A Search for Genuine Regionalism : A Regenerative Agenda for the Peripheries

Considered to be the answer to the problem of globalisation, the “architecture of resistance” was exposited by Frampton (The anti-aesthetic: essays on postmodern culture. Bay Press, Port Townsend, pp. 16–30, 1983) in his polemical essay of the Six points, and illustrated through practice by some architects. The power and degree of the architectural ‘resistance’, though, was restrained by its rather aesthetic focus. As Moore (Constructing a new agenda: architectural theory 1993–2009. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 365–384, 2007) points out Frampton’s modern regionalism was not based on a political perspective, but on a concept that stressed summarising the history of architecture from an individual aspect, rather than declaring a new agenda for praxis. In his non-modern manifesto Moore (Constructing a new agenda: architectural theory 1993–2009. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 365–384, 2007) claims the necessity of the production of a regenerative architecture, instead of basing academic considerations on design, will participate in the construction of integrated cultural and ecological processes by magnifying local labour and constructing the technologies of everyday life. Regeneration has an impact on solving the economic trauma in today’s peripheral societies by motivating the centre to reconsider its role about natural sources of sustainability. Subsequently, we cannot reject the idea expounded by Solà-Morales (Differences: topographies of contemporary architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 57–72, 1987), of the possibility of a new life springing from half-abandoned or marginal areas. What is the unique architectural self-reference that is still untouched by reproducible technologies and global political interventions? To respond to this question, this chapter takes a closer look at the latest relevant tendencies of the architecture of the ‘Marginal Worlds’