Kenneth Frampton

A Genealogy of Modern Architecture by Kenneth Frampton is the fruit of decades of teaching activity and gestation. The class on which this book is based was originally more succinctly called Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form, and was taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University from 2004 to 2008.
The 14 comparisons of some 28 buildings that make up most of the
book are divided into programmatic categories: Houses and Pavilions;
Housing; Office Buildings; Civic Buildings; Concert Halls; Museums; and Stadia, and are laid down in diagrams, photographic and orthographic representations, and in written text.
The analyses are richest, most compelling, and indeed exciting, when modernist works of different persuasion are set against each other. The comparison of the Schröder House by Rietveld to Maison Cook by Le Corbusier, and the Casa del Fascio by Terragni to the Gothenburg Law Courts of Asplund come to mind, or neo-plasticism versus purism and fascism versus social democracy.

Architecture, Analisi Dei Dati Per La Ricerca Sociale, Lecture notes
Riassunti chiari e ben elaborati, che non tralasciano nessun tipo di dettaglio e semplificano il linguaggio del Frampton CAPITOLI: Parte 1: capitoli 1 - 2 - 3 Parte 2: capitoli 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 25 - 26

Contemporary Architecture in Khartoum have been affected by modernization and globalization, which lead to an architecture that has little attention to the existing local and regional architecture. Globalized architecture resulted in buildings that do not adapt to the changed environmental, social, cultural, economic or/and political context, and so is most of the emerging contemporary Architecture in Khartoum This study was conducted in order to find out if an appropriate context-related regionalistic architecture can be created by the integration of local architectural traditions and universal architectural realities through a Critical perspective; as well as, to gain a better understanding to contemporary residential Architecture in Khartoum using Frampton's theoretical concept of " Critical Regionalism ". Five main points were derived by the author from this concept and were used as an analysis tool and criteria that guided the study. This concept was chosen because it had been a successful worldwide tool, especially in the Third World Countries, which had been used to give a sense of a genuine, authentic, and modern architecture to people, as well as helping in creating architecture that is specifically relevant to their context and environment whilst being part of the world of modern architecture. The study proved that a context-related contemporary residential architecture does exist in Khartoum, and that Critical Regionalism is an applicable approach to be followed by architects in Khartoum. The case studies, although not designed with Critical Regionalism in mind, expressed the five points of Critical Regionalism successfully. The study also showed that the points can provide guidance to develop the existing architecture, as well as help architects understand and evaluate what has been built, and to help what is yet to be built here in Khartoum.

*This Paper was extracted from the Masters Thesis “Critical Regionalism: Studies on Contemporary Residential Architecture of Khartoum – Sudan”

Kenneth Frampton enters the populated scene of regionalism like figure of authority with a seal of approval. However, Towards a Critical Regionalism, the essay's title, seems to be vouching for a different approach. As Frampton pursues an "architecture of resistance," so does he pursue a resistance of preceding regionalisms. The essay critiques modernism's "dogmatic principles" and engages with the popular postmodernist movement during the 1980s; it is rooted and/or influenced by ideas of pluralism, phenomenology, new concepts of "place" and post-colonial liberation. He also makes allusions to ideas of environmental or sustainable architecture in a time when such discourse was not yet popular. Ultimately, the essay tries to offer what Architecture's response could become to the question which philosopher Paul Riceour asks:

Is the Salk Institute an exemplar of the ethical New Brutalism? Pulling on archival information regarding CIAM, the Smithsons and general social housing debate, did Louis I. Kahn create the perfect grid of City, District, Street and House in the complete model for La Jolla, San Diego?

The 'Art-Architecture Complex' by the art historian Hal Foster argues that the global styles of contemporary high architecture offer inauthentic
spectacle in place of visceral experience. Thomas Wensing meets him to ask what went wrong, and what architecture can learn from art.

Well-known for his great contribution to architectural criticism and his very extensive teaching, Kenneth Frampton is, above all, an architect with an exquisite sensitivity in all areas that include architecture. An Architect since 1956 for the Architectural Association School of London, he has worked half his life in New York, which he referred to as “the dirty guts of the United States”. He has been Associate Professor in Universities like Princeton; a Visiting Professor in most of the world; and from 1974 he has been a Ware Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Colombia University in New York. Every architect knows his writing and every researcher has, as part or his or her reference bibliography, his books and articles due to their philosophical and critical interest. Also, I don’t need to mention the quality and variety of his lectures, which after more than three decades, continue to retain all their validity, and are followed by many architects. He creates excitement wherever he goes and I wonder… what is Kenneth Frampton’s secret? What causes him to make any enthusiast of architecture, who read his work or who like me have had the good fortune to listen to him speak, shudder with excitement? Maybe the key is his tireless research work… never anchored in what is already known, but also exploring new concepts; never focused on a particular field of architecture, but also studying within the global framework; never understood only from the educational aspect, but also analysing from the special characteristics and peculiarities of each culture.

South African architecture is currently searching for a unique identity and character. Globalisation, amongst others, contributed directly to an absence of architectural character. The result is a degree of placelessness in the South African built environment. In contrast, the Critical Regionalist theory resists the homogenisation in the built environment. This is frequently achieved by acknowledging the region’s potential, while re-interpreting external cultural influences. The resultant building design aims to be appropriate to its specific time and place. This notion promotes a design method focusing on analysing architecture. This paper graphically analyses four custom-designed South African houses at the hand of the characteristics and principles of Critical Regionalism in an attempt to identify the underlying traits of local architectural identity. Although only four case studies were analysed, the research confirms the existence of an architectural response that meets the criteria of Critical Regionalism, within the selected population. Consequently, it is argued that South African architecture could hold a regional and global relevance that extends beyond imagery only. This paper briefly reviews the requirements of Critical Regionalism by referring to pertinent theoretical contributors and advancing a new model for South Africa. This is translated into the graphic matrix used for analysing four custom-designed South African houses. As part of any design process, the architectural practitioner could follow this analytical attempt at analysing relevant South African architecture.

" But for the old master builders the drawing was merely a means of communicating with craftsmen who carried out the work. Just as a poet has to communicate through writing. However, we are not so totally devoid of culture as to get a boy to take up poetry just because he has a calligraphic hand " i " The second half of the nineteenth century was filled with the sound of false prophets, men without culture, crying, " We have no architectural style! " How wrong, how incorrect. That was the very time that had a more distinct style, one that differed more distinctly from the preceding period, a change unparalleled in cultural history. Since, however, these false prophets could only recognize a product by the varying ornamentation, this ornamentation became a fetish for them and they substituted it for the real thing, calling it " style ". Style we already had, but no ornamentation. If I were to chip off all the ornamentation from our old and new buildings, leaving only the bare walls, I would certainly find it difficult to distinguish fifteenth –century from seventeenth-century buildings. But even the man in the street would recognise those of the nineteenth century at a glance. We had no ornamentation and they moaned that we had no style. So they kept on copying ornaments from the past until they found it ridiculous, so when they had gone as far as they could go in that direction, they started inventing new ornaments. That is they sunk to such a low cultural level that they were able to do that. And now they congratulate themselves on having created the style of the twentieth century. But that is not the style of the twentieth century. There are many objects which show the style of the twentieth century in its pure form, and these are the objects produced by craftsmen who were not working under the tutelage of one of the warped graduates of the schools. First and foremost they are the tailors, they are the shoemakers, the makers of bags and saddles, carriages and instruments and all those who avoided the fate of being uprooted from culture because their craft seemed too ordinary to the false prophets to be worth reforming. What good fortune! From such scraps as architects left me I was able, twelve years ago, to reconstruct modern joinery work, the joinery we would have if architects had never stuck their noses in a joiner's workshop. I did not approach the task like an artist, giving free rein to his creative imagination (as they doubtless put it in artistic circles). No. I went to the workshops, as a timid as an apprentice, looked up respectively to the man in the blue apron and, and asked him to share his secrets with me. For many a piece of workshop tradition still lay there, bashfully hidden from the eyes of the architects. And when they realised what I wanted, when they saw I was not one of those who would deface their beloved wood with his drawing-board fantasies, when they saw I had no intention of defiling the noble colour of their revered material with green or violet stains, they glowed with craftsman's pride, revealed their carefully concealed tradition and gave vent to their hatred of their oppressors. I found modern panelling in the cladding of the old lavatory water tanks, I found a modern solution for the problem of corners in the chests for silver cutlery, I found locks and metal fittings on suitcases and pianos. And I found out the most important thing, namely that the style of 1900 differs from that of 1800 to the same extent as the tail coat of 1900 differs from that of 1800. "

The seeds of postmodern architecture were sown in the early 1950s and 1960s when architects, theoreticians and teachers developed new design approaches and pedagogies related to the notion of context in order to heal the ill effects of orthodox modern architecture and planning. Critical Regionalism was suggested as an alternative to postmodern architecture in the 1980s, though it strongly aligns with its original premises on context. To unfold this relation, this paper provides a critical re-reading of Kenneth Frampton’s seminal text ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism’ in comparison to postmodern architecture’s early contextuality, which is discussed specifically through the works of its protagonists Colin Rowe and Robert Venturi.

This exhibition and catalogue are the result of a cooperation between the Jewish Museum New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, it sheds a comprehensive light on the complete oeuvre and achievements of architect and interior designer Pierre Chareau. Pierre Chareau is to this day mainly known for the Maison de Verre in Paris, a universally recognised modernist masterpiece (1928–1931), designed with the Dutch architect Bernard Bijvoet.

In June 2021 we celebrate the centenary of Alan Colquhoun (1921-2012), British architect and prominent architecture critic and theoretician. The goal of the online colloquium is to consider the continuing significance of Colquhoun's writings, and the ways in which they retain relevance for the current tasks of the architectural historian. Several generations of scholars gather to discuss Colquhoun's studies on architecture meaning, type, historicism, and regionalism.

In late 2010, Kenneth Frampton celebrated his eightieth birthday with a one-day conference at the Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation at
Columbia University. The conference was, typically, an act of resistance against the prevalent culture of commodification and globalisation and focused on architecture as practice. To this end, five offices were endorsed by Frampton and invited to speak about their work and motivations: Stanley Saitowitz, Brigitte Shim & Howard Sutcliffe,
Rick Joy, John & Patricia Patkau and Steven Holl. In addition to eschewing the prevalent tendency to perceive architecture as a fashionable and expendable consumer product, Frampton thus also decided to put the cult of personality into perspective
and to present Canadian practice on an equal footing with that in the US. The review argues that the work of the offices presented lacks the necessary political bite to address the forces of globalisation and commodification.

An analysis of the concepts of Modernity, Postmodernity, Modernism and Postmoderism, applied to a reading of Koolhaas, Eisenman, Frampton, Tzonis and Jencks. It considers  architectural theory in social context. It is the essay version of a paper read at a conference in Delft.

See also my texts on Academia.edu:

- Authoritarian Architecture
- Theory of Projection
- Panzer Paranioa - on Postmoderniity
- Transparant Authority

The text explores the relationship between the project composition and the construction methods, above all aims to emphasize the expressive potential of construction, meaning the "tectonics" as an internal architectural principle in opposition to the contemporary trend to deduce the validity of the architecture from what it is different.

El articulo “On Reading Heidegger” publicado en 1974 demuestra a un joven y militante Kenneth Frampton, exponiendo con prosa densa e inspirada los temas que trabajará una y otra vez, con renovada obsesión, en su fructífera carrera académica. Tal vez por eso (su juventud?, su militancia?) nunca haya quedado tan expuesto su paradójico conservadurismo crítico, su idealizado materialismo. Su llamado de atención hacia la pérdida del valor de uso (profundo, histórico) y su reemplazo por el valor de cambio (superficial, contingente) en todo lo que concierne a nuestra cotidianidad queda claramente expuesto gracias a la utilización de la diferenciación Heideggeriana entre espacio y lugar.

Why has Frampton been editing 'A Critical History since 1980'? What do the differences between five editions tell about histories of architectures and the historical grasp of criticism? A seminar for Architecture and Criticism, second year elective course at Marmara University.

In this article South African architecture is currently searching for a unique identity and character. Globalisation, amongst others, contributed directly to an absence of architectural character. The result is a degree of placelessness in the South African built environment. In contrast, the Critical Regionalist theory resists the homogenisation in the built environment. This is frequently achieved by acknowledging the region's potential, while re-interpreting external cultural influences. The resultant building design aims to be appropriate to its specific time and place. This notion promotes a design method focusing on analysing architecture. This paper graphically analyses four custom-designed South African houses at the hand of the characteristics and principles of Critical Regionalism in an attempt to identify the underlying traits of local architectural identity. Although only four case studies were analysed, the research confirms the existence of an architectural respons...