Small but strong

Architectural Review, The, August, 2004 by Charles Jameson

SIR: Many thanks for your Portugal issue (July). One of the exciting things about The Architectural Review is the way in which it brings relatively unknown and unpublished architects to world attention. Yes, of course we had all heard of Siza and de Moura (why one but not the other by the way?), but the other (and presumably younger) designers on the pages were quite a revelation.

This issue, and your coverage of other comparatively small countries like Finland and Switzerland with very talented groups of architects does give some support to Kenneth Frampton's proposal of Critical Regionalism--a concept that, as you yourself have pointed out in the past began to look rather less assured after the African and Balkan wars of the '90s. It must surely be time for a re-examination of regionalism: after all, no human strain of thought can be responsible for entirely bad results. Even Modernism at its most reductive and dirigiste produced some very fine buildings, and (mention it very quietly) not all built products of the Fascist and even Nazi regimes were entirely vile.

Yours etc

CHARLES JAMESON

Madrid, Spain