Musings on natural environment and religion

What's critical regionalism got to do with it?

Eggener's critique of critical regionalism focuses on the debate of what critical regionalism actually is and then examples of what it is not, specifically focusing on the work of Luis Barragán. In general, Eggener defines critical regionalism as "not a style, but a process" (2002, p.229) that requires practitioners to critically examine the region and see how it informs architecture and space. Historically, this process (which became prevalent in the 1980s) came about as a revolt against universal design, which by default made it less important about what it was and more focused on what it wasn't or didn't do (Eggener, 2002). In my opinion, the lack of a clear definition of critical regionalism results in ones inability to truly critique it; observing work under this microscope quickly becomes subjective and lacks the rigor of a non-partisan examination.

It is clear that Eggener has a strong opinion of Barragán's work, calling it elitist, self-reflective, and nostalgic – all things that critical regionalism is supposedly against. But the bigger question may be: did Barragán believe he was doing the work of a critical regionalist? And if so, can Eggener disagree? Examples listed by Eggener argue that Barragán would not have considered himself a critical regionalist, which further supports his opinions.

Despite all the discussion, this critique still manages to elude the topic of people, or the inhabitants of the designed space. I'm unsure as to how this fits into the definition of critical regionalism, but it seems unreasonable to forego considerations of the end user when determining wether or not the solution (which may or may not represent critical regionalist work) is successful. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common oversight by many architectural schools of thought – while built environments are beautiful in themselves, they essentially exist for the inhabitance of people with real needs and desires. Therefore, without considering and critiquing how built spaces affect these individuals, the critique process is incomplete.

Islamism for life.

As our identity pinwheel showed, religion was a part of many of our personal identities; yet, it was also a removable factor (by some) when we needed to hypothetically remove one factor of our selves. This seems to be quite the opposite for Muslims, many of whom are intimately bound to their religion,

"Their loyalty to Islam is quite amazing: Muslims almost never leave their faith in favor of another one." [View source]

[More to come soon . . . ]

References:
Eggener, K. (2002). Placing resistance: A critique of critical regionalism. Journal of Architectural Education, 55(4), 228-237.

Karam, A.M. (2000). Islamsism and the decivilising processes of globalisation. In Alberto Arce and Norman Long, eds. Anthropology, development and modernities - Exploring discourses, counter-tendencies, and violence, London: Routledge, 64-73.