ofArchitecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), pp. 190-227.
44. Quoted in Esther McCoy, "Jardines del Pedregal de San Angel," Arts
and Architecture 68 (Aug. 1951): 24.
45. Luis Barragain, "Barragain on Barragain," Archetype 2 (fall 1980): 31;
Ambasz, The Architecture of Luis Barragdn, pp. 9, 108.
237 Eggener
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View publication stats
46. Keith Eggener, "Postwar Modernism in Mexico: Luis Barragin'sJardines
del Pedregal and the International Discourse on Architecture and Place," Journal of
the Society ofArchitectural Historian 58/2 (June 1999): 122-145.
47. Kenneth Frampton, "Luis Barragin: The Mexican Other," unpublished
typescript of a lecture delivered at Columbia Univ., Feb. 1993, p. 6 (my thanks to
Kenneth Frampton for sending a copy of this to me); "The Legacy of Luis Barragin,"
Columbia Architecture, Planning, Preservation Newsline (Nov./Dec. 1992): 4.
48. Rodman, Mexican Journal, p. 97. Clients, colleagues, and friends even
characterized Barragain as a snob and an elitist. See, for example, Yukata Saito,
"Interview with Francisco Gilardi," Luis Barragan (Mexico: Noriega Editores, 1994),
p. 132.
49. Nalbantoglu and Thai, "Introduction," Postcolonial Space(s), p. 8. Note,
for instance, the section headings in Frampton's essay, "Ten Points on an Architecture
of Regionalism: A Provisional Polemic." These include "Information and Experi-
ence," "Space/Place," "Typology/Typography," "Architectonic/Scenographic," "Ar-
tificial/Natural," and "Visual/Tactile."
50. "The fight against colonial powers," Ricoeur wrote, "and the struggles
for liberation were, to be sure, only carried through by laying claim to a separate
personality." The nation emerging from colonialism "has to root itself in the soil of
its past, forge a national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural revindication
before the colonialist's personality. But in order to take part in modern civilization,"
to be economically and politically viable, the new nation must also embrace "sci-
entific, technical, and political rationality." That is, Ricoeur says, it must embrace
"universal world civilization." Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Cul-
tures," pp. 271, 277
51. Jacobs, Edge of Empire, pp. 14-15.
52. Mumford, The South in Architecture, p. 120.
53. In October, 1984, The Architectural Review devoted an issue to region-
alism (its second in a year and a half), because, its editors claimed, "so many archi-
tects see Regionalism as the salvation of modern architecture." Architectural Review
176 (Oct. 1984): 23.
54. King, "Vernacular, Transnational, Post-Colonial," p. 71.
55. Harwell Hamilton Harris, "Regionalism and Nationalism in Architec-
ture," The Texas Quarterly 1 (Feb. 1958): 116. See also Frampton, Modern Architec-
ture, p. 320.