Introduction
Themes and debates surrounding ‘regionalism’, ‘identity’, ‘modernity’ and ‘form’ are not a new field. Any attempt to compile a discourse on certain perspectives on the issue would necessitate taking another look at the multiple definitions and frameworks that have surrounded such concepts. There have been many valuable writings on such themes, and some of these debates particularly revolve around the field of the ‘tropical’ or the ‘developing’ nation. Some of these past writings have also centred around multicultural contexts such as Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. One of the earliest explorations in architectural thought in these fields in the context of Malaysia as a developing nation is Ken Yeang’s ‘Tropical Urban Regionalism – Building in a South East Asian city’ (1987) in which Yeang compiles and reviews the richly diverse and multiple sources of ‘regionalist’ identity in terms of images and devices from the vernacular, colonial and post-colonial architecture in Malaysia. Yeang (1987) identifies and highlights a range of past devices, some from the traditional world of the Malay vernacular, as having potential for ‘adaptation’ to the modern city: ‘Architecural devices include.. porches, verandahways, raised ventilaed timber floors, pitched roofs, balustraded erraces’ and highlights the purity and classicality of the Malay house forms in responding to the tropical climate, from which essential principles can be derived. Abel (1997) similarly, and in more detail, compiles and traverses a trajectory of historical styles and developments in Malaysia, from the kampung (village), to the colonial models of public buildings and to modern attempts of interpreting regional essences in modern forms. Recently, Hagan (2000) and Steele (2002) have further discussed how sustainable architecture and regionalism are part of the same ethos. One must reconcile an emphasis on ‘empirical performance’ with ‘design expression’ and visual interest. They suggested that combining aesthetics through cultural expression and concerns with environmental performance criteria is necessary. For practitioners concerned about the aesthetic ‘expression’ of sustainability, a reconciliation can be found through a return of searching for a formal expression of regional ‘culture’.
Modernity
The era of ‘modernity’ is typically linked with a break or rupture with the past. ‘Modernity’ is often advocated and viewed as a period in a nation’s history when the nation and communities become aware of drastic changes. To forge into a new future, leaders and their populations become infused with a new energy and spurts of idealism. Historically, eras of modernity have been linked with technologically driven phases, due to scientific events or eras. The rise of ‘new’ forms of technology brought about by advancements in the sciences often brings fresh impetus in design, and new ideas into the built environment, in whatever region, and these were always marked by the gradual birth and energy of new movements in arts, architecture and urban design.
Kahn (2006) describes the nature and specific conditions of modernity with a reference to the Malaysian context:
When we seek to narrate Malaysian modernity, the question of such a break immediately presents itself … It produces an awareness of a multiplicity of breaks and a plurality of the past, including the breaks within modernity itself.
As a newly formed nation at the cusp of independence, Malaysia was a country that needed to project a certain identity to the world. However, Malaysia was also in the South East Asian region, a region fraught with multiplicity and diversity of cultures and identities. As Kahn (2006) again describes it:
The nations of insular and peninsular South East Asia – Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore – are frequently distinguished from those in northern and eastern Asia, by the linguistic, cultural, religious and social diversity of their populations. His diversity, is moreover, seem to pose particular problems for modern states of the region.The successes and failures of different governing regimes in the region are therefore often measured against their varying capacities to ‘manage’ their diverse populations.
Hence the undertaking, initiating and commissioning of architecture and urban structures is not only an expression of development and modernisation but a way in which identity and symbols are produced and preserved. In the words of Jones (2011), they become part of the wider discourses of identity and belonging. They breed a critical agenda in relation to the evolving growth and dynamics of an urban language and formal representation that can epitomise a developing nation. The field of architecture and urban language, and the large investment they entail, is never a neutral one and is always fraught with ‘positions’. They evolve as society evolves and must be debated to ensure that these structures are somehow effective in representing ideals higher than themselves. The goal of multicultural unity is one of these ideals, along with the struggle and effort to preserve local cultures, through political will and social-religious climate, to reflect the specifics of both the environment and geography.
Modernity and Modernism
While ‘modernity’ is generally understood as a period in which there were tumultous changes in technology and science that affected society, it has been described as one which signals the beginning of a wide-ranging impact. Global developments center around two significant advancements, that is, the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the era of the Enlightenment. As postulated by Frampton (2007): ‘The more rigorously one searchers for the origins of modernity … One tends to project it back, if not to the Renaissance, then to that moment in mid 18th century when a new view of history brought architects to question the Classical canons of Vitruvius.’ Modernism, on the other hand, is a much more recent phenomenon, linked to the far-reaching changes occuring in the late 1800s and which continued into the era after the 1900s. Modernism, was formulated, during a time in Europe during which there was a search for the ‘new’ and there was an injection or a broad push, after two destructive world wars. Two urgent agendas came together: the need to rebuild for the masses and the need to avoid recycling forms of the past. Architects, planners and urbanists wanted to redefine the future in terms of the present, instead of the past. Colquhoun (2001) summarises
Modernity is broadly understood as all buildings and works that are conceived, designed and built during an intensive modernization period of a nation or country or region.
To epitomise the idea of progress, a certain objectivity and functionality must symbolise the new mindset. This aesthetic value was diffused in Asia. At the onset of independence this was expressed in architecture as it was connotative of a new socio-ideological framework. Urban-architectural form is thus not only a means of asserting the new found sense independence, presence and identity across nations, but a means of reaching out beyond its own boundaries and asserting a new consciousness and optimism for the global audience. Modern architecture has carried this sense of optimism in its form and appears as a certain unfinished and constantly evolving project. It is seen as expressing the ability of a people to stake their position in a world that must commemorate their attainment and consolidate the political independence of the nation-state, and to show a certain measure of social and technological attainment.
Yet modernisation is also the harbinger of urbanisation and along with it, a gradual destruction of identity, traditions, idealisms and purpose, as Frampton (2007, preface to 4th edition) describes with insight and force:
As we are thrown into the modernizing vortex of the 21st century, since the global production of architecture … far exceeds the critical overview of any single observer … This is greatly exacerbated by the fact that technological modernization has become an irreversible fate … The current triumph of market-driven modernization, which under the aegis of globalized capitalism is virtually devoid of any kind of ameliorative aim.
Thus modern architecture, for example in a nation such as Malaysia, can be broadly understood as all buildings and built works which are conceived, designed and built during an intensive modernisation period of a nation, country or region. However, it can also be understood as a series of works, whether in architecture, art or urban design, that expresses a society’s consciousness of an evolution or their newfound position in the modern world. Modern architecture may begin with the need to commemorate their independence or achievement in terms of social and technological development. Architecture becomes a means of expressing their hopes or the ‘spirit of the age’.
Architectural Regionalism: A Global Movement
‘Architectural regionalism’, is generally described as ‘a commitment to finding unique responses to particular places, culture and climates’ (Curtis 1986), and as Jahn Kassim and Nawawi (2016) have outlined, even the modernist Le Corbusier had not sought only to regionalise his Modernist forms in into acclimatised variants, but had modernised past forms. Essentially a movement or trend that gathered momentum in developing countries, regionalism must be understood in the context of the increasing dominance of a homogeneous style. The local context basically became the basis of inspiration for differentiation in architecture.
The post-colonial era, also saw forms arising as a critique against the universalising tendencies of modernisation in the region. During this period, there was a subtle destruction of local and regional identities, and architectural regionalism represented a response that had gathered momentum after the achievement of independence in developing countries. In this context, regionalism is an assertion of a people’s or nation’s identity against those forces of globalisation. The urbanising context of developing countries became the catalyst for a search towards a localised style. Powell and Ozkan (1985) has taxonomised the evolution, of regionalism into several broad strands namely two broad streams or branches: ‘the historically-derivative’ and ‘the historically-transformative’. The historically derivative strand refers to a typological approach using ‘vernacular vocabulary’ including the ‘neovernacular’ approach which refers to the application of indigenous techniques in smaller-scale buildings, traditional typologies and forms. Aesthetic expression acrose from an articulation of traditional elements and materials and the use of indigenous labour and craftsmanship. With larger building programmes or typologies, Powell and Ozkan highlight the significance of a more ‘transformative’ form of regionalism:
Rather than an eclectic copying of the past or slick collage of elements from Modernism, history and region (as in post-modernism), regionalism seeks to synthesize a genuine hybrid, a new configuration which may include a remembrance of the past, but transformed or framed in terms of its significance for today.
Rather than a straightforward process of extracting elements derived directly from the past, transformative regionalism often involves a more indirect interpretation in which traditional forms and patterns are alluded to and reinterpreted into new forms. The approach ranges from a climatic position to regionalism to a more iconic tendency. The climatic approach essentially represents a more rigorous approach to regionalism. It emphasises a predominant strategy of deriving architectural form and expression from an analysis of the locality’s climate. As defined by Olgyay in his Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism (1963):
The design approach is based on a systematic analysis of the climate and landscape of a particular locality and the transformation of these principles into architectural form and expression.
National Identity
The nation, on the other hand, occupies a space that differs from that of a region. Curtis (1996) highlights how in modern architecture, aspiration towards a regional architecture imply a different set of boundaries to a national architecture.
‘National’ and ‘cultural’ identities in architecture at times, constitutes different set of boundaries; and that … The dilemma attached to the problem of public representation were not unique to any society.
Kahn (2006) describes the ‘nation’ as a modern construct, a process of disembedding the individual and re-embedding it in a new social structure. Kahn (2006) describes a phenomenon and with respect to Malaysia:
Regardless of whether civic nation-building in northwestern Europe was or was not successful … It is clear that the ethnic-cum-racial pluralization of Malayan society is by no means unique in the history of the modern nation-state.
In any multicultural society, the challenges of representation become acute, as architecture can make or break the consciousness of a people as one nation, as it has the opportunity to act as a uniting symbol, including representing a distinct historical moment. The premise of this book is based on the belief that for relatively large structures, or urban development in independent nations, and in the midst of the search for an inclusive modality of expression and language, at different times and in various degrees of intensity, two conflating and occasionally conflicting forces and dynamics occur: the regionalising force or tendency and, at a higher level, the symbolic agenda or pressure. On the surface these two may seem synonymous, they are two different forms of ideations. As highlighted in his reading of Ken Yeang’s bioclimatic architecture, Alan Balfour (1994) succinctly describes the conditions faced by a post-colonial nation and the conflations of regional versus national identity intentions in form and language. In the preface of his book, he observes Ken Yeang’s bioclimatic skyscrapers, and views them against the background of momentous political, cultural and economic changes in a post-colonial nation:
The evolution of Yeang’s architecture is embedded in the emergence of Malaysia as a distinct culture. One hundred years and more of imposed and quite alien reality would make the task of establishing the cultural voice of Malaysia after British rule more complex … The restoration of a regional and national identity after a century of British rule had specific targets: how to negate the presence of the British past; how to inflect arch...