ABSTRACT
Although we tend to think of regionalism as a twentieth-century pursuit, regional attitudes in design are recognizable characteristics of most pre-industrial place-based settlements. These urbanisms had to rely on building materials that could be sourced regionally, designs that were scaled and erected based on human physical capability, and local craftsmanship that developed in response to local conditions for construction. Prior to the industrial revolution when transport, communication, and manufacturing processes liberalized access to resources and technical innovations, we might say that most built environments were de facto regional. Then in the industrial period, all of this changed as materials could be transported across the globe, factory-based production could mass produce building components, and communication improvements allowed the sharing of design techniques and strategy without regard to context. A conscious turn to regional design became a strategy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and again in the late twentieth century to reinstill a sense of place and local culture that had been lost with growing industrialization, global homogenization, and the widespread use of universalizing (and often oppressive) architecture movements. Regional design approaches helped to make neo-classicism, factory-based production, and international style modernism more palatable to local tastes – as well as help to reinforce a sense of place-based pride. From Marie Antoinette’s rustic milkmaid’s cottage, to Barry and Pugin’s Houses of Parliament – from the Craftsman aesthetics of Ruskin, to Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh buildings – notions of regionalism have been used to conjure up and reinforce imagery associated with local culture, everyday life, regional craft traditions, and national identity.
