# Help with Regional skyscrapers!



## NickABQ (Jun 6, 2007)

Hey everyone!

I've been challenged in my Urban Planning class at University to come up with some examples of regionalist architecture applied to high-rise form or skyscraper design. 

So I need help in collecting some examples of Regionalism expressed in high-rise design!

Pictures would be a huge help of course!

I can think of a few examples already, most notably Taipei 101, Abraj Al-Bait etc.

Please everyone, show off your favourite "regionalist' skyscrapers!

Thanks a bunch! :banana:


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## Ramses (Jun 17, 2005)

Some highrise examples in my country


*Netherlands - The Hague*
Castalia 









Is derived from Dutch "tuitgevels"










*Netherlands - Zaanstad*
Hotel Inntel (very extreme)









I derived from "Zaanse houses"


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## beautiful9 (Oct 2, 2010)

*About regionalist architecture*

Hello,there are good examples of regionalost architecture. Its architecture and design is very attractive. According to me there should be unique design. The choice of structural system and structural material has a major influence on construction time and cost. The services have to be carefully integrated with the structure which is helpful


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## NickABQ (Jun 6, 2007)

@Ramses-

Thanks mate! things like this is exactly what I was looking for!

Love Castalia btw...gorgeous.

Keep them coming!


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## Concrete Stereo (May 21, 2005)

It can be useful to look into Kenneth Frampton's "Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six points for an architecture of resistance".

Regionalism (critical regionalism) as far as I know is not so much a post-modern term but a modernist one - part of the discussion whether modernism should be 'the international style' or whether locality should play a role. Most important in this movement was Alvar Aalto, but our friend Wikipedia comes with this list of names:

"In addition to Aalto and Utzon, the following architects have used Critical Regionalism (in the Frampton sense) in their work: Studio Granda, Mario Botta, B. V. Doshi, Charles Correa, Alvaro Siza, Jorge Ferreira Chaves, Rafael Moneo, Geoffrey Bawa, Raj Rewal, Tadao Ando, Mack Scogin / Merrill Elam, Glenn Murcutt, Ken Yeang, William S.W. Lim, Tay Kheng Soon, Juhani Pallasmaa, Juha Leiviskä, Tan Hock Beng. Dimitris & Suzana Antonakakis are the two Greek architects for whom the term was used by Tzonis and Lefaivre."

Also the South American modernists could be called regionalist - it's the 'tropical modernism' (Lina Bo Bardi, Louis Baragan, ...)

When in post-modernism 'region' starts playing a role as a symbolic layer you get this very literal translations - which is very flat and really not something you'd want to use as a reference. Much more interesting I think is something like Renzo Piano's Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center - which really is a representation (or continuation) of a culture, not some easy image pasted on a building.










In contemporary architecture, perhaps Kolhoff's brick skyscraper in Berlin or Christian Rapp's centre of Ypenburg could be. Definitely Sjoerd Soeters' urban plan for Java/KNSM island is regionalist. 

But I don't know specifically about skyscrapers. It's in extreme a typology that is built in the same corporate architecture around the world. And when it incorporates local elements or traditions, i'm not really sure we're still talking architecture. The Taipei 101 for example is said to represent a bamboo or a palmtree or something terrible like this.


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## NickABQ (Jun 6, 2007)

Thanks for all your info! Very insightful ^^

I'm quite familiar with Frampton's text and the idea of critical regionalism. I guess the debate is whether or not skyscrapers as a FORM can be globalized while using regionalism motif, aesthetic principal, ethic or cultural understanding. 

It can be argued that the skyscraper itself can be traced back to regionalism in America, and that it has been copied and replicated by corporate developers around the world in post-1970's era of globalization. 

So with this in mind, I'm trying to spark discussion amongst forumers against (or at least in contrast) to this point. Preferably with pictures!!


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