Vol :37 Issue No.1 2012 - Open House International

Abstract
A READING IN CRITICAL REGIONALISM: ANALYSIS
OF TWO HOUSES BY HAN TÜMERTEKİN*
Hilal Aycı & Esin Boyacıoğlu
If regionalism is defined as designing responsibly in reaction to a local context, then critical regionalism can be
defined as doing so without denying the universally enlightening content of the modernist project. Armed with this
definition, this article attempts to analyze two houses by architect Han Tümertekin that are set in a rural context
in a very small Aegean village in Turkey. The aim of the paper is to explore the extent to which these two buildings
embrace the tenets of critical regionalism and to understand the local relevance as well as international
esteem of the buildings.
Keywords: Critical regionalism, tactile, place-context, tectonic-poetic, defamiliarization / estrangement.
INTRODUC TION
Like in many disciplines, the need for theories in
architecture arose from the tendency to reduce criticism
to personal views and even prejudices of a
writer. On the other hand, it is largely common for
critics to reduce the built environment into two categories:
universal and local. Within the intersection
of these seemingly opposite concepts, there exist
others such as location, context, culture and time,
which transform the universal and local duality, that
was especially perceived after World War II, into
concepts capable of enriching the language and
content of architecture. Lewis Mumford, in a 1971
speech, pointed out that the “Modern Movement
was regional at heart” (Tzonis, Lefaivre, 2003: 6)
suggesting a new reading for the built environment
instead of merely reading it as universal or local.
This objection to approaching universal and local
as two opposite concepts was furthered by
Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre and Kenneth
Frampton in the 1980s. With the contribution of
these writers, “critical” was appended to the concept
of regionalism, building up a new and critical
prospect.
Similarly, Frampton, in his 1980 article
“Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an
Architecture of Resistance,” discussed six concepts
which mediate between universal and local. The
main idea of this article was that a designer must
engage with the specificities of culture, place, tectonics
and tactile experience, otherwise the built
environment will only consist of functional entities.
Tzonis and Lafaivre on the other hand put forward
another concept within the theme of critical regionalism;
defamiliarization. Defamiliarization proposes
an awareness of the familiar environments of daily
life. According to critical regionalism, these concepts
need to be taken critically in order to have
more ‘appropriate works’ in the built environment.
These concepts also pave the way for prolific
debates to interpret the built environment.
The aim of this essay is to form a conceptual
framework that is “critically regionalist” and
enables a reading specific to Han Tümertekin’s B2
and SM Houses. Through this method, the goal is
to spotlight the hidden qualities of the buildings
which are not perceived at first sight. This reading
intends to take the architectural product beyond the
familiar way of defining a product on the basis of
function, and enables a reading of the interfaces of
opposite concepts. The aforementioned houses
* This article is adapted from the Hilal Aycı’s master thesis , "Seeking the Universal within The Local: A Reading Of Han Tümertekin's
B2 and SM Houses Through the Prominent Concepts of ‘Critical Regionalism’ ” (thesis advisor: Associate Prof. Dr. Esin Boyacıoğlu),
submitted to the Gazi University Institute of Science and Technology, Ankara, TURKEY, 2008.
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open house international Vol.37 No.1, March 2012 A Reading in Critical Regionalism: Analysis Of Two Houses By Han Tümertekin