Globalization & Regionalism in Contemporary Architecture: Interaction or Mutuality

A complicated, multilateral and unavoidable process, globalization semiconsciously covers growing temporal and spatial integration, dissemination of knowledge, ­ability to understand the others, strengthening intercultural interactions and integration of universal and local affairs, and consequently, introduces further development into social arena in the postmodern era. On one hand, formation of a global village and growing mutual effects in the world of architecture have led to concerns over domination of universalism and homogeneity, losing the soul of the place and creating faults in local identities. On the other, regionalism in architecture centers on preserving special characteristics of space and showing dissimilarities, and prioritizes special regional identity over universal characteristics. Definition of regionalism covers a wide spectrum due to its diversity and the course of events in different approaches to this theory, but generally, it is claimed that ecological features, climate conditions, social and cultural conditions and local customs are among important features of regionalism. Regionalism is an approach to coordinating the influence of global civilization with special local features. In another words, since man is an heir and creator of global culture as well as possessing a regional culture, he has to quiver knowledge of the interaction between both of them. Supporters of such theory believe that architecture has to reflect the features of the self and be independent of an emotional view point of region, tradition and history. The present paper attempts to investigate the relationship between globalization and current regional based approaches in the field of contemporary architecture. The research method is descriptive-analytical by using content analysis technique. Economic arena, on one hand, faces universal and global supply of multinational companies, and deals with local demand, on the other. This emphasizes the need for designing products in line with special regional circumstances in order to attract consumers and establish a global-regional interaction. In politics, there is an alignment theory of globalization and regionalism that based on which regionalism moderates globalization and both enjoy a mutual relationship. In culture, contemporary world covers both universalization and homogeneity and localization and heterogeny. Globalization provides a bed for universalization of local culture and localization of global culture. Local cultural systems enjoy a complex relationship with global culture to have its privileges. The results show that on one hand, the multilateral nature of globalization indicates that it enjoys an alignment of homogenous and heterogeneous approaches in such a way that it recognizes variety, pluralism and heterogenic and prepares the ground for special cultural and architectural identities and values. On the other, having shifted from nativist approaches and emphasis on physical interpretations and stylistic, structural and aesthetic issues towards modern approaches and social, cultural issues, ecosystem and interpersonal relationships, regionalism aims at modifying traditional prejudiced thoughts, strengthening an interactional approach and creating variety as well as enjoying universal privileges (critical regionalism, interactional regionalism and bioregionalism). Therefore, there proves to be a mutual relationship between these phenomena. The coexistence between technology and cultural identity (place) in architecture leads to the formation of a type of hybrid architecture enjoying universal privileges and regional indices (global- local).