It is more than quarter of a century since there emerged the idea of a ‘critical regionalism’ in architecture. While accepting and advocating the ‘confluence of globally prevalent’ styles and technologies with ‘culturally and geographically specific ones’ this regionalism was critical in more than one sense. For one thing, it rejected some of the dominant trends in global or ‘international’ modernism, such as what many had come to regard as a dour functionalism. At the same time, it was critical of the ‘kitsch vernacular’ that some ‘post-colonial’ architects in developing countries were producing in an over-hasty enthusiasm to retrieve lost traditions.