A Critical Architecture – Comments on Politics and Society

Abstract

Over a fifty year career as an architectural critic and historian Kenneth Frampton has consistently defended the Modernist agenda of the Twentieth Century. However, he has also been fiercely critical of its failings and shortcomings. He has taught at the world’s most prestigious institutions, produced a body of work that can be defined as kaleidoscopic and has written texts which have become part of the canon of architectural history and theory. His encyclopedic Modern Architecture: a Critical History , is in its fourth edition and still remains a bedrock text for our understanding of the Modern Movement more than twenty years after its initial publication. His ground-breaking essay of 1983, Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance set the agenda for a reconsideration of Modernism that continues to resonate today. He has published internationally on a whole range of issues and remains committed to a critical analysis of Modernism which places architecture firmly in the context of the social and political milieu of the left. In this fifty year career, the ideas of the social and political theorist Hannah Arendt have operated as a form of conceptual and ethical foundation. His 1979 essay, The Status of Man and the Status of his Objects , is a form of analysis of her theories that explores, amongst other things, her distinction between work and labour in the specific context of architecture. This essay is also given primary importance in his 2002 book Labour, Work and Architecture: Collected Essays on Architecture and Design , which he dedicates to the memory of Arendt. In his 1979 essay, he suggests that reading Arendt’s work in 1965 illuminated the “invariably confusing distinction between building (as process) and architecture (as stasis)”, with architecture having as its primary charge the creation of the public realm. He begins this interview-article by summarising these themes, but also by drawing out the relevance of Arendt’s ideas in the context of contemporary commodified culture. He goes on to explore a whole range of other ideas including the mediatisation of architecture, high rise development, suburbia and the role of government in the architecture of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Principles of Architectural Design in the Shaping Paradigm

“…Работая в этой парадигме Тадао Андо говорил: «То, что я называю «замкнутой архитектурой», заключается в восстановлении единства дома и при-роды, того единства, которое японские дома потеряли в процессе модернизации» (рис. 9) [10,11,12].…”

“…Этот уникальный проект -яркая иллюстрация того что «Вложенные структуры» являются как инструментом проектирования, так и его объектом (рис. 7) [10,11].…”

Interior/Exterior Form and Property Research on Wu-Style Residential Houses from the Perspective of Sustainable Development

“…From Mumford's "regionalism," through the presentation of the term "critical regionalism" by Chuniss, to the six elements of critical regionalism proposed by Frank Dune [28], the perspectives of research on architectural regionality have gradually diversified. They recognized real life and technological development but emphasized the mandatory application of technology, and also respected context, environment, history, and culture.…”

Autonomous Houses and Architecture of Cybernetics in the 1970s: Towards Limits and Undeveloped Potentials of the Sustainable

“…This article also partially fills a research gap regarding the ecological design and its relation to cybernetics during the 1970s. The analysis of experimental ecological design during the 1970s, including autonomous houses, is also relevant because the major histories of modern architecture, such as Curtis' Modern Architecture Since 1900 [8], Frampton's Modern Architecture: A Critical History [9], Colquhoun's Modern Architecture [10], and Tafuri and Dal Co's Modern Architecture [11], do not focus extensively on it [12]. Autonomous houses rarely figure in architectural history or are treated as specific phenomena [13], decontextualized and disconnected from the non-ecological architecture.…”