A critical reappraisal of one of the most popular architectural theories of the recent past on its fortieth anniversary. 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 homogenizing onslaught of globalization. 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." This book uses more than fifty interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries to resituate critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around
