critical regionalism

"The forms that people used in other civilizations or in other periods of our own country's history were intimately part of the whole structure of their life. There is no method of mechanically reproducing these forms or bringing them back to life; it is a piece of rank materialism to attempt to duplicate some earlier form, because of its delight for the eye, without realizing how empty a form is without the life that once supported it. There is no such thing as a modern colonial house any more than there is such thing as a modern Tudor house. [...]
If one seeks to reproduce such a building in our own day, every mark on it will betray the fact that it is fake, and the harder the architect works to conceal that fact, the more patent the fact will be. [...]
The great lesson of history - and this applies to all the arts - is that the past cannot be recaptured except in spirit. [...] Our task is not to imitate the past, but to understand it, so that we may face the opportunity of our own day and deal with them in an equally creative spirit."

"As with a human being, every culture must both be itself and transcend itself; it must make most of its limitations and must pass beyond them; it must be open to fresh experience and yet it must maintain its integrity. In no other art is that process more sharply focused than in architecture."

by Lewis Mumford
in "Critical Regionalism" by Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis