Kenneth Frampton is an architect, historian and architecture critic, author of numerous books and essays on history and theory of architecture. Frampton studied architecture at the Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He later worked in Israel, with the Council of Middlesex County and Douglas Stephen and Partners (1961-1966), during which time he was also a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art (1961-1964), professor at the Architectural Association ( 1961-1963) and Technical Editor of Architectural Design (AD) (1962-1965).
He is currently professor of Ware chair of Columbia University (New York). He has taught at the Royal College of Art in London, the ETH Zurich. He is the author of numerous essays on modern and contemporary architecture, best known for his "Critical History of Modern Architecture" (1980, revised in 1985, 1992 and 2007), which performs a full analysis of modern architecture that has become an indispensable classic in the academic literature on the history of modern architecture, and "Studies on Tectonic Culture" (1995). Frampton achieved great influence on the teaching of architecture with his essay "Towards a Critical Regionalism" (1983) - although the term had been coined by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre. Frampton's essay was included in a book "The Anti-Aesthetic," essays on postmodern culture, published by Hal Foster, but Frampton is critical postmodernism. The very position Frampton tries to defend a version of modernism that tends toward a critical regionalism or "momentary" understanding of the autonomy of the practice of architecture in terms of their own concerns with the form and tectonics that can not be reduced to the economy.
Kenneth Frampton is the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The decision was made by the Board of La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon recommendation of the Curators of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara.
