Regionalism and Modernity

Leen Meganck is Senior Researcher on Architectural History at the Flanders Heritage Agency. Linda Van Santvoort is PhD in Art History and Professor at the U.Gent. Her research focuses on architecture and conservation in the 19th and 20th centuries. Linda Van Santvoort is Professor of Architectural History and Heritage at Ghent University.Jan De Maeyer is professor emeritus of contemporary church history at KU Leuven and honorary director of KADOC-KU Leuven. His research focuses on political and social Catholicism, material Christianity, and the development of religious institutions and congregations.

• IntroductionFRANCEJean-Claude VigatoBetween Progress and Tradition. The Regionalist Debate in France Hervé DoucetSearching for a New Image. An Idealized Regionalism in Lorraine BELGIUMJohan Van den MooterGerman Reconstruction in Belgium during World War I. A Regional Experiment Leen MeganckPatriotism, Genius Loci, Authentic Buildings and Imitation Farmsteads.Regionalism in Interwar Belgium Benoît MihaïlTraditionalist Architecture in Belgium between the Wars.The Obsession with National Culture and the French Influence Evert VandewegheMunicipal Imagery and Regionalist Architecture in the Aftermath of the First World War. Branches of the National Bank of Belgium in Flanders Björn RzoskaFarmstead, Tribe, Soil and National Character.Clemens Victor Trefois, a Self-Made Farmhouse Expert from Flanders Lut MissinneRegionalism and a European View? Gerard Walschap on the 'Heimatroman' GERMANYKai KrauskopfStandardization and the Landscape. Traditionalism and the Planning of Housing Estates in Germany between the Two World Wars ENGLANDVanessa Vanden BergheOliver Hill. A Window on Regionalism in Britain during the Interwar Period ITALYMichelangelo SabatinoToward a Regionalist Modernism. Italian Architecture and the Vernacular AbbreviationsBibliographyIndexAuthorsColophon

Lost and Found: Regional Modernism in EuropeWith 'Regionalism and Modernity', we get a more full and European perspective that suggests that in Europe maturation was dominant, but also more complex. European regionalism, assert the editors, was a “strategy forensuring continuity within a modernizing society which compensates for the increasing loss of landscape and tradition.” [...]So considered altogether, 'Regionalism and Modernity' is a valuable contribution to the discourse that benefits a US audience by its ability to situate regionalism, modernism, historicism, and eclecticism within a social and political framework, while also demonstrating architectureʼs cultural and artistic relevance. Rather than simply a debate about style (regionalism, modernism, or neo-Tuscan?) as has been so often the case in the US, the European context demonstrates a closer and deeper relationship between culture, meaning and architecture.Vincent B. Canizaro, University of Texas San Antonio