Critical Regionalism In The Age of Digital Architecture

The presented study seeks to provide a new reading of Critical Regionalism theory by focusing on the digital architectural technologies in the issues pertaining to, ۱: Innovative design, ۲: Project economy, ۳: Site features, ۴: Client preference, ۵: Democratization. These five notions extracted from the critical regionalism theory are set out to be explored within the architectural capabilities provided by digital technologies. This research consists of a review of different levels of applying the digital design and manufacturing systems in the production process to map the appropriate level of involvement, which would be most suitable for the revival of the architectural values that the critical regionalism intends to achieve. Next, the changes of architect role within the design-build projects and the related reasons have been discussed. The narrative of this section illustrates the reasons behind these changes and reinvention of the architect role by involvement of digital technologies. Subsequently, two distinctive architectural projects with drastically different approaches towards the use of digital technology have been analyzed based upon the five previously defined criteria. The intention is to determine how the quintuplet of the architectural values have been realized in the two varied approaches of digital design-build systems and also to present a comparison between the two different methods according to the analysis results. Methodology of this research is based on literature review and case study analysis, indicating how the refinement of digitally driven production process can serve the architectural values, based on a brief comparison of the processes of work in design and build companies with varied approaches in applying the digital technology.

Keywords:

File-to-Factory technology , Mass customization , Critical regionalism , Digital architecture , Globalization , Architectural Homogenization