Kenneth Brian Frampton (born November 1930 in 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.He has been a permanent resident of the USA since the mid-1980s. Frampton is regarded as one of the world's leading architecture historians of modernist.
- Kenneth Frampton Modern Architecture A Critical History Pdf Files Full
- Kenneth Frampton Modern Architecture
Kenneth Frampton is a British architecture and was born in 1930. He took his graduation at Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. After a short period of working as an architecture in London in the 1960s, he started to teach and write at Columbia University. Instead of taking an active role in building, preferred to be in a theoretician side. Additionally, he studied about history of architecture. Frampton’s works achieved tremendous success and also influence in architectural education. In his works he aimed that create a better understanding of cultural identity, contemporary demands, and the contextual features in architectural sense.
According to Frampton, with the light of his work “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, architects should analyze local character and reinterpret it with contemporary terms, rather than adapting the traditions directly. Also, architecture should not be captured by technology and history. In his most recent take on “critical regionalism,” Kenneth Frampton revisits the dichotomy between center and periphery. It is not the implied territorial divide that interest Frampton. At issue is how architecture could or should define the periphery in contrast to the hegemonic architecture unfolding in the center. Frampton’s take is centered on the ways that technological apparatus, under the auspices of capitalism, transform the cities one-dimensionally.[1] Frampton starts the “Toward a Critical Regionalism” with an essay by a philosopher Paul Ricoeur. According to Ricoeur, human culture’s globalization, and the results of getting monotype in terms of civilization caused loss of variety and traditional cultures which are the main qualities for defining space. That fact gets more obvious in developing countries, as their aim to building a better environment requires a critical balance between getting remoteness and the qualification to participate in modern civilization.[2] “In order to get on to the road toward modernization, is it necessary to jettison the old cultural past which has been the raison d’étre of a nation? … Whence the paradox: on the other hand, it has a root itself in the soil of its past, forge a national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural revindication before the colonialist’s personality. But in order to take part in modern civilization, it is necessary at the same time to take part in scientific and political rationality. It is a fact every culture cannot sustain and absorb the shock of modern civilization. There is the paradox: how to become modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in universal civilization.”[3]
With the light of these quotation and Frampton’s thoughts, architecture should pay attention social value and has to protect the meanings of the past and also combine it with the futuristic qualities. On the other hand, Frampton underlines that the critical regionalism is not the same thing when compared to vernacular architecture. “The climatic condition, culture, myth, and craft of a region are not to be reduced to indigenous forms. Both ancient and modern cultures are not to the product of a single heritage, but rather hybrids of several cultures found in region’s past. A global modernization continues to reduce the relevance of agrarian-based culture, and our connection to past ways of life is broken, as the presence of universal world culture overpowers regionalist tendencies. Therefore, regional culture must not be taken for granted as automatically imposed by place but, rather, cultivated and presented through the built environment.”[4]
Kenneth Frampton tries to explain his ideas, critical regionalism, with the Tadoa Ando’s works. According to Frampton, Ando’s definition of space, which is defined by basic geometric shapes, is in a harmony with the environment and the place’s cultural qualities. He prefers to use its concrete surface instead of its mass to highlight its specific spaces which include shadows and bouncing light off surfaces provided by these basic geometric forms.
Ando uses these words about his work, Koshino House:
“Light changes expressions with time, I believe that the architectural materials do not end with wood and concrete that have tangible forms but go beyond to include light and wind which appeals to the senses… Details exist as the most important element in expressing identity… thus to me, the detail is an element which achieves the physical composition of architecture, but at the same time is a generator of an image of architecture”[5]
In Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance, Frampton makes architecture gain a new theoretical perspective which is about bringing back the actual components of architecture such as topography, tactile, light, climate, tectonic etc. He compares six conceptual couples with a critical language.
As mentioned before Frampton has comments about effects of civilization in terms of cultural diversity. Additionally, there is a huge role of technological improvements and the financial waves that limit the scope of urban design in many ways. He claims that the architectural thoughts are divided into two parts one is profits of technological predication on the product, and the other one is the provision of a compensatory façade to cover the harsh realities of this universal system.
To Frampton, “Twenty years ago the dialectical interplay between civilization and culture still afforded the possibility of maintaining some general control over the shape and significance of the urban fabric. The two last decades, however, have radically transformed the metropolitan centers of the developed world. What were still essentially 19th-century city fabrics in the early 1960’s have since become progressively overlaid by two symbiotic instruments of Megapolitan development rise and the serpentine freeway. The former has finally come into its own as the prime device for realizing the increased land value brought into being by the latter. The typical downtown which, up to twenty years ago, still presented a mixture of residential stock with tertiary and secondary industry has now become little more than a burolandschaft city-scape: the victory of universal civilization over locally inflected culture.”[6]
Frampton states that the movements in the architecture in the mid-19th century, with the starting of industrial process and Neoclassic form, was the reaction to the tradition part to the modernization as the Gothic Revival and the Arts-and-Crafts ideas take up a categorically negative attitude.[7]
According to Frampton, “The fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism is to mediate the impact of universal civilization with elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place. It is clear from the above that Critical Regionalism depends upon maintaining a high level of critic self-consciousness. It may find its governing inspiration in such things as the range and quality of the local light, or in tectonic derived from a peculiar structural mode, or in the topography of a given site.”[8]
In architectural work, architects must study very well contextual features instead of acting it as a free standing object. It should be adapted the characteristic of place. According to Frampton, the physical space of region and the place where the communication between people are not the same things. When applying critical regionalism to the design, architects should consider the idea that there is no limitation of physical space and the characteristic of place cannot be consisted of an independent building. Spaces may be created by enclosing however its borders should be the beginning of the place instead of its ending. The spatial organization of a building should be solved in terms of its relation between exterior qualification of place such as; its entrance, exits, and the circulation.[9]
According to Frampton, “Critical regionalism necessarily involves a more directly dialectic relation with nature, more than abstract, formal traditions of modern avant-garde architecture allow.” [10]
Kenneth Frampton Modern Architecture A Critical History Pdf Files Full
Frampton is analyzing the necessity of these two element while creating an architectural structure that associates local culture and the qualities of the landscape. While creating architectural structure on the natural environment, both these two elements should be merged with each other in order to achieve relationship between its concept, rather than a create a free standing object. The geographical characteristics and the cultural legacy will be decisive in the ecology, climate, and the symbolic aspect of place. That’s the creating the “place-form” balance between natural environment and the cultural legacy identifies societies.[11]
According to Frampton, both visually and both the other senses’ experiences should take a part while designing. That cooperation between the all senses makes architecture deeper and unique. This concept supports the usage of all materials which target all senses and that will allow variable emotional reactions.
Kenneth Frampton Modern Architecture
To Frampton, “Critical Regionalism seeks to complement our normative visual experience by readdressing the tactile range of human perceptions. In so doing, it endeavors to balance the priority accorded to the image and to counter the Western tendency to interpret the environment in exclusively perspectival terms.”[12]
References
[1] Taken from http://www.fusion-journal.com/issue/004-fusion-the-town-and-the-city/critical-regionalism-whatever-happened-to-autonomy/#_ednref2
[2] Kenneth Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalims:Six Points for an Architecture Resistance
[3] Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth
[4] Juan Carlos Orozco, A Comparative Analysis of Kenneth Frampton’s Critical Regionalism and William J.R. Curtis’s Authentic Regionalism As a Means for Evaluating Two Houses by Mexican Architect Luis Barragan
[5] Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture a critical history
[6] Kenneth Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance
[7] Kenneth Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance
[8] Kenneth Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance
[9] Kenneth Frampton, Ten Points on Architecture of Regionalism: A Provisional Polemic
[10] Kenneth Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance
[11] Kenneth Frampton, Ten Points on Architecture of Regionalism: A Provisional Polemic
[12] Kenneth Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance