Synopsis No: 04

Students Name: 1.
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Text:
Author:
Year Written:

Ang Boon Cheong

Chua Sor Hong
Gan Sze Hui (Scarlett)
Ahmad Farhan Shah
Yasaanth K.
Preshant Rasu
Hans Hosea Gonza

From Towards a Critical Regionalism

Kenneth Frampton
1981

Purpose of the theory (Please tick X; you may tick more than one box)
X
X
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Identifying an issue or problem within the contemporary context

Analyzing an architecture to identify a problem or solve a problem
Solving an issue in a broader context outside of architecture: presenting a theory/manifesto
Solving an issue within the context of architecture: presenting a design method
Solving an issue within the context of architecture: presenting a theory
Others:

Please complete the following:

What are the issues
addressed?

What are the design

methods/strategy/theories
proposed?

Lack of sense of place in modern architecture

With the onslaught of universal civilization stirred by
increasing hunger for development, freestanding highrises and freeways more concerned with utility
Avant-garde become rational and used to destroy culture
and retard society.
Critical Regionalism not just stuck to vernacular but is
about implemented newness.
New form generates placelessness, or an
indistinguishable domain.
.
Critical regionalism should adopt modern architecture
critically for its universal progressive qualities but at
the same time should value responses particular to the
context.
A design method that is assuredly modern architecture
but relies on
1. Organic unity of topography,
2. Local material
3. Climatic,
4. Light,
5. Cultural characteristics,
6. Tectonic form and
7. Tactile sense

Relate the text to

architectural/urban forms
by illustrating one key
image.

Justify the selection.

Rokko Housing I,II, and III, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, 1999

by Tadao Ando Architect & Associates
The architect should enter a dialectical relation with
nature, taking clues from the topography and avoiding
bulldozing in order to flatten space.

The Rokko housing project is characterized by the steep

60 degree slope of the site located at the foot of Mt.
Rokko. Avoiding the modernist tabula rasa approach of
levelling the site, Ando chose to situate his building on
the severe slopes to make a quiet building standing
quietly in nature, one that preserves the tectonic
qualities of the mountain.
The passageways were intended to be activated by the
interpenetration of public and private realms so that
one can get the sense of the life in each housing units.
In the past, streets, particularly back alleys in japan
served as communal spaces for the neighbourhood; these
communal spaces threaded their way among buildings and
were intimately connected with everyday life culture.
Andos architecture gives rise to a revitalized Japanese
feeling for the interplay of light, material and detail
(traced to the history of Japanese architecture).