About the Book
This book brings together Kenneth Frampton’s essays from the 1960s to today which epitomize his reflections on the historical–theoretical entanglements of architecture with place, the public realm, cultural identity, urban landscape and environment, and the political question of the “predicament” of architecture in the new Millennium.
The essays explore Frampton’s contention that architecture’s imperative is to assume a significant responsibility for the edification and stewardship of the Arendtian ‘public world.’ One of the most theoretically sophisticated and politically committed architectural thinkers, Frampton’s work breaks emphatically with the limits and norms of much contemporary practice and restores a sense of richness and social consequence of architecture’s ‘unfinished project,’ while offering abiding lessons not only for architecture but for social, cultural, and design criticism alike.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Editorial Notes
List of Figures
Kenneth Frampton: A Brief Biographical Sketch
Introduction, Miodrag Mitrašinovic (Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA)
Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Miodrag Mitrašinovic (Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA)
SECTION ONE: The Human Condition and the Critical Present
Introduction to Section One
The Status of Man and the Status of His Objects: A Reading of The Human Condition
Industrialization and the Crises in Architecture
Apropos Ulm: Curriculum and Critical Theory
Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Introduction to the 1st Edition
Towards an Ontological Architecture: A Philosophical Excursus
SECTION TWO: Urban Landscape and the Eclipse of the Public Realm
Introduction to Section Two
America 1960–1970: Notes on Urban Images and Theory
The Generic Street as a Continuous Built Form
Technology, Place, and Architecture
Civic Form
The Legacy of Alvar Aalto: Evolution and Influence
Toward an Urban Landscape
Megaform as Urban Landscape
Land Settlement, Architecture, and the Eclipse of the Public Realm
SECTION THREE: Cross-Cultural Trajectories, Place Creation, and the Politics of Counter Form
Introduction to Section Three
On Reading Heidegger
Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance
Tadao Ando’s Critical Modernism
Place-Form and Cultural Identity
Modernization and Local Culture
The Predicament of the Place-Form: Notes from New York
Plan Form and Topography in the Work of Kashef Chowdhury
Society of Architectural Historians Plenary Talk
SECTION FOUR: The Predicament of Architecture in the New Millennium
Introduction to Section Four
Architecture, Philosophy, and the Education of Architects
Reflections on the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production
Seven Points for the Millennium: An Untimely Manifesto
Typology and Participation: The Architecture of Álvaro Siza
Towards an Agonistic Architecture
The Unfinished Project at the End of Modernity: Tectonic Form and the Space of Public Appearance
Afterword: “The Criticism of Architecture is Worth More Than Architecture,” by Clive Dilnot
Bibliographic Sources
Biographies
About the Author :
Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University, USA. He is the author of, amongst other works, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980: 4th edition, 2007; 5th edition in preparation), Modern Architecture in the World of Art series (5th edition, 2020), Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction (1995), Labor, Work and Architecture (2002), A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form (2015) and The Other Modernism (2016: in Italian).
Miodrag Mitrašinovic is Professor of Urbanism and Architecture, and Co-Chair of Parsons Graduate Urban Programs, at Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA. He is the co-editor of Public Space Reader (2020), Public Space in a Chinese Megaregion: Contemporary Urban Practices and Design Strategies of the Greater Bay Area (forthcoming 2021), 'Cooperative Cities' (Journal of Design Strategies Vol. 8, 2018), editor of Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion (2016), co-editor of Travel, Space, Architecture (2009), and author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (2006).
Review :
Well-argued, well-grounded, well-written, these texts based on architectural practice, critique, and history reach beyond the particular discipline of architecture and the built environment. They touch all design professions that strive to make artifacts compatible with daily life practice in a fragile environment. Design, having become increasingly vaporous in recent years, needs a (re-)linking to the social-political domain confronting the “conflict between power and reason”.
To those who have read him, and even to those who have not, the name Kenneth Frampton suggests an intellectual and ethical beacon in architecture. And like a beacon, Frampton has continued to cast light on some of the enduring and critical topics of our times. Perhaps similar to Rilke’s letters to the young poet, Frampton’s writings have alerted generations of architects, young and not so young, across the world, to abide by the cultural ethic of architecture, and compelled them to contemplate on what they do.
By employing his deep understanding of the process of designing and crafting buildings, Frampton peels back the layers of a building to reveal its meaning, to understand its relevance, to evaluate its impact. He inhabits the world between thinking and doing, observing what is being done, capturing with incisive clarity the inner workings of projects, charting their equally possible outcomes. Just in case we might forget in this busy, digital world, Frampton reminds us that people's experience of architecture is of highest cultural importance.
The wait is over. It is finally here! Kenneth Frampton, the revered British critic, finally sees his extensive body of work compiled in this benchmark volume, marking a significant epoch in architectural thought ... A must-read.
