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Journal of Architectural Education, pp. 130–139© 2001 ACSA, Inc.

Proposals for regionalist architecture have ap-peared regularly in architectural discourse sincethe seventeenth century. Central to this discourseare shifting attitudes toward the core concepts oftechnology and place. Moderns, it seems, tend tovalue technology and devalue place. Postmodernsdo the opposite—they value place and devaluetechnology. The doctrines of critical regionalismdefy categorization because they value both tech-nology and place positively. However, by derivingits program equally from the modern assumptionsof Jurgen Habermas and from the postmodernassumption of Martin Heidegger, critical regional-ism presents a philosophical antinomy, orunresolvable conflict. It is this conflict that sug-gests a nonmodern thesis for architecture.

Introduction

In the 1980s and early 1990s the topic ofregionalism enjoyed considerable visibilitywithin architectural discourse. The prospectof a progressive regionalism, or critical re-gionalism, seemed an antidote to both theregressive fantasies of postmodern histori-cism and the various proposals for adeconstructivist architecture inspired by Eu-ropean linguistic theory. Since the mid-1990s, however, the regionalist moment haswaned. The progenitors of that conversa-tion, Kenneth Frampton, Alexander Tzonis,and Liane Lefaivre have moved on to othertopics, and the projects of those architectswho embodied the critical regionalist atti-tude have been reframed by other discourses.

This state of affairs is, in my view, arather natural if not entirely satisfying devel-opment. In the maturation of any conversa-tion, some possibilities are suppressed just asothers are amplified by the exigencies of thesituation. The purpose of this article, then,is to reconstruct those suppressed possibili-ties contained within the modern concep-tion of regionalism that might yieldunsuspected theoretical opportunities rel-

evant to contemporary conditions. In short,I wish to argue that technology and placeshould be understood as the suppressed coreconcepts that are contained within regional-ist architectural production.

This is not to say that regions are con-stituted only of places and technologies, butthat these concepts are central to our under-standing of what a “region” might be. Theinterrogation of these core concepts, then, isan opportunity to reconsider the history ofregionalism as a concept.

Before I argue that the concept of re-gionalism should be renovated in one direc-tion or another, I have a responsibility toreview how the core concepts of place andtechnology have been used in the past. Inwhat follows I’ll first define the concept ofplace by reconstructing the rationale behindits devaluation as a concept relevant tomodern conditions. Because the contempo-rary recuperation of place is often a conser-vative reaction against modernist ideology itwill be helpful to put this discussion in ahistorical context before looking further.

In their most recent essay on criticalregionalism, Alexander Tzonis and LianeLefaivre documented five historical stages inthe evolution of the concept of regionalismin Western culture: the picturesque, the ro-mantic, the Nazi Heimat, the commercial,and finally, the stage of critical regionalism.1

I find their analysis to be helpful and willreview their genealogy for the benefit of thenonmodern thesis to follow. Having de-fined the concept of place through the dis-ciplines of geography and history, I’ll thenconsider how we might understand themodern construction of technology. Ken-neth Frampton has, of course, deeply minedthe philosopher Martin Heidegger’s critiqueof modern technology as a way of informinghis critical regionalism hypothesis. Ratherthan revisit that discourse, however, I willborrow from the contemporary literature of

science and technology studies to provide asociological view of how technological sys-tems are developed.

My own position is very supportive ofthe critical regionalism hypothesis originallyconstructed by Tzonis and Lefaivre andfully developed by Frampton. There are,however, hanging threads in that conversa-tion which tug at a contemporary under-standing of the topic. In my view it isnecessary to resolve the internal tensionsimplicit in Frampton’s hypothesis that (toofreely) mix the underlying modernist as-sumptions of critical theory, particularlythose of Jurgen Habermas, with the under-lying postmodern assumptions of MartinHeidegger. I will attempt to resolve this op-position by constructing a nonmodern posi-tion that avoids the conflicted attitudetoward the concepts technology and placethat is implicit in both modernist andpostmodernist thought.2 Before I can map anonmodern position from which Frampton’scritical regionalism hypothesis might berenovated, however, it is necessary to betterdefine my terms.

Defining Place

The geographer John Agnew has arguedthat, in modernist thought, the traditiona lconcept of place is devalued, and this fortwo reasons: First, modern social science hasconfused, or conflated, the distinction be-tween place and community. Communityin the modern view, argues Agnew, is as-sumed to define both “a physical setting forsocial relations” and “a morally valued wayof life.”3 In the conflation, place has beenerroneously equated with local concepts oftraditional morality. Modernist thought, inAgnew’s analysis, fails to understand societyas a dynamic process that transforms, butdoes not abolish or invalidate, the concept

Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis

STEVEN A. MOORE, The University of Texas at Austin

131 Moore

of region. As a result, moderns tends to reifymoral concepts as places. In other words,our characterization of big cities as dens ofiniquity and small towns as the vessels ofmorality is ideological, not empirical.4

Second, beginning in the nineteenthcentury—a period that witnessed the dra-matic evaporation of traditional communi-ties—social scientists attempted to projectthe trajectory of history. Common to all ofthese a priori projections was the polarity ofcommunity and society. Writers as dissimi-lar as Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx sawcommunity as being coercive, limiting, oridiotic, whereas national societies were char-acterized as liberative. Conservatives, suchas Auguste Comte, saw the loss of tradi-tional village forms as the loss of the idealsocial type. In contrast, the politics of na-tion building and the liberative project ofEnlightenment, became an ideology ofantitraditionalism. To free humans fromfeudal bonds to the land, and the hierarchi-cal relations inscribed there, was understoodby moderns to be the grand scheme (or tel-eology) of history. The German sociologist,Max Weber, popularized this historical ten-sion as the transformation of gemeinschaftinto gesellschaft .5

This logic suggests that the modernreification of moral codes and the teleologyof history conspired to devalue place as a con-cept relevant to the conditions of contempo-rary life. “Becoming modern involves castingoff ties to place (in work, recreation and senseof identity) and adopting an ‘achievementoriented’ or ‘class conscious’ self that is place-less.”6 Agnew argues, in concert with thepostmodern geographer Edward Soja, thatthe devaluation of place was most vigorouslypromoted by Marxist ideology.7 For tradi-tional Marxists to consider social behavior asin any way determined by the conditions ofplace would have been to subvert the dialec-tic order of causality. Marxist logic has tradi-

tionally held that material order arises from adialectic relationship with social activity. But,if Marxists devalued the concept of place onideological grounds, there is considerableirony in the recognition that it has been mar-ket forces that have most effectively devaluedreal places.8

In the eyes of the Left, the doctrine ofenvironmental determinism (which opposesa dialectic understanding of place by hold-ing that societies owe their unique characterto the conditions of their territory) amountsto nothing less than racism and thefetishization of place.9 We will return to thislogic shortly.

In a friendly renovation of this Marx-ist viewpoint, Agnew argues that places can-not be understood within the limiteddimensions of architecture or physical ge-ography.10 Rather, Agnew argues that thevariables that characterize places are multi-valent. He offers three elements, or scales,by which we might understand the phe-nomenon of place: location, sense of place,and locale.11

By location, Agnew intends that aplace can be understood as a geographic areaencompassed by the objective structures ofpolitics and economy. In this sense, places arelinked together, for example, by the interestsof the European Community (EC), or theMonroe Doctrine. Using the same logic, onemight argue that Houston is closer to the cit-ies of Aberdeen, Scotland, and Stravanger,Norway, than to Austin, Texas, because thesame corporate structures that manage the oilfields of the North Sea, manage those ofTexas. It is these structural conditions of po-litical economy at the macroscale that mostconcern Marxist scholars.

At the other end of the spectrum,Agnew argues for the existence of a sense ofplace. By this term he means the local“structure of feeling” that pervades Being ina particular place. This dimension of place

includes the intersubjective realities thatgive a place what conventional languagewould describe as “character” or “quality oflife.” For example, the reverence that thecitizens of Austin, Texas, reserve for a swimin Barton Springs and the stylish ambitionof street life that New Yorkers enjoy are on-tological, rather than objective, dimensionsof place. It is at this scale that the complexhuman poetics of place are experienced. It isthe intersubjective construction of condi-tions experienced as a sense of place thatmost concern constructivist scholars andphenomenologists.

Between objective location, and thesubjective sense of place, Agnew establishesa middle ground, or locale. This scale ofplace is the setting in which social relationsare constituted. Locale includes the institu-tional scale of living to which architecturecontributes so much: the city, the publicsquare, the block, and the neighborhood. Iwant to claim that by considering the con-cept of place, or region, from this mesoscale,we avoid two problems. First, we can appre-ciate the insights of Marxists but avoid theoverdetermination that derives from theirpreoccupation with the seemingly objectiveconditions of political economy. Second, wecan appreciate the insights of constructivistsand phenomenologists but avoid theunderdetermination that derives fromtheir preoccupation with the subjectiveconditions of atomized reality.12 It is the“elastic” scale of all three dimensions,viewed from the mesoscale of the city-state, which best describes a place. By un-derstanding the concept of place as adynamic process that links humans andnonhumans in space at a variety of scales,we might get beyond the opposition be-tween those who understand the conceptas a set of objective structures and thosewho understand it as a set of romanticmyths tied to subjective experience.

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Regionalism as a Historic Strategy

Agnew’s analysis of the devaluation and re-construction of place is helpful, but doesn’ttell us much about how place, or the con-cept of regionalism, has been employed inarchitecture. The essays of Alexander Tzonisand Liane Lefaivre are more helpful. Theseauthors distinguish regionalist architecturefrom regional architecture as a matter of po-litical content. Where a regional architec-ture is constituted by an isolated crafttradition that adapts to local ecological con-ditions, regionalist architecture implicitly“criticizes an architectural order that claimsuniversal application.”13 The regionalist po-sition, then, is both reactive and liberative.It reacts against imposed a priori standardsand seeks liberation from a power that isconsidered foreign and illegitimate.

Tzonis and Lefaivre’s first regionalistcategory, eighteenth-century English pictur-esque architecture, is a good example. It is noaccident that Anthony, Earl of Shaftsbury(1621–1683), was a member of the WhigParty, a promoter of a parliamentary form ofgovernance, an antimonarchist, a nationalist ,and an advocate of constructing a pictur-esque landscape. The cultivation of a land-scape that intensified the natural topographyand flora of place was, for Shaftsbury, an aes-thetic tactic that would foreground the rigidimposition of classical order upon local or-der. Rather than tolerate the classically or-dered formal gardens adopted by themonarchy, which were associated with theclaims of absolute rule, the Whigs cultivateda landscape of particularity in the hope thatit would nurture the liberative politics in-scribed in the genius loci.

Tzonis and Lefaivre’s second cat-egory, romantic regionalism, continues theproject of political liberation from centralauthority that was initially found in the En-glish picturesque, but it employs new tac-

tics. Where the picturesque was a spatialstrategy, romantic regionalism also employstemporal strategies. In the projects ofJohann Wolfgang Goethe and John Ruskin,for example, architecture is constructed as a“memory machine”—a setting that evokesone’s sense of belonging to a familiar his-tory. The romantic, however, should not beconfused with the merely eclectic. Wherethe eclectic chooses what appears to be bestfrom diverse sources, the romantic recuper-ates a seemingly authentic ethnic history forthe purpose of reconstructing lost authority.In this sense, romantic regionalism employsthe previously introduced doctrines of envi-ronmental determinism, which have rootsin architectural theory going back toVitruvius. In his Ten Books, Vitruvius ar-gued that Africans to the south were dim-witted because their climate was too hot.Using similar logic, Vitruvius argued theGermans to the north were no less dim-wit-ted because their climate was too cold. Inthis logic it follows that Roman geniusemerged from the “just right” environmen-tal conditions of the sacred region ofRomulus and Remus. Like Vitruvius, theromantics of the nineteenth century cred-ited nature, or those who presumed to speakfor her, with cultural constructions.

The architecture of German NationalSocialism, or Heimatsarchitektur, the thirdof Tzonis and Lefaivre’s categories, ispostromantic in that its goal was one ofneotribal regimentation rather than libera-tion. Although the volkish fantasies of AlbertSpeer clearly emerge from German roman-ticism, they invent an “authentic” tax-onomy of forms that is intended to excludethose others that threaten the spatial purityof the race. Nazi Heimatsarchitektur , or lit-erally, “homeland architecture,” relies uponthe doctrines of environmental determin-ism, but with a particularly malignant twistof logic. Hitler, Himmler, and their cohorts

argued that just as Germanic genius is de-rived from the enchantment of the BlackForest, the shiftiness and untrustworthinessof Jews, for example, is derived from a life ofwandering in the desert. Heimatsarchitektur ,as in contemporary Bosnia and Kosovo,leads to a spatial project of ethnic cleansing.

Following World War II, regionaliststrategies were appropriated, less by totali-tarian regimes than by the market. Tzonisand Lefaivre describe commercial regional-ism, their fourth category, as an architectureof tourism. Corporate sponsorship of thelocal can be understood as one of many tac-tics discovered by the market to differentiateits products in an endless sea of mediocresuburban choices. This is true particularly inthe American West, where the propinquityof the placeform has been sacrificed to stan-dards imported by the universal concern formaintaining resale value. Herein some petri-fied sense of the local has reached epidemicdimensions. Some critics have argued thatthe phenomenon of New Urbanism is a po-tent critique of commercial regionalismwhile others have maintained the opposite—that New Urbanism is itself a product-differ-entiation strategy that succeeds in themarket only to the degree that it extractsvalue from so-called authentic places. In thisview, a distinction between authentic re-gionalist houses in places like Austin andwhat my colleague David Heymann refers toas “yuppie limestone starter-mansions” hasbecome somewhat moot. The cynical mar-keting of architectural motifs precludes anunderstanding of place as an environmentalreproduction grounded in traditional con-struction practices.

It is into this historical context thatTzonis and Lefaivre have cast their proposalfor a fifth category, that of critical regional-ism. These authors argue that architecturecan mount an effective resistance to the tra-ditionally restrictive conception of place as

133 Moore

well as to the hegemony of the global marketthrough a strategy of “defamiliarization.”14

They mean by this term that architectureshould evoke meaning and thought ratherthan emotion and excitement—that architec-ture should evoke critical consideration of thecultural and ecological origins of construc-tion practices rather than feed the folk sceno-graphic fantasies that allow them to withdrawinto familiarity. For Frampton, critical re-gionalism is an attitude rather than a set ofmotifs—it is a set of ever evolving tectonicpractices rather than “a look.” By slowingdown cognition, rather than appeasing con-sumer lust for instant gratification, criticalregionalists hope to engage the inhabitants ofa region in a thoughtful consideration ofwhat it means to live locally. This is an onto-logical rather than a representational project.This distinction suggests that the labor andmaterial practices employed to construct aplace are more important than visual refer-ences made to the traditional canons of archi-tecture or to the artificial icons produced byMadison Avenue. Although we lead lives in-creasing dominated by universal forces, thecritical regionalists argue that some of thoseforces might act to stimulate, rather than re-press, creative response to the material condi-tion of the places into which we are thrown.

Although Tzonis and Lefaivre’s gene-alogy of regionalism is extremely helpful, itimplies a classically modernist teleologyabout which I am skeptical. Although theirsuccessive historical categories ring true, Idoubt that there is any historical necessity,Marxist or otherwise, that will drag our un-derstanding into the critical consciousnessthey advocate. Rather, I will argue, placesspring up in response to those interests thatare most effective at gathering resources.The social construction of places is an en-tirely contingent event, not one determinedby the structure of history. It is suchnonmodern logic that contributes to the

concluding thesis.

Defining Technology

Just as the definition of place requires amultifaceted strategy, so does the definitionof technology. Conventional thought un-derstands place as only physical in quality.Similarly, technology is commonly under-stood to be physical hardware—radios, re-frigerators, or computers. Such a materialistdefinition tends to consider the social con-struction of such objects as outside the com-peting interests of society.15 In the positivisttradition, technology is understood as theasocial application of scientific truths. In thephilosophical tradition of Heidegger, tech-nology is understood as an ontological prac-tice. In contrast to both of these traditions,the literature of science and technologystudies has demonstrated that technology,far from being constructed outside society,and far from being the singular practice ofthe poet, is a system that is inextricably partof society.16 Technology, like place, is a fieldwhere the struggle between competing in-terests plays out. The sociologists DonaldMacKenzie and Judith Wajcman have ar-gued that the concept technology, likeplace, includes three qualities. In their con-struction, technology includes “humanknowledge, patterns of human activities,[and] sets of physical objects.”17 Rather thanreturn to those discourses, like Frampton’sor Heidegger’s, that examine technology, ortechne, through ontological lenses, I find it

helpful to examine technology as a processof social construction.

In MacKenzie and Wajcman’s defini-tion, knowledge—the first characteristic oftechnology—is required, not only to buildthe artifact, but to relate the natural condi-tions upon which the artifact works and touse the artifact. The second characteristic oftechnology, patterns of human activity, orwhat I would prefer to call human practices,refers to the institutionalization, orroutinization, of problem solving that inevi-tably occurs in society. The practices of ar-chitecture, carpentry, or farming areexamples. The third quality of technology,sets of objects, is, of course, the most obvi-ous—these are the things themselves. Thepoint is, however, that computers, hammers,or tractors are useless without the humanknowledge and practices that engage them.

What I want to argue here is that thedefinition of place offered by Agnew andthe definition of technology offered byMacKenzie and Wajcman are related by atripartite structure that is not accidental.Figure 1 will help to make this point clear.The limited point of the diagram is three-fold: First, that places and technologies areboth spatial concepts with related struc-tures. Second, that these qualities are dia-logically related. And third, that modernforms of knowledge, like the economics oflocation, tend toward the abstract andoverdetermined (meaning that the outcomeof events is strongly tied to structural con-ditions) while our understanding of objectsand our sense of place tend toward the

1. The dialogic qualities of place and technology.

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underdetermined (meaning that the out-come of events is weakly tied to structuralconditions). These points serve only tomagnify the centrality of locale and prac-tices as the glue that holds the discourse ofplaces and technologies together.

To argue that place is a spatial con-cept is a tautology and requires no furtherbacking. However, to argue that technologyis a spatial concept requires some explana-tion. Bruno Latour’s term, technological net-work, is helpful in this regard. Latour hasargued that “technological networks, as thename indicates, are nets thrown overspaces.”18 By technological network, Latourrefers not just to sets of objects, but to thesocial networks that construct a relation be-tween human knowledge, human practices,and nonhuman resources—the latter beingthe stuff (steel, wood, water, etc.) fromwhich the objects themselves are made. Hispoint is that technology is essentially a spa-tial concept because its operation dependsupon the mobilization of human and non-human resources that exist in differentplaces.19 For example, architects, clients,contractors, and bankers comprise a socialnetwork of building producers. Their rela-tionship has a social and spatial quality to it.Advances in communications technology,many now argue, have radically collapsedthe spatial reality of these social relations.When one recognizes, however, that lumberfrom Oregon, windows from Pittsburgh,carpet from Mobile, and compressors fromTaiwan are required to realize the materialintentions of the producers, the concretequalities of their purely social network arematerialized as a global technological net-work. A technological network producesspatial links that tie the social network ofproducers to those nonhuman resources re-quired for construction. This is a central ar-gument of this study that has, as we shall seeshortly, important implications for how we

understand an architecture of place in acontemporary context.

My argument is that technology isbest understood not through history butthrough geography. History interprets real-ity as human events in time. Through tem-poral interpretation we might betterunderstand the causal sequence in whichhumans construct artifacts. In contrast, ge-ography interprets reality as human eventsin space. Through spatial interpretation weare more likely to understand how techno-logical networks operate to dominate theplaces inhabited by humans and nonhu-mans. It is geography, then, that offersmethods more relevant to this inquiry be-cause it is through similar spatial structuresthat technologies and places are consti-tuted.

Henri Lefebvre has argued two pointsthat reinforce the dynamic relationship be-tween technology and place that is claimedhere. First, that social spaces are producedby technology acting upon nature, and sec-ond, that each society—or, as Marxistswould have it, each mode of production—produces its own peculiar type of space.20

What architects might extract fromLefebvre’s logic is that the differing qualitiesof places are more a matter of technologicalpractices than aesthetic choices because suchpractices are always already spatial. For ex-ample, the practice of carpentry requires notonly forests, and citizens to house, but thespatial mechanisms that link them. This isthe heart of what I will characterize as thedialogic relation of technology and place.

In constructing this dialogic relationbetween place and technology, I shouldmake clear that I am not building a case forenvironmental determinism, which wouldbe to say that places cause technologies.Given different cultural conditions, the setsof objects that dominate any particularplace might be different. Given constant

environmental conditions, the interpretiveflexibility of culture is entirely contingent. Iwant to argue that environments do shapetechnologies but are in turn shaped bythem.21 As a corollary, I am not building acase for technological determinism, whichwould be to say that technologies causeplaces. The same logic holds—that tech-nologies do shape places but are also shapedby them.22 The point here is that the rela-tion of place and technology is both spatialand discursive. It is a dialogue of cause andeffect, means and ends. They are inseparablebut contingent concepts that lead inhabit-ants of a place to a dialogic narrowing ofcultural horizons.

Following the development of thetelephone, for example, business practiceswere extended by the possibility of synchro-nous communication across space. As aresult, businesspeople spent many unpro-ductive hours playing “telephone tag.” Al-though the physical distance betweenpeople could be radically collapsed, theirplaces could be joined only by availabletechnological space. After development ofthe Internet, however, business practice hasbecome increasingly asynchronous. Theplaces where we work are connected to eachother through wider and more porous link-ages that are independent of time. Thechanging technological linkages betweenplaces are both reflective of, and determi-nant of, how we conceive our work, per-ceive our coworkers, and live our lives.

This rather lengthy definition of tech-nology in relation to place can now be relatedback to the topic of regionalism. The dialogicstructure that I propose to exist betweentechnology and place is only in part consis-tent with the modernist assumptions that liebehind Frampton’s critical regionalism hy-pothesis. Extension of Frampton’s hypoth-esis, then, requires different (nonmodern)assumptions.

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The Nonmodern Thesis

In this short essay I will not try to fully ex-plicate the critical regionalism hypothesis.Between 1983 and 1990, Frampton pro-duced no less than six separate essays thatfully accomplished that goal. In my view,what might be more helpful in the currentdiscussion will be to examine what I’ll referto as Frampton’s antinomy, or theunresolvable conflict between Frampton’smix of modernism, as it is embodied in thedoctrines of critical theory, and post-modernism, as it is embodied in the place-bound doctrines of Martin Heidegger. Thesimplest way to illustrate this conflict isdemonstrated in Figure 2. Here I have plot-ted the way that modernism and post-modernism value the concepts place andtechnology. 23

The point of the diagram is to argue,as did Agnew, that moderns have generallyheld a negative attitude toward place be-cause the social hierarchies inscribed thererestrict human liberty. Conversely, modernshave held a positive attitude toward tech-nology, because it is the machines inventedby us that, science claims, will free us fromthe drudgery of place-bound tyrannies.

The flip side of this diagram is to rec-ognize that postmoderns, far from con-structing a new worldview, have merelyinverted the relationships constructed bymodern thought. Where postmoderns desireto recuperate the propinquity of place andvalue it positively, they have become evermore skeptical of modern technology andthe unintended consequences that have fol-lowed in its wake. The malignant promisesof atomic power and industrial agricultureare salient examples of the fears nurtured bypostmoderns like Heidegger, or the Ameri-can poet-farmer Wendell Berry. Anotherway to argue this point is to claim that con-servative postmoderns, at least in their atti-

tude toward place and technology, are onlyantimoderns. In the world of architecture, afigure like Leon Krier exemplifies this posi-tion—his drawings value the premodern cityas the place that embodies ideal civic rela-tions, but he employs technology only as ascenographic, or instrumental, tool requiredto realize those social relations.

The problem, or the opportunity,found in Frampton’s critical regionalismhypothesis, then, is that it relies upon as-sumptions drawn from opposing philo-sophical traditions. Critical regionalismproposes to value both technological meansand the propinquity of place as positiveforces in history. I want to stress that theproblem I see here lies not in the expressedgoal, which is admirable, but in the incom-patibility of the assumptions upon whichthe hypothesis relies. By relying alternatelyupon the opposing assumptions of criticaltheory, which are modern, and those ofMartin Heidegger, which are postmodern,critical regionalism is led to philosophicalconfusion.24 What is needed, in my view, isnot more hybridizing of disparate sources,but a single set of philosophical assumptionsthat will lead to a coherent position. FredrikJameson has hinted at such a direction.Jameson has argued that the philosophicalassumptions of critical regionalism are nei-ther modern nor postmodern.25 I agree. Thequestion is, then, what are they?

I argue that the doctrines of criticalregionalism are better served by nonmodernassumptions. Figure 3 demonstrates this

conceptual possibility. Bruno Latour hasused the term nonmodern to argue that wehave, in practice, never been modern at all,by which he means that modernity has beenso powerful, and sometimes environmen-tally destructive, precisely because it hasconcealed our existence within nature.26 Byembracing the Cartesian assumptions thatposition us outside nature, we have madethose nonhuman “Others” with whom weshare the planet available for dominationand exploitation. If being modern meansthe isolation of subjects from objects, andthe isolation of humans from nonhumans,then I agree with Latour that we have beenmodern in theory, but never in practice. It isa condition like pregnancy—one is never“sort of” modern. In this sense, modernityhas been a convenient license to plundernature, not an anthropological fact. Thenonmodern thesis proposes to erode theCartesian distinctions between humans andnonhumans. In the nonmodern view, weare no longer subjects empowered to con-template and order up resources from afar.When we examine how the world reallyworks, we are compelled to recognize thatwe—riders and horses, politicians and vot-ers, bricklayers and bricks—are “quasi sub-jects” and “quasi objects.”27 These termssuggest that what distinguishes a subjectfrom an object at any given moment in timeis only a temporary advantage in power re-lations. At one moment we are empoweredto control conditions, and at the next mo-ment we find ourselves being ordered about

2. The value opposition of place and technology in modern thought.

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by the digital logic of machines that deter-mine our health care benefits, or which tele-phone company will bill us each month. Mypoint here is that, in a nonmodern world,humans and nonhumans have more in com-mon than they don’t. In such a world,places show up as place making is practiced.In other words, it is hard to distinguish be-tween the qualities of a place and the tech-nologies employed to make them.

This nonmodern logic further sug-gests that there is no effective distance be-tween culture and nature. If there ever wassuch a thing as primeval nature—natureuntouched by human invention—it haslong ago disappeared. Far from lamentingthe lost garden of human origins,nonmoderns see not ruination but increas-ing opportunities in which human institu-tions can creatively participate in the cyclesof natural systems. Participation in naturejust might produce life-enhancing condi-tions that will benefit all us quasi objects.

I recognize that the nonmodern the-sis that I am proposing, and Figure 3 in par-ticular, leaves many questions unanswered.I should dwell on this diagram long enough,however, to point out that just as criticalregionalism constructs a positive non-modern synthesis, a negative nonmodern

synthesis resolves the modern dilemmaequally well—at least from a purely rhetori-cal point of view. The position that I labelas radical nihilism in the diagram is, I think,best exemplified by the projects of RemKoolhaas and the Office for MetropolitanArchitecture. The negative nonmodern po-sition is, of course, disinterested in the topicof regionalism so that discussion can be leftfor another day. When taken up, however,the first question to be asked must be “Cana double-negative constitute a life-enhanc-ing course of action?” As metaphor, thisstrategy surely has merit. As a material prac-tice, however, I am skeptical.

For the sake of brevity, I will alsoleave other terms that appear in Figure 3undefined. Sustainability and eco-tech areconcepts related to regionalism and the cur-rent discussion, but are well documentedelsewhere.28

The term that appears in the upperleft-hand corner of Figure 3, regenerative ar-chitecture, does, however, demand more dis-cussion because it describes the heart of thenonmodern thesis. This term is borrowedfrom the landscape architect, John TillmanLyle. By placing this term in this position inthe diagram, I am proposing to substitutethe word regenerative for Frampton’s word

critical. This language is proposed becausecritical must always refer back to the mod-ern, dialectic assumptions embraced by criti-cal theory. Just as Jameson would renovatecritical regionalism as a postmodern doc-trine, I would renovate it as a nonmoderndoctrine.29 I am arguing that the philosophi-cal trajectory of critical regionalism is mostcomfortable not in its modernist origins, norin postmodern Marxism, but in a non-modern, dialogic future.

Lyle defines a “regenerative system” asone that “provides for the continuous replace-ment, through its own functional processes,of the energy and materials used in its opera-tion.”30 In this definition, the notion thattechnology might “provide for the continu-ous replacement . . . of energy and materialsused in its operation” does not mean that ar-chitecture might overcome the second law ofthermodynamics, and thus escape the conceptof entropy. While it is not possible for anytechnological system to reconstitute all of theenergy consumed in its own creation, archi-tecture—or, placeforms as Frampton wouldhave it—can certainly participate far more ef-fectively in the natural energy flows of a placethan is the current technological practice. It isthrough such participation that entropymight be radically reduced.

3. Alternative theoretical positions with regard to the concepts place and technology.

137 Moore

Lyle offers the concept of regenerationas an alternative to the now common termsustainable, because, in his view, to simplysustain current entropic conditions is inad-equate. I agree, but for different reasons. Inmy view, to merely maintain the status quo ofmaterial systems is a necessary but insufficientstrategy to achieve life-enhancing conditions.It is equally necessary to recognize, as doesLatour, that all material systems are techno-logical networks in the sense previously de-fined. In other words, they are politicallyconstituted. This political recognition requiresthat we reject the status quo of social systemsas equally entropic. It is simply a passive formof positivism (traditional science by anothername) to imagine that ecologists can repair theecosystem in isolation from political processes.Lyle’s definition of a regenerative system,then, is flawed because it ignores the socialand political constitution of an ecosystem.

Rather than attempt a comprehensiveredefinition of what a regenerative architec-ture might be in this short essay, I’ll suggesta single political characteristic that we mightadd to Lyle’s scientific definition: A regen-erative architecture will seek to engage hu-man institutions in the democraticreproduction of life-enhancing places. Thisis not yet an adequate definition of the pos-sibilities foreseen in this essay, but it doespoint toward a cultural horizon where thedialogic relationship between technologiesand places can be better understood.31

Having now defined place and tech-nology as the core concepts upon which re-gionalist architecture depends, I canconclude by summarizing this discussion inthree short propositions:

First, it is politically desirable andecologically prudent to reproduce regional-ism as a practice relevant to contemporaryconditions. Regenerative architecture pro-vides a framework through which we mightreconstruct and extend that discourse.

Second, to do so we must understandthe historic uses and abuses of regionalism asa concept, with particular regard for the ge-ography of power relations. It is both pos-sible and desirable to make places that relatehuman institutions to the natural cycles of aregion without resorting to appeals that au-thenticate, and thus legitimize, the authorityof entrenched social networks. Rather, a re-generative architecture might consciously,and democratically, construct places that re-late humans and nonhumans in life-enhanc-ing and ever changing practices.

Third, although critical regionalismoffers a positive and life-enhancing direc-tion for architectural practice, its own as-sumptions are conflicted and requirerenovation as a nonmodern polemic for ar-chitectural production. The articulation ofregenerative architecture is a first attempt tomeet this challenge.

In sum, these propositions are an at-tempt to reconstruct the suppressed possi-bilities of an ongoing discourse. Byexamining the core concepts of regionalism,we find a vocabulary through which wemight interpret the contemporary projectsof such architects as Webler + GeisslerArchitekten, Stuttgart; Herzog + Partner,Architekten, Munich; Renzo Piano BuildingWorkshop, Paris; and Neutelings RiedijkArchitekten, Rotterdam. The projects ofthese firms, and those of six others, havebeen collectively documented in the exhibi-tion, Ten Shades of Green, organized by theArchitectural League of New York and guestcurated by Peter Buchanan.32

What these projects share is a dialogicattitude toward the variables of technologyand place. In each case documented, thesearchitects have found unexpected technologi-cal opportunities through rigorous investiga-tion of ecology and physics, local buildingpractices, the objects themselves, or a combi-nation of these. Similarly, they have found

unexpected topological opportunitiesthrough rigorous investigation of global eco-nomic structures, local sense of place, or theunique ordering systems of the cities andneighborhoods in which they have built.Most important, however, is that these archi-tects investigate the qualities of place throughthe qualities of technology, and visa versa.

My only uncertainty about theprojects exhibited in Ten Shades of Green isthat too little is known about the social andpolitical context of their production. Al-though curator Peter Buchanan has done anadmirable job of interpreting these projectsthrough multiple lenses that examine suchavisual issues as “embodied energy,” “totallife cycle costing,” and “community andconnection,” I would like to know moreabout the technological networks that theseprojects forge. In the scheme of things,however, these are quibbles. The emergenceof these projects, and their positive publicreception, is an extremely hopeful event,one that leads the way toward a nonmoderndialogic of technologies and places.

As I have implied throughout this es-say, the nonmodern dialogic requires thatthe discipline of architecture be reconsti-tuted as a political, rather than an aesthetic,practice. Through this reconstitution, thecanon of architecture would be reconceivedas not a set of heroic objects but the mate-rial record of life-enhancing discourses. Thisproposal suggests that architects would nolonger design “things” per se. Rather, wewould design the political processes embod-ied in technological and topological choices.Indeed, we would no longer distinguish be-tween technologies and places.

Acknowledgments

Portions of this article are adapted fromTechnology and Place: Sustainable Architec-

138February 2001 JAE 54/3

ture and the Blueprint Farm (Austin, TX:The University of Texas Press, forthcom-ing). Portions have also appeared in “Repro-ducing the Local,” in Platform (School ofArchitecture, The University of Texas atAustin, spring, 1999): 2–3, 8–9. I wouldlike to thank Kenneth Frampton, BarbaraAllen, Michael Benedikt, and VinceCanizaro for their help in revising both thetext and the thesis proposed.

Notes

1. Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre,“Critical Regionalism,” in Critical Regionalism: ThePomona Meeting Proceedings (Pomona, CA: The Col-lege of Environmental Design, 1991), pp. 3–28.

2. I should make clear at the onset that whenusing the terms “modern,” “postmodern,” and“nonmodern,” I refer not to architectural styles but tothe philosophical assumptions that lead to materialchoices.

3. John Agnew, Place and Politics (Boston:Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 62. Agnew also discussesthe theme of the historic devaluation of place in “Rep-resenting Space: Space, Scale and Culture in SocialScience,” in James Duncan and David Ley, eds., Place/Culture/Representation (New York: Routledge, 1993),pp. 251–271. Although Agnew interrogates the con-cept of place, I use the term region interchangeably inthis text. Place and region do not mean the same thing,but for the purpose of this discussion I conflate them.

4. For example, crime statistics reveal that themurder rate in New York City is dramatically less thanthat of rural Arkansas. See Box Butterfield, “Nation-wide Drop in Murders Is Reaching to Small Towns,”in New York Times, May 9, 2000. Available at http://archives.nytimes.com/archives/.

5. Although Max Weber is commonly creditedwith the coinage of these terms, they belong toFerdinand Tonnies who first used them in 1887. SeeFerdinand Tonnies, Community and Society (NewYork: Harper, 1963).

6. Agnew, Place and Politics, p. 231.7. Soja’s position is associated with the tradi-

tion of critical theory, however, his intention is revi-sionist. See Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: TheReassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London:Verso, 1989), p. 120.

8. I am indebted to my colleague Stephen Rossfor this insight.

9. Anna Bramwell, for example, has arguedthat German anti-Semitism arises from the doctrinesof environmental determinism. To generalize that allGermans share a genius that originates in the forestand that wandering Jews share a rootlessness thatoriginates in the desert is a classic example of deter-minist, reductivist logic. See Anna Bramwell, Bloodand Soil: Richard Walter Darre and Hitler’s Green Party(Abbotsbrook: Kensal House, 1985). See also JefferyHerf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture andPolitics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1984).

10. Agnew’s concern is, apparently, that thoseof us who are most involved with the physical world—architects and physical geographers chief among thesuspects—are prone to fall into the trap of environ-mental determinism.

11. John Agnew, Place and Politics, p. 28. Thedefinition of these terms is further amplified in his es-say “Representing Space,” p. 253.

12. Thomas Misa, “Retrieving SociotechnicalChange From Technological Determinism,” inMerritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds. Does Technol-ogy Drive History? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1995), pp. 115–142.

13. Tzonis and Lefaivre, “Critical Regional-ism,” p. 4.

14. Ibid., p. 20. The authors credit the term“defamiliarization” to Victor Schlovsky, a member ofthe Russian Formalists, who coined the term aroundthe time of the Bolshevik Revolution. See also VictorSchlovsky, “Art as Technique,” in L.T. Lemon and M.Reis, eds., Russian Formalist Critique (Lincoln, NB:University of Nebraska Press, 1965).

15. Reductive, materialist definitions of tech-nology tend to be less sophisticated in their under-standing of the social construction of artifacts.However, Bruce Bimber’s essay “Three Faces of Tech-nological Determinism,” in L.T. Lemon and M. Reis,eds., Russian Formalist Critique (Lincoln, NB: Univer-sity of Nebraska Press, 1965) develops a very scholarly,yet reductive, definition of technology as limited toapparatus. Bimber’s project, however, leads to otherontological problems beyond the scope of this study.

16. I have discussed the various traditionswithin science and technology studies elsewhere ingreater detail. See Steven A. Moore, “Technology andthe politics of sustainability at blueprint demonstra-tion farm,” in Journal of Architectural Education, 51/1(September 1997): pp. 23–25 and Technology andPlace: Sustainable Architecture and the Blueprint Farm(Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, forthcoming).

17. Donald MacKenzie and Judith Wajcman,“Introductory Essay,” in The Social Shaping of Technol-

ogy (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1985), p. 3.18. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Mod-

ern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1993), p. 117.

19. Bruno Latour, “Visualization and Cogni-tion: Thinking with Eyes and Hands,” in Knowledgeand Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past andPresent (JAI Press, Inc., 1986); pp. 1–40.

20. Implicit in the first point is the claim thatoriginal nature, if it ever existed at all, has long agobeen incorporated into second nature, which is a workof society. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space[1974], Donald Nicholson-Smith, trans. (Cambridge,MA: Blackwell, 1991, p. 190. See ibid., p. 31, for thesecond point.

21. Anthony Giddens is credited with devel-oping the theory of structuration, which is an attemptto synthesize the seemingly opposed principles ofvoluntarism and determinism. He argues that humansare free to transform social structures but are alsoproducts of those structures. My argument here, re-garding the relation of places and technologies, isdrawn from the same logic. See also MacKenzie andWajcman, The Social Shaping of Technology, p. 6.

22. Philip Brey has examined how “space-shaping technologies” have disembedded the contem-porary phenomenon of place. Where Brey’s study hasfocused upon the role of “connectivity development”in transforming the experience of place, my own em-phasis has been on what Brey terms “local develop-ment.” See Philip Brey, “Space-shaping technologiesand the disembedding of place,” in Philosophy andGeography III: Philosophies of Place (New York:Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 242.

23. I want to stress that I am not making aclaim in Figure 2 that modernism or postmodernismcan be described entirely within the limits of these twoconcepts. Rather, I only suggest that these concepts areparticularly helpful, as heuristic devices to get at thosequalities of our time that are relevant to a discussionconcerning regionalism.

24. In philosophical discourse, HerbertMarcuse attempted a similar blending of Heideggerand Marx. In Marcuse’s case, however, the project wasfurther confused by the inclusion of Freud as a thirdpole. To be clear, I am not suggesting that such hybrid-ized texts are unhelpful, only that their confused as-sumptions lead to previously unrecognized possibilities.

25. Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 187–203.

26. Latour, We have Never Been Modern.27. Ibid., pp. 51–55.28. The term sustainability is much used and

much contested. For an excellent analysis of the term

139 Moore

see, in this issue of JAE, Simon Guy and GrahamFarmer, “Reinterpreting Sustainable Technology: ThePlace of Technology.” See also Scott Campbell,“Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities: UrbanPlanning and the Contradiction of Sustainable Devel-opment,” in APA Journal (Summer 1996): 296–312.The term eco-tech has come into use to describe theenvironmentally responsible projects of those firms,like Sir Norman Foster & Partners, that were previ-ously described as high-tech practitioners. For ex-ample, see Catherine Slessor, Eco-Tech: Sustainable

Architecture and High Technology (London: Thamesand Hudson, 1997), p. 7.

29. Jameson, Seeds of Time, p. 194.30. John Tilman Lyle, Regenerative Design for

Sustainable Development (New York: Wiley, 1994), p. 10.31. In my forthcoming book, Technology and

Place: Sustainable Architecture and the Blueprint Farm,I examine a single case of architectural and agriculturalproduction that provides enough empirical evidenceto support an eight-point definition of regenerativearchitecture.

32. The other firms represented in the exhibi-tion include: Foster and Partners, London; Clare De-sign, Sydney; Jourda & Perraudin Architectes, Kassel;Andrew Lee for Hackland + Dore Architects Ltd.,Edinburgh; Michael Hopkins and Partners, London;Lake/Flato Architects, San Antonio; Rick Joy Archi-tects, Tucson; Fernau & Hartman Architects, Berkeley;and Brian MacKay-Lyons Architecture Urban Design,Halifax. For a review of the exhibition, see Muschamp,“Good Buildings and Good for You,” New York Times,Apr. 16, 2000: Arts and Leisure, p. 37.