Archiwatch

Isabella Guarini … seconda risposta a Salingaros …

Critica al regionalismo critico

“Le premesse, contenute nella mia prima risposta con postilla, mi aiutano nel dire ciò che penso del “critical regionalism” e delle sue conseguenze sull’insegnamento dell’architettura, come disciplina storica e compositiva. Salingaros descrive bene il processo filosofico che sottende tale criterio di classificazione dell’architettura moderna, mentre io faccio esplicito riferimento al capitolo sul “critical regionalism” nella Storia dell’Architettura moderna di K. Frampton. Per me l’espressione “critical regionalism” è un ossimoro, ovvero affermazione e negazione al tempo stesso, che non è applicabile all’architettura in quanto costruzione concreta dell’esistenza stessa degli esseri umani: costruisco per abitare, quindi esisto. Da ciò escludo che si possa classificare un modo di essere dell’architettura nella combinazione di due termini che si elidono a vicenda. Nella introduzione al capitolo sul “critical regionalism” Frampton riporta la tesi di Paul Ricoeur sostenitore della necessità di modernizzazione delle culture regionali attraverso l’apporto esterno di altre culture. Dunque, si sostiene che per entrare nella modernità bisogna pagare il tributo alla diversità, o meglio bisogna farsi colonizzare pacificamente. Tuttavia, nell’applicazione di una proposizione filosofica al fare architettonico, il risultato appare limitato all’uso delle tecnologie industriali, uguali in tutto il mondo, associate con quelle locali. Il limite di una tale riduzione dell’architettura sta non solo nella negazione dell’autonoma capacità delle varie culture di evolversi, ma anche nel considerare l’architettura in sé come manufatto senza alcuna relazione con il paesaggio naturale e artificiale in cui risiede la memoria identitaria. Quando visitiamo la dissepolta città di Pompei , abbiamo la visione della casa e della città al momento dell’eruzione del 79 dopo Cristo. Se, invece, camminiamo per i Decumani di Napoli, quelli della sua fondazione che ancora esistono con tutto il peso delle trasformazioni in 2500 anni, non possiamo riconoscere
l‘antica casa romana come era quella pompeiana, ma ne avvertiamo l’esistenza dalla relazione con la struttura urbanistica rimasta immutata. Penso sinceramente che il “critical regionalism” sia stato solo un anticipatore del decostruttivismo globalizzante attuale.
Il problema è come trasmettere tutto ciò agli studenti, dominati dall’establishment virtuale!”
I.G.

…
Proponents of this self-contradictory ideology assert that vernacular tradition and culture are dead, and that henceforth, regional architecture must adapt to modernist uniformization. They proclaim that the patterns and practices from which a region’s identity is derived are mere “nostalgia”, and instead recommend the abstract aesthetics of international modernism (Cassidy, 2007). Any architectural expression, other than those possible within the restricted modernist aesthetic, is rejected. Those writers’ avowed intention is to create forms that do not belong to the vernacular form language. What results from this schizophrenic approach is not regional architecture in any sense, but a set of self-referential objects detached from their cultural roots, created and manipulated without regard to their regional context. (One occasionally sees an attempt at site-specific climatic adaptation, but nothing more).
Teachers thus use purely ideological arguments to validate a narrow set of design styles for students. That is as wrong as it is unsupported. It is only a means to further sustain a cult ideology that has dominated architectural education for the past several decades. The point is that good architecture and urbanism have nothing to do with political beliefs. Worst of all, teachers apply techniques learned from political ideologues to coerce students and other academics into intellectual submission. Such forms of censorship are typical of a system that considers itself above all others. It gives itself the authority to re-frame every member’s worldview. Whenever evidence is ignored, and is substituted by the irrational, that creates dogma. This erroneous style of teaching has become solidly established in today’s system.
One way to maintain the mystique of “architecture as an art” was to embrace ever more abstruse and incomprehensible texts, so as to shield the discipline’s shaky intellectual core from outside scrutiny. This obsession (or defensive tactic) has led architecture to embrace the nihilistic and deconstructive philosophers. Having architecture students read Derridean and Deleuzean philosophical texts disorients them, breaking down their critical faculties. Such disorientation could in fact be deliberate: a necessary psychological preparation for imprinting stylistic preferences in their minds (Salingaros, 2004). Throwing the burden of teaching architects onto obscure philosophical texts enables architecture schools to endorse a very narrow set of design styles, embracing those currently in fashion.
The common justification given for studying philosophy is that architecture and urbanism are intimately tied to social phenomena, so that philosophy prepares a student to confront architectural problems. This explanation is a subterfuge, however, operating more as a means to avoid teaching architecture to students directly. The modernist teaching method, wherein all useful derived knowledge is thrown out in the tabula rasa approach, cannot openly admit that architectural and urban knowledge ever existed. If it did, then someone would have to explain how over 2,000 years of knowledge was lost, discarded, or ignored during the modernists’ 70-year reign. By diverting architecture students towards carefully selected philosophical authors, this action conveniently covers up the deliberate avoidance of any genuine, newly-derived or historically-relevant architectural theory.
So much of what now passes for “architectural theory” is therefore little more than doctrine. It conditions students to have absolute faith in a body of beliefs established in the absence of real-world criteria. Those beliefs set up the student’s worldview as shaped by the dynamics of in-group affiliation: a cognitive filter that bends information to fit, and rejects information that does not fit. Architectural education must in the future clearly separate architecture from politics, and also separate architecture from self-referential philosophy. Only teachers can train their students to do this. Both teachers and students can achieve this clarity of thought only after they understand the genuine theoretical basis of architecture, expressed in strictly architectural terms. Schools have a responsibility to teach a genuinely architectural basis for design.
Architecture students should ultimately study philosophy, but that is productive once they have formed a basis of what is really going on in architecture. And the philosophy they study has to be positive and humanistic. Many philosophers throughout history emphasize the necessity for human beings to connect to the universe, but architects hardly ever study those authors. Intelligence-Based Design has deep philosophical foundations. Humanly-adaptive architecture and urbanism arise out of a respect for humanity’s higher meaning in an infinite universe. There exists a vast body of philosophical work connecting humanity both with nature and with the sublime. One of our recommended texts, The Luminous Ground (Alexander, 2004) establishes a genuine philosophical foundation for an adaptive architecture.
Philosophers whose writings are essential for the sustainability of humankind try to understand otherwise puzzling human actions outside a strictly scientific framework. They help us to delineate good from bad in human activities. This historical notion of “morality” recurs throughout the traditional treatises on philosophy of the entire world. Numerous contemporary philosophers celebrate life and the sacredness of humanity. Traditional religious texts are founded upon morality stories that help humanity to see beyond the limitations of human beings existing as animals or purely subjective beings. But none of this is ever incorporated into architectural teaching today — which still turns to the same peculiar handful of (Western) philosophers, relying upon them to justify “architecture for architecture’s sake”. Judging by how inhuman its forms are, the driving ideology is purely nihilistic, even as it serves global capital.
The separation between nihilism and humanism is total and uncompromising, however. We have to choose very carefully which philosophers, and which texts to offer students for their reading assignments. A school cannot abrogate its responsibility by teaching architecture as a set of self-serving beliefs. In the twentieth century, architecture became a mass movement under the influence of leading architects who exploited specific philosophical texts to support their ideals and to promote themselves (Salingaros, 2004). Architecture detached itself from any higher order in human existence, turning away from both nature and from the sacred. It was the first time in human history that humans began to intentionally create unnatural structures that are uncomfortable to inhabit and to experience.

Section of “Intelligence-Based Design: A Sustainable Foundation for Worldwide Architectural Education” by Nikos A. Salingaros & Kenneth G. Masden II, ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, Volume 2, Issue 1 (March 2008), pages 129-188.