Kenneth Frampton is best described as a stubbornly independent architect and critic. Throughout his extensive career he has insisted on the view that architecture is a practice deeply embedded in social reality, that as such strongly influences this reality and should thus bear responsibility for the transformations it effects. And that architecture is a specific discipline that must preserve its specificity in order to remain a socially relevant practice.
Back in 1980, Frampton resigned from the organisation of the 1st Architectural Biennial in Venice over the concept of architecture being treated as a scenographic set. Instead he introduced Critical Regionalism as a possible way forward in architecture. In opposition to the predominant tendency of the 1990s to derive a legitimacy for architecture out of other discourses, he insisted that architecture should rely on its own grounds, which he specified as the poetics of construction. Today he remains faithful to his critical position in the new chapter of the recently- published 4th edition of his seminal book Modern Architecture, A Critical History. Instead of joining today’s widespread fascination with so-called “star architecture”, he focuses on the work he considers to be of the highest quality regardless of the name-fame of the architects behind it. We met in his office at Columbia University shortly after the presentation of the latest edition of his book.

You began your presentation with images of megalopolises that showed polluted environments, uncontrolled urban growth, extreme poverty. Why did you choose to begin your introduction to what you consider the best architectural production of the past two decades with such a dark image of contemporary reality?

My intention was to emphasise the immense scale of urban development today. One has to realise that the traditional model of a city has become obsolete.  We can only aspire today to urbanised regions, as opposed to cities in the old sense. An urbanised region is an entirely transformed territory, volatile and overlaid by endless auto routes and random development of every conceivable kind: laissez-faire.  It’s important to acknowledge the sheer scale of this in order to relativize, as it were, the context of any architectural intervention.  I wanted to frame the scope of architecture in a measured way not only to stress the critical value of quality work, but also to acknowledge its limits.

It seems that today we can no longer speak of any firm design principles or norms in architecture; technology allows almost anything to be built. Even schools of architecture advocate continuous experimentation, breaking of the rules, going “beyond architecture”. And yet you insist there are certain firm principles that need to be followed in architecture. How would you justify your position?

The received idea that there are no principles in architecture today and that anything goes is pernicious, particularly since outside of this field, techno-scientific maximization is the paramount principle.  The Olympic Stadium in Beijing, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, demonstrates the paradox of the spectacular in architecture.  From a technical standpoint this is an exceptionally regressive and unethical structure.  The colossal amount of steel used or rather misused, exemplifies what Tomas Maldonado once called the “ideology of waste,” as opposed to waste that unavoidably occurs when something is fabricated.  Designing a building as a spectacular, ‘experimental’ object is a waste of resources by definition.  The concept of architecture, as a proliferation of free-standing objects is an anathema.  Instead buildings should be subtly integrated into both the contingent topography and the vicissitudes of the climate.  One should conceive of a building not only programmatically but also in terms of the energy it consumes which means not only the energy used in mediating the climate but also the energy embodied in the production of the material from which it is made.  However one cannot reduce the issue of sustainability solely to a technological question.  As far as architecture is concerned, a building should be sustainable in a cultural as well as in a technical sense, which returns one to the pre-industrial standards of vernacular building and to the paradoxical relationship between tradition and innovation.  I believe there is no significant innovation without tradition and that there is no living tradition without innovation.  The fact that these two processes are ultimately inseparable totally repudiates the vain neo-avant-gardist notion that the architecture could or should be an open-ended value free experiment.

If I understand correctly, you argue that tradition too changes, precisely in connection with or as a result of innovation?

Exactly. I like what Auguste Perret once said, that the concept of originality means going back to the origins. One should keep in mind that with architecture it is always our reality that is being affected, not some disposable commodity. There is a very beautiful aphorism by Alvaro Siza, in which he remarks that “architects do not invent anything, they transform reality”. The power of this aphorism is that it alerts both society and the architect to the delicacy of the architectural act.

How about the principle of tectonic form: would this represent another fundamental principle of architecture?

The fact that the etymology of architecture takes back to the Greek term tekton, meaning carpenter, is sufficient in my view to posit the tectonic as an irreducible aspect, involving an oscillation between presentation and representation, between the constitution of the thing as such and its manifestation as form.  In my essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism” of 1983 I argued that a tension between the scenographic and the tectonic was an inescapable condition of architecture.  Later this led me to adopt the German concept of tectonic – construed as a poetics of structure and construction – as a basis on which to re-ground architecture, one which was free from any apriori formal determination or style.  One remains aware that the degree to which an equisse is susceptible to the tectonic must vary, even although the phenomenon of space is invariably contingent on structural articulation. One thinks of Le Corbusier’s le plan libre, as a case in point.

If we return to your critical history of modern architecture, you pay, in the new chapter surprisingly little attention to the work of so-called architectural stars. Yet they play an inarguable, highly-visible role in contemporary architectural reality; why do they not enjoy a similar position in your book?

It seems to me that in a global sense, the quality of architecture – at its best – is more refined now than it was fifty years ago. Part of that has to do with accelerated communication and the ease of travel.  Architects can assess themselves across a broader front and compare their work instantly to architectural production elsewhere. They can familiarise themselves with a feeling for what the issues are, and what kind of contribution they can make in their own, local situation, when seen against a larger, global background. Because of this new condition there seems to be a lot of high-quality architecture designed and being realized all over the world today. I think that the task of a critic is to call attention to such work, to the work of so-called unknown architects, and in so doing help to establish them as points of reference in a more general discourse regarding what architecture is and what it could possibly be in the future. I think this is the role that critics, teachers and theorists should play in relation to contemporary architectural production. To return to your question: in my experience such lesser-known work is often superior to the work of the star architects. Perhaps this is a result of the very circumstances of success, the fact that a star or brand architect often has too much work and the fact that famous architects are often commissioned by clients because of a particular image for which they are famous; the client wants just that image and nothing else, nothing more. I think we may say that the overall quality of architecture depends on a relatively large number of architects receiving commissions at one time and being able to work at a very high level in the service of a given society. Such conditions still obtain I believe in Finland, Japan, France and Spain, and also lately in Australia and some parts of South America like Brazil and Chile.  Having said this I would like to add that I do indeed refer to certain “star” architects positively in the last edition.

How about Switzerland?

Switzerland, like The Netherlands, sustained a vital culture of architecture throughout the better part of the last century.  In this regard one immediately thinks of the refreshing Neo-Rationalist architecture of the Ticinese which came to the fore in the 60’s along with the exemplary low-rise, high-density residential model pursued by Atelier 5 right up to the present, beginning with their canonical Siedlung Halen, Bern which surely remains one of the most ecologically humane patterns of land settlement built anywhere in the last fifty years.  The magalopolitan crisis of Europe and elsewhere could still be mediated by the general adoption of such a model.

If we remain focused on the issue of high-quality architecture – as opposed to designing buildings as free-standing sculptures, you advocate an approach known as urban acupuncture. What is this approach about?

The metaphor was coined by Manuel de Sola Morales, and has also been recently used by Jaime Lerner.  However I think Morales has applied it in a particularly relevant way. He has used it as a metaphor for intervening in an urban fabric in such a way that this intervention has a catalytic effect, meaning that it has a high level of pertinence to the surrounding urban fabric and the evolving historical fabric. An example is L’IIla block in Barcelona, designed by Morales and Rafael Moneo. This very impressive, 800m- long block, houses offices, a shopping mall, shops and a huge parking lot below, so that people from the surrounding region may also easily drive into the city and shop in the very centre of town. And it is positioned on the site so that it reinforces the axis of the existing Avenida Diagonal along which it is placed, and it functions as a continuation of the existing shopping facilities on the Avenida. The new and the old shopping structures are here symbiotically connected. It is a modern intervention, which establishes a vital reciprocity with the 19th century city; it facilitates a connection between the historic urban core and the urbanised region that surrounds this core.  It is a modern investment, involving private capital. It is a quintessential example of acupuncture. Another example would be the construction of new infrastructures, such as light rail or high speed train, where they are treated not only as transportation facilities but also as cultural interventions. In France, for example, 30% of the budget appropriated for light rail is allocated for landscape development. It’s important to note that– here the state as client – fully understands the importance of the cultural integration of a new infrastructure into the existing conditions.

Another issue you pay particular attention to in your work is how it’s possible, in today's scheme of increasing privatisation of society, to create and sustain a public sphere with architecture. For what you consider a truly public building you use a special expression: a civic form. What criteria must a building fulfill in order to fit in this category?

I prefer the word civic as opposed to public because of the political connotations of this word. I think that every truly public building must be conceived so that it works – to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase – as “the space of public appearance”. That is, as the space in which the society recognises itself, its own identity, and therefore of course its political and cultural potential. An excellent example of such civic form is the Poupatempo building by Paulo Mendes de Rocha, in Brazil, the Public Service Centre in Sao Paolo. The architect succeeded in designing this institution, which is otherwise entirely bureaucratic in character, as a public space in the true sense of the word: a space meant for all and a space where an individual can feel himself part of  society. He succeeded in giving a bureaucratic building a civic interpretation, a civic status in effect.

You’ve mentioned herein a good number of examples of high-quality contemporary architecture. Does this mean that despite widespread global commodification, architecture continues to be practised as it should be – as the transformation of reality? And thus remains an exceptional practice in a world that is increasingly governed by the same logic, the logic of profit and progress?

The universal triumph of capitalism even in the command economy of China has led to a state of affairs in which profit and progress are seen as synonymous.  The phenomenon of global warming should be sufficient to indicate that this is a fallacy and that unless we are able to transform our rapacious attitude towards nature we shall simply not survive.  The liberative modern project of the left and modern architecture were once inseparable, at a time when modernization and progress could only be seen in a positive light.  The industrialisation of genocide, Hiroshima and the seeming failure of socialism have left us exposed to the two unbridled nemeses of our time: the rampant commodification of everything and the increasing misdistribution of wealth.  Under these conditions architecture as a progressive project is a fragile enterprise.  The most we can strive for is a holding pattern.  As the hero says at the end of Alain Resnais’s Providence, “We know nothing is written, surely we all believe that.”

Aus der Ausgabe 11-2008