Kenneth Frampton

Renzo Piano has created some of the most emblematic buildings of our age, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Shard in London, the Parco della Musica in Rome, and the New York Times Building in New York City. Here, Renzo Piano himself – whose many international awards include the prestigious Pritzker Prize – presents in his own words the works on which he has built his reputation over a span of fifty years. Over one hundred works are described (almost twice as many as featured in the original edition that this volume supersedes), accompanied by over one thousand images, including new photographs, drawings and sketches, both intimate and authoritative, all with commentaries by the architect that combine personal anecdote and technical description with original insights. This is an unmatched introduction to the work of one of the world’s most influential and inspiring architects.

Neoptolemos Michaelides (1920–92) was a pioneer of modern architecture in Cyprus. All of his designs are based on the desire to develop principles that combine modern architecture with traditional Cypriot construction methods—and the knowledge preserved therein regarding the choice of materials, geographical orientation, natural climate control, and the internal organisation of buildings. These principles are rooted in his studies of Western philosophy and even more in his affinity with Eastern philosophical thought, especially the spiritual importance of a harmonious relationship with nature. Between his respect for pure, natural materials and his awareness of elemental forces, his buildings seem both to worship nature and to evoke the Shintoism of Japan. In this first ever book on the architecture of Neoptolemos Michaelides, the distinguished American architectural historian Kenneth Frampton presents his work in two essays. The first, illustrated with historical photos and documents, is dedicated to 13 of his most important buildings. The second takes a close look at Michaelides’ own home in Nicosia. Newly taken photographs and plan drawings created especially for the book on a 1:100 scale document this extraordinary house in detail. The beautiful volume is rounded out with a concise biography of Michaelides. Text in English and Greek.

Instantly calming houses in remote Scandinavian locations that will make you want to escape into nature. In a world of starchitects competing to design ever taller glass and steel megaliths, there are still some architects designing with natural materials at a human scale, for comfort, longevity and visual delight. Mette Lange is one such architect. She creates beautiful, unpretentious homes in spectacular scenery that offer visual inspiration for homebuilders and dreamers alike. Earth, Sky and Water presents 15 projects designed by Mette across three chapters: By the Water, In the Forest and In the Countryside. First-person project texts describe Mette’s unique practice of camping on-site at the start of each design process, and detail the thinking behind each house’s main features. Inviting photography takes readers inside these homes and draws particular attention to the choice of materials. In keeping with her socially responsible ethos, Mette has also designed schools for the children of migrant workers in India, where she spends part of each year. These projects, presented in the book alongside her own home in India, inform her practice at home in Denmark. Mette has kept her studio small in order to remain fully involved in each project at every level. As well as a visual feast of deceptively simple Scandinavian summerhouses that will leave the reader yearning for one of their own, the book offers a blueprint for aspiring architects on how to escape the rat race by running their own sustainable studio. Renowned architecture writer and fan of Mette's work, Kenneth Frampton, contributes a foreword.

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.

A revised and updated edition of a bestselling introduction on one of the leading architects of the 20th century. Le Corbusier is probably the most famous architect of the 20th century. The richness and variety of his work and his passionately expressed philosophy of architecture have had a gigantic impact on the urban fabric and the way we live. Weaving through his long and prolific life are certain recurrent themes – his perennial drive towards new types of dwelling, from the early white villas to the Unité d’Habitation at Marseilles; his evolving concepts of urban form, including the Plan Voisin of 1925 with its cruciform towers imposed on the city of Paris and his work at Chandigarh in India; and his belief in a new technocratic order. The distinguished critic and architecture historian Kenneth Frampton re-examines all the facets of his artistic and philosophical world-view in light of recent thinking, and presents us with a Le Corbusier for the 21st century. This revised edition features a new introduction; some illustrations have now been replaced with colour.

An updated edition of this classic title on the origins of 20th-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts. The turn of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary flowering of invention in architecture and design, leading to the emergence of two contrasting styles: Art Nouveau and the International Style. Professor Nikolaus Pevsner brings clarity to this period of dynamic change by tracing the origins of twentieth-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts. Featuring a new foreword by the distinguished architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, this classic title has now been updated with colour illustrations throughout.

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.

The first survey in nearly two decades of the work of John McAslan + Partners. Making Architecture both provides an up-to-date account of the work of John McAslan + Partners, one of Britain’s most respected and dynamic architectural practices, and analyses the culture of a studio that has made a remarkable contribution to architecture, place-making and the lives of individuals for four decades. A series of thematic chapters includes detailed, fully illustrated descriptions of many recent and ongoing international projects, from Central and Waterloo stations in Sydney and ten new stations for Delhi Metro to the transformation of King’s Cross station in London; from the sensitive restoration of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, to the new Doha Mosque and nearby Msheireb Museums in Qatar. It also includes the pioneering initiatives for which the McAslan studio has become well known and that underline the practice’s humanity and sense of social responsibility: the urgent restoration of the Iron Market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the devastating earthquake in 2010; the Hidden Homelessness initiative, begun in 2017; the N17 project that provided a pop-up design studio in Tottenham, London, after the riots of 2011, with the aim of inspiring young people to become engaged in the regeneration of their own community; and many others. Edited by Chris Foges, with a foreword by Kenneth Frampton and an introduction by Alan Powers, and with contributions by architectural specialists, this beautifully designed book offers the key to understanding the development and philosophy of one of the world’s most socially engaged architectural practices.

Kenneth Frampton: Conversations with Daniel Talesnik presents seven interviews with the architectural historian reflecting on the long arc of his rich and influential career in the discipline. Spanning Frampton’s early years as an architecture student at the Guildford School of Art to his nearly fifty years as a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, the interviews trace not only the development and implications of his work but also the cultural, political, and discursive terrain surrounding it. Here Frampton outlines the formation of his seminal ideas of “critical regionalism” and “tectonic culture,” and also ruminates on how he understands his own role as a writer on architecture. The book includes an essay by Mary McLeod, which takes stock of Frampton’s “criticality” and his enduring impact on architectural practice. As a whole, Kenneth Frampton: Conversations with Daniel Talesnik is as much a portrait of a thinker as a record of the books, buildings, and ideas that have inspired such profound architectural thought.

Grafton’s recently completed Marshall Building for LSE, sits across Lincoln’s Inn Fields from Sir John Soane’s Museum, the home of leading Georgian architect John Soane. This new neighbour was deeply inspired by the architecture of the Museum, in particular Soane’s atmospheric use of light, as well as other historic buildings in the area. The result is an elegant, expressive and democratic new space. Like the Museum, it fosters learning, debate and creativity. This relationship will be celebrated in an exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum from October 2022-January 2023. Contributing authors explore the architecture of Grafton’s Marshall Building and the Soane Museum, pairing Soane drawings from the Museum’s collection with Grafton’s own drawings and in-progress photographs of the Marshall Building which are published for the first time. This approach highlights architecture as a craft shared across the centuries. This innovative publication also functions as a sketch-book, with printed sections interleaved with 16 pages of high-quality drawing paper and a pocket at the back for collected materials.

Since the mid-1990s, when China allowed its architects to practice independently from government-run design institutes, a new kind of architecture, distinguished by unique regional characteristics, has emerged. China Dialogues is a rigorously selected collection of insightful interviews that the book’s author Vladimir Belogolovsky has conducted with 21 leading Chinese architects during his extensive travels in China. At the time when so many buildings that are being built around the world are no longer rooted in their place and culture, the leading Chinese architects succeeded collectively in producing unique architectural body of work that could not be confused with any other regional school. The interviews are accompanied by over 120 photographs and drawings of beautifully executed projects built throughout China since early 2000s. China Dialogues opens up the thinking process of the country’s top architects, as they share their ideas, insights, intentions, and visions in unusually revealing and candid ways.

"‘Truth and Lies in Architecture’ delves deep into the soul of architects and their work." — Naser Nader Ibrahim, Amazing Architecture This is a collection of provocative essays that journey into the vexed circumstance of contemporary architectural practice. The nature of the great cultural, social, political, environmental, and consumerist challenges facing the contemporary architect are explored, interpreted, and questioned, while drawing connections from architecture theory, philosophy, science, literature, and film sources in an attempt to negotiate the territory between the truth and lies in architecture. These essays written by a leading Australian architect represent a level of comprehensive critical awareness rarely found within the architectural profession and one would be hard pressed to find another comparable figure in contemporary architectural practice. The entire argumentation is impressive, challenging, intellectually at the highest level and beautifully written.

A revealing new look at modernist architecture, emphasizing its diversity, complexity, and broad inventiveness “[Frampton] remains a formidable force in architecture . . . The Other Modern Movement offers an opportunity to re-examine the Western canon of 20th-century architecture—which Frampton himself was crucial in establishing—and delve deeper into the work of lesser-known practitioners.”—Josephine Minutillo, Architectural Record Usually associated with Mies and Le Corbusier, the Modern Movement was instrumental in advancing new technologies of construction in architecture, including the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete. Renowned historian Kenneth Frampton offers a bold look at this crucial period, focusing on architects less commonly associated with the movement in order to reveal the breadth and complexity of architectural modernism. The Other Modern Movement profiles nineteen architects, each of whom consciously contributed to the evolution of a new architectural typology through a key work realized between 1922 and 1962. Frampton’s account offers new insights into iconic buildings like Eileen Gray’s E-1027 House in France and Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, California, as well as lesser-known works such as Antonin Raymond’s Tokyo Golf Club and Alejandro de la Sota’s Maravillas School Gymnasium in Madrid. Foregrounding the ways that these diverse projects employed progressive models, advanced new methods in construction techniques, and displayed a new sociocultural awareness, Frampton shines a light on the rich legacy of the Modern Movement and the enduring potential of the unfinished modernist project.

Shim-Sutcliffe's masterful work at Point William intertwines landscape and architecture with ancient rock and water reshaping and reimagining a site on the Canadian Shield over two decades. Found conditions and new buildings are interwoven and choreographed to create a rich spatial experience moving between inside and out. Kenneth Frampton provides an insightful introduction with selected images and his own sketches framing a way of seeing Point William for the reader. Michael Webb's provocative interview with Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe describes their evolving vision for Point William and their two-decade journey towards its realisation. Acclaimed photographers Ed Burtynsky, James Dow and Scott Norsworthy contribute through their powerful images capturing the spirit of Point William through the seasons and over time.

This highly acclaimed survey of modern architecture and its origins has become a classic since it first appeared in 1980, and has helped to shape architectural practice and discourse worldwide. For this extensively revised and updated fifth edition, Kenneth Frampton has added a new section that explores in detail the modernist tradition in architecture across the globe in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He examines the varied ways in which architects are not only responding to the geographical, climatic, material and cultural contexts of their buildings, but also pursuing distinct lines of approach that emphasize topography, morphology, sustainability, materiality habitat and civic form. It remains an essential book for all students of architecture and architectural history.

Offering a rare opportunity to explore the largest and most luxurious house designed by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, and Marcel Breuer, leading architect and furniture designer of the twentieth century, this beautifully designed volume celebrates the Alan I W Frank House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Built in 1939-40, the house embodies the Bauhaus total work of art philosophy, with Gropius and Breuer having designed every aspect of the building and its site. Illustrations including new and archival images and the architects plans and sketches highlight an exquisite balance of proportions and colors. Accompanying essays place this house firmly within the American modernist canon just as the Bauhaus celebrates its one-hundreth anniversary in 2019.

British architect, critic, historian and educator Kenneth Frampton is the third recipient of the Soane Medal, which is awarded annually in recognition of architects and critics who have made a major contribution to their field through practice, education, history or theory, and in doing so have furthered and enriched the public understanding of architecture. The lecture was delivered on 11 November 2019 at the Sheikh Zayed Theatre in the New Academic Building of the London School of Economics. This publication contains the transcript of Kenneth Frampton's lecture, which examines masterworks of modern architecture from 1930 to the present in order to theorise an architecture that resists our compulsive commodification of the environment.

The quintessential Japanese architect of today, Kengo Kuma has forged a modern design language that artfully combines the country’s traditional building crafts with sophisticated technologies and materials. From his iconic Glass House (1995) to Dundee’s V&A (2018), this is the complete record of Kuma’s built work, comprising thirty projects to date. Kenneth Frampton’s revised and updated essay frames Kuma’s work in the context of post-war Japan’s flourishing architecture scene and influential figures, and recounts the international acclaim that Kuma’s ideas and buildings have received. The heart of the book consists of projects presented in detail, accompanied by descriptive text and detailed drawings, and organized by the material themes that have come to define the architect’s output. This new edition includes five new projects: Komatsu Seiren Fabric Laboratory fa-bo, Under One Roof project for the EPFL ArtLab, Japan House São Paulo, China Academy of Art’s Folk Art Museum, and the V&A Dundee.

Two Journeys is the firsat comprehensive monograph on the work of Michael Webb, an artist who is also a trained architect and who operates at the intersection of the two disciplines. He is widely known for creatively exploring the boundaries of drawing techniques, specifically perspectival projection. Webb's aspirations for and re-conceptions of both built and natural environments are revealed between a twenty-year study on perspective projection that utilizes as its subjects the Regatta Course at Henley-on-Thames in England, and early work, some of which was done in conjunction with Archigram, an avant-garde group concerned with theorizing and critiquing architecture which formed during the 1960s at the Architectural Association in London. The publication connects nearly sixty years of the artist's work into a continuously evolving narrative about the relationship between architecture, the automobile, and landscape. Webb's work investigates these relationships using notions of time, space, and speed, and analogue drawing tools such as pencil and collage, which are often rendered later in oil paint. The book features over 150 drawings: artistic works rooted in analytical thinking and structured around architectural elements and notational systems.

The Friendship Centre near the district town of Gaibandha, Bangladesh, is for an NGO which works with some of the poorest in the country and who live mainly in riverine islands (chars) with very limited access and opportunities. Very limited funding prevented an elevated structure in this area under constant threat of flooding. This and the location in an earthquake zone and the low bearing capacity of the silty soil lead to a design surrounded by an embankment for flood protection while built directly on existing soil. Rainwater and surface run-off are collected in internal pools and the excess is pumped to an excavated pond. The design relies on natural ventilation and cooling facilitated by courtyards and pools and the earth covering on roofs. An extensive network of septic tanks and soak wells ensure the sewage does not mix with flood water. This new book features the austere beauty and simplicity the building by Dhaka-born architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury in striking photographs taken by Helene Binet and selected plans and sections. Essays by architects and critics Kenneth Frampton and Robert Wilson round out this building monograph.