In this event, Kenneth Frampton will explore the impact on architecture of a society undergoing constant technological modernization, which renders the realization of social theorist Jürgen Habermas’s "unfinished modern project" (the idea that the development of modernity has reached its apogee) increasingly remote. Subject to the triumph of globalized capitalism, we are left, instead, with the presence of architecture not only as a spiritual end in itself but also as a space of appearance capable of nurturing some form of democracy. In short, Frampton will reflect on the role of architecture in the age of endless urbanization.

Speaker:
Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation

About the Speaker:
Kenneth Frampton is the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and a leading voice in the history of modernist architecture. In the 1970s, he was instrumental in the development of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York and a co-founding editor of its magazine Oppositions. His 1983 essay "Towards a Critical Regionalism" was seminal in defining architectural thought throughout the 1980s, and his Modern Architecture: A Critical History (Thames & Hudson, 1980, 1985, 1992 and 2007) and Studies in Tectonic Culture (MIT Press, 1995) are cornerstones of his work.