Kenneth Frampton
Distinguished Plym Professor
Columbia University
Frank Lloyd Wright and the City in Miniature
Monday, March 16, 2009 Rescheduled from March 2
5:30 P.M. - Lawrence J. Plym Auditorium
Temple Hoyne Buell Hall
Plym Lecture
The Plym Distinguished Professorship is a very special position in the School of Architecture. It was made possible by a gift made to the School in 1981 by the late Mr. Lawrence J. Plym of Niles, Michigan. He was past president of the Kawneer Corporation and the director of a number of companies before he retired. As many of you know, Plym is a very prominent name in our School. Mr. Plym and his family have a very warm association with the University of Illinois and with our School.
The Plym Professorship is conferred on an architect who has a distinguished record of achievement and who can make a positive contribution to the enrichment of the professional education of students in the School. The past Plym professors have included Gunnar Birkerts, Paul Rudolph, Joseph Esherick, Minoru Takeyama, Edmund Bacon, Thom Mayne, Carme Pinos, Dominique Perrault, Wiliam Miller, Francis Halsband and Norman Crowe, and most recently Kengo Kuma.
Kenneth Frampton is the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. He trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, and has worked as an architect and architectural historian and critic in England, Israel, and the United States. He is the author of such distinguished books as Modern Architecture: a Critical History (1980), Modern Architecture and the Critical Present (1980), Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995), American Masterworks (1995), Le Corbusier (2002), and Labor, Work and Architecture (2002). An updated and expanded fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History will be released in the summer of 2007.
Ken received his Dipl. Arch., Dipl. Trop., Architectural Association (London), 1956; A.R.I.B.A., 1957; Honorary Doctorate of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 1991; Honorary Doctorate in Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo, 1995; Honorary Doctorate in Environmental Studies, California College of the Arts and Crafts, 1999.
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Kenneth Frampton (born 1930, Woking, UK), is a British architect, critic, historian and the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York.
Frampton studied architecture at Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Subsequently he worked in Israel, with Middlesex County Council and Douglas Stephen and Partners (1961-66), during which time he was also a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art (1961-64), tutor at the Architectural Association (1961-63) and Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design (AD) (1962-65).
Frampton has also taught at Princeton University (1966-71) and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, (1980). He has been a member of the faculty at Columbia University since 1972, and that same year he became a fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York -- (whose members also included Peter Eisenman, Manfredo Tafuri and Rem Koolhaas) -- and a co-founding editor of its magazine Oppositions.
Frampton is a permanent resident of the USA.
Frampton is well known for his writing on twentieth-century architecture. His books include Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980; revised 1985, 1992 and 2007) and Studies in Tectonic Culture (1997). Frampton achieved great prominence (and influence) in architectural education with his essay "Towards a Critical Regionalism" (1983) — though the term had already been coined by Alexander Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre. Also, Frampton's essay was included in a book The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, though Frampton is critical of postmodernism. Frampton's own position attempts to defend a version of modernism that looks to either critical regionalism or a 'momentary' understanding of the autonomy of architectural practice in terms of its own concerns with form and tectonics which cannot be reduced to economics (whilst conversely retaining a Leftist viewpoint regarding the social responsibility of architecture).
In 2002 a collection of Frampton's writings over a period of 35 years was collated and published under the title Labour, Work and Architecture.
In 2006, he wrote the introduction to the book of Flemish architect Georges Baines.
From Wikipedia
From Wikipedia
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Kenneth Frampton 