Architecture and the Public World

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).

• AcknowledgmentsEditorial NotesList of FiguresKenneth Frampton: A Brief Biographical SketchIntroduction, Miodrag Mitrašinovic (Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA)Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Miodrag Mitrašinovic (Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA)SECTION ONE: The Human Condition and the Critical PresentIntroduction to Section OneThe 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 RealmIntroduction to Section TwoAmerica 1960–1970: Notes on Urban Images and Theory The Generic Street as a Continuous Built FormTechnology, Place, and ArchitectureCivic FormThe Legacy of Alvar Aalto: Evolution and Influence Toward an Urban Landscape Megaform as Urban LandscapeLand Settlement, Architecture, and the Eclipse of the Public Realm SECTION THREE: Cross-Cultural Trajectories, Place Creation, and the Politics of Counter FormIntroduction to Section ThreeOn Reading HeideggerTowards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of ResistanceTadao Ando’s Critical ModernismPlace-Form and Cultural Identity Modernization and Local CultureThe Predicament of the Place-Form: Notes from New YorkPlan Form and Topography in the Work of Kashef ChowdhurySociety of Architectural Historians Plenary TalkSECTION FOUR: The Predicament of Architecture in the New Millennium Introduction to Section FourArchitecture, Philosophy, and the Education of ArchitectsReflections on the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production Seven Points for the Millennium: An Untimely ManifestoTypology and Participation: The Architecture of Álvaro SizaTowards an Agonistic ArchitectureThe Unfinished Project at the End of Modernity: Tectonic Form and the Space of Public AppearanceAfterword: “The Criticism of Architecture is Worth More Than Architecture,” by Clive DilnotBibliographic SourcesBiographies

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”.