Book Launch: Resisting Postmodern Architecture

This talk is part of the Situating Architecture Lecture Series. Prof Jonathan Hill and Megha Chand Inglis join Stelios Giamarelos to discuss his new book; Resisting Postmodern Architecture: Critical Regionalism before Globalisation (UCL Press) is a critical reappraisal of one of the most popular architectural theories of the recent past on its fortieth anniversary. This event will be chaired by Prof Peg Rawes.

About

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Its principles of acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture, and topography of a specific place are integrated into architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has frequently been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of “the global” with “the local”.

The book uses more than fifty interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries to resituate critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it also shows how the “periphery” was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice.

Speakers

Stylianos (Stelios) Giamarelos is Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture. He is the author of Resisting Postmodern Architecture: Critical Regionalism before Globalisation (London: UCL Press, 2022); co-editor of Resilience in Architectural History (Special Collection of Architectural Histories, 2019) and ATHENS by SOUND (Athens: futura, 2008); and co-author of 2 oral histories of architectural education in Greece (The Postmodern in Architecture (Athens: Nefeli, 2018) and Uncharted Currents (Athens: Melani, 2014)). He has also served as executive editor of The Journal of Architecture (RIBA, 2020-22), general editor of Architectural Histories (EAHN, 2017-20), and co-founding editor of LOBBY (Bartlett, 2013-16), among others.

Jonathan Hill is Professor of Architecture and Visual Theory at The Bartlett School of Architecture, where he directs the Architectural Design MPhil/PhD programme and tutors Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2) Unit 12 with Elizabeth Dow. Jonathan is the author of The Illegal Architect (1998), Actions of Architecture (2003), Immaterial Architecture (2006), Weather Architecture (2012), A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction (2016), and The Architecture of Ruins (2019); editor of Occupying Architecture (1998), Architecture—the Subject is Matter (2001) and Designs on History: The Architect as Physical Historian (2021); and co-editor of Critical Architecture (2007).

Megha Chand Inglis is Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Her work challenges prevalent notions of modernity by including untold stories of temple builders of western India in a creative struggle between ancient and new building and technological practices. Megha recently co-curated the special issue of Architectural Research Quarterly 'The Indian Temple and Modernity' (2022). Her work has also been published in Industries of Architecture (Routledge: 2016) and the Colombian journal Dearq (2020) in a special issue dedicated to digital technologies for architecture from the Global South. She is currently writing a monograph on the Sompura community of temple builders of Western India, for Routledge.

Attendees will be able to purchase a discounted hard copy of the book at the event with an exclusive UCL promo code. The book is also available as an open-access PDF, free to download at UCL Press' website.

More information

• Buy or download Stylianos (Stelios) Giamarelos' book at UCL Press

Image: Atelier 66 architects’ 1982 visit to their Lyttos Hotel project in Anissara, Crete, Greece. Courtesy of Lucy and Giorgos Triantafyllou.