Learning From South Africa: Contradicting the Myth of Core/Periphery Knowledge Production Through an Appraisal of Critical Regionalism

Abstract

Kenneth Frampton’s theory of Critical Regionalism has generally been understood to have disseminated from the “West” to the rest of the world. This analytical trope is true of a previous study of Critical Regionalism(Eggener) which determined that it was a neocolonial theory. This study was limited in scope to Mexico, it did not engage localized discourses on decolonization and nationalism, and it did not address the primacy of Denise Scott-Brown, a South African, to the formulation of the theory. I analyze the origin and reception of Critical Regionalism relative to South Africa, to upset the trope that the theory originated in the United States and was passively received in the rest of the world. Moreover, I identify how popular agency is discursively undercut in the theory’s formulation by way of Kenneth Frampton’s preceding exchanges with Denise ScottBrown.

I look at two pieces of South African architecture which were expressive of the “rainbow nation” narrative before and after the end of apartheid in 1994 and consider their connection to Critical Regionalism. I connect decolonial critiques of modernism, architectural elitism and nationalism to this critique. It is arguably the ideal outcome of a theory intended to counteract homogenization and to foster “authentic dialogue”, that critical insight should filter back from the “periphery” to the “core” regarding the colonial assumptions which stand in the way of undominated expression.