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On a smaller scale, this can also be seen
in the design of the Fisher House in Pennsylvania, where the simple arrangement
of timber boxes provides a dramatic “viewing-platform” over the landscaped
site.
In
the work of another writer, Kenneth Frampton, some of these ideas have been
taken further, with the attempt to provide a programme for what he called a “critical
regionalism”. This would again address the idea of place but within the context
of a “global” architecture, through a “critical” reinterpretation of vernacular
building types and the use of local materials and craft skills. Frampton was
again picking up on Heidegger and his attachment to the sense of place, though
he identified a number of recent architects he felt had also been working on a
similar theme. In the final chapter of his book Modern Architecture: A Critical
History, he looked at the work of the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, both as
an example of regional architecture and a seductive collage of sensuous
materials. Frampton has since developed a more specific interest in tectonic
culture in modern architecture and in a recent book he reinterpreted a number
of key buildings in terms of their construction. This shift of interest towards
architectural detail shows a further influence of phenomenological thinking, as
the expressive potential of a building’s materiality is seen as enriching the
experience of form and space. As Marco Frascari – a former assistant of Scarpa’s
– wrote on this theme:
In
architecture feeling a handrail, walking up steps or between walls, turning a
corner and noting the sitting of a beam in a wall, are coordinated elements of
visual and tactile sensations. The location of those details gives birth to the
conventions that tie a meaning to a perception.22
These
two themes of place and bodily experience become for Frampton a mode of “resistance”
– a way of countering the alienation of the city and the emphasis in our media
culture on the sense of vision:
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