Emerging in 1981 with the publication of the essay “The Grid and the Pathway” by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, it was Kenneth Frampton's 1983 essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism: six points for an architecture of resistance” that brought the term “critical regionalism” wider recognition. The essay was published in the anthology “The anti-aesthetic: essays on Postmodern culture,” edited by critic and historian Hal Foster, initiating a debate later revisited in "Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," also written by Frampton that same year for the journal Perspecta.
“Towards a Critical Regionalism" formulates a critique of universalizing and populist movements in architecture—represented by modernism and so-called postmodern architecture—structured around six points: Culture and Civilization; Rise and Fall of the Avant-Garde; Critical Regionalism and World Culture; The Resistance of the Place-Form; Culture versus Nature: Topography, Context, Climate, Light, and Tectonic Form; and The Visual versus the Tactile.
