R.I.P. Regionalism

As you approach universality, you also approach non-specificity. The emergence of a global culture is causing the increasing abandonment of local culture in favor of a more universally palatable homogeneity.

Though readily apparent in many areas, I will of course use architecture as a prime example. In times past architecture was a reflection of the responses of a local population to its environment, climate, and cultural heritage. As communication has increased, architecture has dealt with a perpetually increasing (though increasingly non-specific) scope of influence on its design. Where you could once identify the region a particular American home was built in, you now encounter a huge number of “custom” homes with no regional character. More accurately, you find homes employing the watered down usage of just about every regional character – a Chimera of non-specific American regionalism. There is little regard for cultural memory as a depository for solutions to common regional problems. In Global Culture, Frank Gehry works everywhere, from L.A. to the Czech Republic. The only difference is the amount of the heating/cooling bills.

Even when you can find reference to local culture, it is not as a solution to some regional problem but as a surface nod to the past. This is not to say that all architectural precedent is purely functional, but that such precedent embodies a cultural reality of climate, geography, spirituality, or organization. Architects are good at making the obligatory head fake towards the preservation of local character and then lobbing the Hail Mary in hopes of getting their latest “critical” interpretation of post-modern humanity in the pages of Architectural Record.

The final question boils down to this: Is globalization killing culture? Does the virtue of “tolerance” coupled with a desire to create the global village inadvertently smother any condition under which local culture can endure or progress? More importantly, does the new interconnected, universally acceptable culture provide as much enrichment or value as local, backwards, ethno-centric, existing culture?

Obviously that’s way too many questions without answers. Maybe some of you out there can help me out on that. Extra credit if you can help me figure out how Christianity plays into the same issue.