ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses mainly on architectural work concerned with the context of the project, specifically as a means of reaffirming a local identity and an ‘identity-specific’ modernity. Local identity here refers to a unique set of traits corresponding to a specific group of people, inherent of their cultural and artistic production through many years. By using as a starting point the building typology of the Mediterranean patio house, this chapter discusses different notions of the concept of ‘tradition’. It also looks at the ways in which they have been grasped as synonyms of local identity; all this, in a period where the modern movement was being widely disseminated as the predominant building expression of a new machinist era. The value of studying their work lies in the fact that they instinctively discern the shortcomings of the modern and test more liberal and expressive interpretations of it, in a time when modernity had become generally accepted.
