Critical Regionalism: The Importance Of Regionalism In South Africa

Culturally relevant buildings are becoming harder and harder to find throughout the world. Like most countries, South Africa has not escaped the persistent commercialism of the Western world. “Critical Regionalism is the approach to architecture that strives to counter placessness and lack of meaning in Modern Architecture by using contextual forces to give a sense of place and meaning “(Frampton 1983:92).It also looks to balance and inter link the goal of having local and global architecture influences in a building.

“Teaching and making architecture cannot be based on the black box principle, because every new design triggers an original new solution” (Fawcett, 1985:17). The development and recreation of architecture reinforces this statement as one could say that architectural movements evolve and change periodically due to architects finding and exploring new ideas and culture; leaving architectural styles either Avant-garde or not looked upon. Frampton explained how that our Modern Critical Regional Architecture can be put into under Six points .These Six points may come across as a practical way of evaluating ones architectural typology and fitting in to a country. At the same time it restructures the architects way of thinking and giving back to the cultural roots of the land not just an International Movement that the building is built with. In this essay I will choose four out of the six points written by Frampton and discuss them in depth through a critical study of the FNB Stadium, which is situated in the South West of Johannesburg; South Africa. These four points will enable me to decide critically if the building is designed well to be label a critical regionalism building.

The FNB Stadium which is widely regarded as...

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...have a local tie and design for the local atmospheric conditions.

The stadium is an architectural responsive design to climatic constraints, the permanent gapping in the roof means that the design of a hot climatic country was taken into consideration whereas if this stadium was in England it would have a roof design as the weather is generally cold and rainy.

End

The FNB Stadium advocated an inclusive architecture that combined ‘Visual versus Tactile’; ‘Culture versus Nature’, ‘Resistance of place and form’ and Culture and Civilisation’. The FNB Stadium successfully achieved the core concepts of Critical Regionalism, there is strong cultural aspects integrated into the design. It is not just a stadium or structure in Johannesburg, it is a structure that has meaning, and careful thinking was put into the execution of the design, look and feel of the stadium.