Hybrid: Jenks uses hybrid to mean something that holds dual meanings at the same time. He uses the example of the duck/rabbit illustration, where, depending on what you look for, you can see a duck or a rabbit within the drawing. He contends that you might be able to see a third creature, a double-faced monster, but you cannot view two of the meanings at once (both “all duck” and “all rabbit”).
Placelessness: Placelessness occurs where there are no unique signs or markers that define a place as separate from the universal space continuum. The aim of Critical Regionalism is to intercept this “universal civilization” (Frampton, 21) and view it through a uniquely regional lens.
Hyperreality: Hyperreality occurs when reality has been over-mediated and over-saturated with communication to the point at which it ceases to exist. Baudrillard believed that this had occurred, and that we no longer live in reality, but instead have signs or stand-ins for reality.
“Itʼs all confusion and strife, and yet this invective is still language even if itʼs not very comprehensible or persuading. There are various analogies, architecture shares with language and if we use the terms loosely, we can speak of architectural ʻwordsʼ, ʻphrasesʼ, ʻsyntaxʼ, and ʻsemanticsʼ. (Jenks, Language of Postmodern Architecture)
“Heidegger argues that the phenomenological essence of such a space/place depends upon the concrete, clearly defined nature of its boundary, for, as he puts it, ʻA boundary is not that at which something stops, but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.ʼ” (Frampton, Critical Regionalism)
“But just so: as long as there is alienation, there is spectacle, action, scene. It is not obscenity-- the spectacle is never obscene. Obscenity begins precisely when there is no more spectacle, no more scene, when all becomes transparence and immediate visibility, when everything is exposed to the harsh-and inexorable light of information and communication.” (Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication)
In moving toward a universal culture we are moving toward the idea of communicating a solitary idea. When we cease to communicate regional ideas, we lose what defines regions. This is dangerous, because when we loses what marks a region as separate from another, we lose not only what marks where a region ends, but also where it begins. Without beginnings or endings, there is no reality, only, to use Baudrillardʼs term, an un-nuanced hyperreality.