This book brings together Kenneth Frampton's essays from the 1960s to today which epitomize his reflections on the historical-theoretical entanglements of architecture with place, the public realm, cultural identity, urban landscape and environment, and the political question of the "predicament" of architecture in the new Millennium. The essays explore Frampton's contention that architecture's imperative is to assume a significant responsibility for the edification and stewardship of the Arendtian 'public world.' One of the most theoretically sophisticated and politically committed architectural thinkers, Frampton's work breaks emphatically with the limits and norms of much contemporary practice and restores a sense of richness and social consequence of architecture's 'unfinished project,' while offering abiding lessons not only for architecture but for social, cultural, and design criticism alike.

AcknowledgmentsEditorial NotesList of FiguresKenneth Frampton: A Brief Biographical SketchIntroduction, Miodrag MitraSinovic (Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA)Kenneth Frampton in Conversation with Miodrag MitraSinovic (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