Critical regionalism

Critical regionalism is an approach to architecture that strives to counter the placelessness and lack of identity of the International Style, but also rejects the whimsical individualism and ornamentation of Postmodern architecture. The stylings of critical regionalism seek to provide an architecture rooted in the modern tradition, but tied to geographical and cultural context. Critical regionalism is not simply regionalism in the sense of vernacular architecture. It is a progressive approach to design that seeks to mediate between the global and the local languages of architecture.

The phrase "critical regionalism" was first presented in 1981, in ‘The Grid and the Pathway,’ an essay published in Architecture in Greece, by the architectural theorists Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre and, with a slightly different meaning, by the historian-theorist Kenneth Frampton. Sri Lankan Architect Minnette De Silva was one of the pioneers in practicing this architecture style in the 1950s and termed it 'Regional Modernism'.^[1]

Critical Regionalists thus hold that both modern and post-modern architecture are "deeply problematic".^[2]