Architecture and the Public World

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.

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 Mitrasinovic 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).

Acknowledgments Editorial Notes List of Figures Kenneth Frampton: A Brief Biographical Sketch Introduction, Miodrag Mitrasinovic (Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA) Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Miodrag Mitrasinovic (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