Intersecting Itineraries Beyond the Strada Novissima: The Converging Authorship of Critical Regionalism

Stylianos Giamarelos

doi:10.5334/ah.192

Abstract

While the 1980 Venice Biennale is usually understood as the exhibition that crystallised postmodernism as a style of historicist eclecticism, the event also acted as a catalyst for the eventual convergence of alternative architectural sensibilities and ideas. This article shows how critical regionalism emerged when the physical and intellectual trajectories of British historian Kenneth Frampton and the Greek architects Suzana Antonakaki and Dimitris Antonakakis intersected in the aftermath of the Biennale. Offering an alternative way out of the contemporaneous crisis of modernism, this open-ended and extrovert regionalism that opposed static cultural insularities is thus the discursive footprint of architectural sensibilities travelling through cultures.

Highlights

Despite the diverging agendas of its curators and participants, the 1980 Venice Biennale went down in history as the event that single-handedly defined postmodernism as an architectural style of historicist eclecticism
Kenneth Frampton’s Intellectual Travels as a Displacement of Architectural Discourse beyond the Strada Novissima Like Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis, Kenneth Frampton was ambivalent in his relation both to the legacy of a redundant modernism and the triumphalist promises for a postmodern pluralist future offered by the Biennale
The early architectural travel observations recorded in these student works foreshadowed Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis’ future projects — as emerging sensibilities that were to be consciously developed later in their career

Summary

Introduction

Despite the diverging agendas of its curators and participants, the 1980 Venice Biennale went down in history as the event that single-handedly defined postmodernism as an architectural style of historicist eclecticism.

Results

Conclusion