Stylianos Giamarelos: Four Decades of Critical Regionalism

Galerie VI cordially invites you to a lecture from the series History, Theory and Criticism in Architecture.
What comes to architects' minds today when they hear the words "critical regionalism"? Usually resistance. On one side is the specific cultural identity of a place. On the other side is what this regional identity seeks to resist: the onslaught of globalization which threatens to homogenize the world. The subtitle of the latest and most systematic treatise on critical regionalism by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre emphasizes these "peaks and valleys" that continue to resist the flattening of the world.
Is it necessary to discuss these terms even today? Are not all these clashes of the local with the global a bit outdated and tired? Do they sufficiently cover the complex reality of today's world? It has been more than 40 years since the term "critical regionalism" was first introduced. The world was certainly different back then. But that is only half the story. The discourses of critical regionalism have themselves further evolved within the process of globalization at the end of the 20th century. The process of globalization then became the subject of fierce debates, which particularly became evident due to the anti-globalization movement at the turn of the millennium. However, that was just the tip of the iceberg, which had been gradually developing in the previous decades. Since the 1980s, the global picture has been more complex than the schematic representations of Tzonis, Lefaivre, and Frampton—the main theorists of critical regionalism.
In this lecture, I will show how even critical regionalism ultimately unwittingly supported what it fought against. I will base this on the differences between the world then and now. More precisely, I will traverse three decades to present three worlds, three returns, three globalizations, three colonizations, and three challenges for the architectural theory, history, and historiography of critical regionalism in the 21st century.
Dr. Stylianos (Stelios) Giamarelos is an associate professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL. His research is grounded in his multidisciplinary education in architectural engineering, history and theory of architecture, and history and philosophy of science and technology. He is the author of the book Resisting Postmodern Architecture: Critical Regionalism before Globalisation (London: UCL Press, 2022); co-editor of the books Resilience in Architectural History (Special Collection of Architectural Histories, 2019) and ATHENS by SOUND (Athens: futura, 2008); and co-author of two oral histories of architectural education in Greece (The Postmodern in Architecture (Athens: Nefeli, 2018) and Uncharted Currents (Athens: Melani, 2014)). In 2018, his work on critical regionalism was a finalist for the EAHN prize for publication, awarded every two years. Due to his role as executive editor of The Journal of Architecture (RIBA, 2020–22), general editor of Architectural Histories (EAHN, 2017–20), executive editor of P.E.A.R.: Paper for Emerging Architectural Research (Bartlett, 2019–21), editorial collaborator on the second series of The Bartlett Design Research Folios (Bartlett, 2019–20), and co-founder of the journal LOBBY (Bartlett, 2013–16), he has also guided early-career researchers and facilitated scholarly outputs on prominent global platforms for architectural research. In 2008, he was co-curator of Greece's national participation at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture.