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June 20, 2003
Here is a solution to my spatial anxiety about the poor architectural design in Adelaide, and the reproduction of the same old stuff in the name of heritage in a city that once saw itself as the 'Athens of the South.' That 1970s image has well gone and it has been replaced by a conservative provincalism.
How to move forward? The suggestion holds that Adelaide should embrace its design community including its architects, and help them assert a regional identity through good design.That is the view of Francesco Bonato, (director of Tectvs Design) the new President of the SA Royal Australian Institute of Architects.
I support this desire. What is needed is good design suited to teh climate and the need for Adelaide to become an eco-city.
Regional identity is the key here.The suggestion is that it is based on an architecture that is rooted in the characteristics of a specific region while still utilizing the technological advantages of modern building.
By this I presume Bonato means that we get behind good design that responds to the needs and opportunities of a specific region; is rooted in the region; and so is an architecture that is meaningful within its context. This would be an architecture that acts as a reaction to the phallocentric forms of the International Style that symbolized the later phases of modernism. This modernism is a stand alone, technological architecture that is free of local reference and meaning, and which assesses buildings in terms of the function and integrity of materials.
Sad to say, Adelaide is not nurturing good regional architecture. From what I see in the building boom along the coast near Victor Harbor, the new seaside architecture is dominated by the ethos of the biggest house on the smallest at the lowest price. This has very little to do with developing new forms of architecture that draw upon local knowledge and traditions, and are adapted to the local climate, economy, and culture. There is very little by way of a careful design response to a localized, physical sense of place. It is more a case of living around dismal architecture.
What a critical regionalism would do is react against Sydney as the metropolitan center of the Australia, which embodies the victory of universal civilization over locally inflected culture. A regional architecture can be sustained if it distances itself from both the Enlightenment myth of progress and from a reactionary, unrealistic impulse to return to the architectonic forms of the pre-industrial past.
This would be an architecture that explored possibilities for natural daylighting, natural ventilation, shading and for passive solar heating and cooling are all important. It would foster the creation of an architecture that can selectively be opened to its surroundings, and has a sensitivity to nature through the interaction of inside and outside spaces.
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