Transcultural Architecture

I discuss the urban plan of the Finnish architects, explain the difference between “Transcultural Architecture” and Critical Regionalism, and show how the Sief Palace Area project is related to those differences. In 2011, I revisited Pietilä’s Ministry of Foreign affairs in Kuwait, which no person with an interest in architecture has visited since 1986.

Pietilä Kuwait project consisted of two different tasks that were interrelated: the establishment of an urban plan for Kuwait and the construction of three buildings in the central part of the city. Second, the Sief Palace Buildings are a school case permitting reflection on the possibilities and limits of Critical Regionalism. The project started with the best intentions but ran into problems that can be considered as paradigmatic. Only a thorough analysis of the planning history, the context, the reception of the building as well as the architect’s theoretical ideas can clarify the complications from which this project has suffered.

The chapter also contains a 5000 words long subchapter providing a theoretical foundation of Transculturalism and, in architecture, its relationship with Critical Regionalism.