Exploring Building’s Climatic Adaptability Through Critical Regionalism

Against globalization and other centralized structures in arts or business, thinking in terms of region brings the tactile immediacy of spatial experience, the necessary response to climate and topography. A sense of reality to the cultural meaning (identity) of architectural form, and the possibility of engaging local labor and skill in architectural production (to embrace the principles of critical regionalism, an alternative theory that respects local culture, geography). The good architecture is also local. Re-center the theory away from concerns for style and aesthetic representation and update regionalism and architecture to a “subset environmentalism”, revised the theory, calling it a “liberative environmental practice” This study focuses on the views of architects (Fernand Pouillon & Minyaoui brothers) and their way of thinking contributing to the production of cultural identity in their work projects. For the purpose of this study, a sample of their projects which express cultural identity will be analyzed through the critical regionalist approach and explore their climatic adaptability. The methods used for data collection included: a survey using a standardized thematically axes; and the analysis of projects’ sample that represents the expression of cultural identity –through critical regionalism-. The analysis contained several axes covering different enquiries including: the views of architects producing this architecture in order to understand how they perceive what they are doing, what are their references, and how they are influenced by the client, the context, the climate and the history of the region. The aim of this work and research is to explore climatic adaptability through the critical regionalist approach and clarify the strong relation between identity and climatic adaptability in critical regionalism architecture.