Architecture and the Public World: Kenneth Frampton (Radical Thinkers in Design)

Architecture and the Public World: Kenneth Frampton (Radical Thinkers in Design)
by: Kenneth Frampton (Author),Miodrag Mitrašinovic(Editor)
Publisher:Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Publication Date: 8 Feb. 2024
Language:English
Print Length:320 pages
ISBN-10:1350183792
ISBN-13:9781350183797
Book Description
Architecture and the Public World brings together key writings by Kenneth Frampton, the eminent architectural historian and critic, from the 1980s to the present. Articles are grouped into thematic sections representing abiding concerns of Frampton’s criticism: history and critical theory; modes of criticism; the vicissitudes of urban form, and tactility, tectonics, and resistance. The volume also includes a new interview with Frampton and an essay by Clive Dilnot exploring the relevance of Frampton’s thought for design history and criticism.The anthology represents Frampton’s abiding concern for labor and the political dimensions of architecture, including his development of the concept of ‘critical regionalism’, but, in featuring writings from across the range and breadth of Frampton’s career, enables a broader understanding of his work, demonstrating the potential for architectural interpretation and analysis to function as a mode of cultural criticism.
About the Author
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”. –Gui Bonsiepe, author of The Disobedience of DesignTo 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. –Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, Director of the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, BangladeshBy 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. –Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara, Grafton Architects, Ireland 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).