EGA (Sep 2012)
Conversando con... KENNETH FRAMPTON
Abstract
Well-known for his great contribution to architectural criticism and his very extensive teaching, Kenneth Frampton is, above all, an architect with an exquisite sensitivity in all areas that include architecture. An Architect since 1956 for the Architectural Association School of London, he has worked half his life in New York, which he referred to as “the dirty guts of the United States”. He has been Associate Professor in Universities like Princeton; a Visiting Professor in most of the world; and from 1974he has been a Ware Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Colombia University in New York. Every architect knows his writing and every researcher has, as part or his or her reference bibliography, his books and articles due to their philosophical and critical interest. Also, I don’t need to mention the quality and variety of his lectures, which after more than three decades, continue to retain all their validity, and are followed by many architects. He creates excitement wherever he goes and I wonder… what is Kenneth Frampton’s secret? What causes him to make any enthusiast of architecture, who read his work or who like me have had the good fortune to listen to him speak, shudder with excitement? Maybe the key is his tireless research work… never anchored in what is already known, but also exploring new concepts; never focused on a particular field of architecture, but also studying within the global framework; never understood only from the educational aspect, but also analysing from the special characteristics and peculiarities of each culture.
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