American Masterworks

The Twentieth-Century House

By Kenneth Frampton

1995

First Published

4.28

Average Rating

300

Number of Pages

9H09M

Audio Length

Throughout the twentieth century the United States has provided remarkably fertile ground for innovative residential architecture, from the Shingle Style pioneered on the East Coast in the late nineteenth century to the deconstructivist experiments in California today. Over the decades, American and international architects alike responded to this country's rising standard of living, rapidly expanding suburbs, and receptive often liberal clients - factors that encouraged the creative use of both unorthodox building materials and mass-produced components. One chapter is devoted to each of 34 houses by such luminaries as Richard Neutra, Eliel Saarinen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore, Louis Kahn, and Frank Gehry. Selections of the architects' plans and finest freehand drawings complement the photographs in this history of exceptional American house design. The text by Kenneth Frampton explores each house in depth, discussing its context in the progression of American architecture, its role in the architect's oeuvre, and its broader relationship to the history of twentieth-century American cultural and artistic movements.

Avg Rating

4.28

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

45%

4 STARS

38%

3 STARS

18%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Kenneth Frampton

Author · 10 books

Kenneth Frampton is a British architect, critic, historian and the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York. Frampton studied architecture at Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Subsequently he worked in Israel, with Middlesex County Council and Douglas Stephen and Partners (1961–66), during which time he was also a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art (1961–64), tutor at the Architectural Association (1961–63) and Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design (AD) (1962–65). Frampton has also taught at Princeton University (1966–71) and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, (1980). He has been a member of the faculty at Columbia University since 1972, and that same year he became a fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York — (whose members also included Peter Eisenman, Manfredo Tafuri and Rem Koolhaas) — and a co-founding editor of its magazine Oppositions. Frampton is a permanent resident of the USA. Frampton is well known for his writing on twentieth-century architecture. His books include Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980; revised 1985, 1992 and 2007) and Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995). Frampton achieved great prominence (and influence) in architectural education with his essay "Towards a Critical Regionalism" (1983) — though the term had already been coined by Alexander Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre. Also, Frampton's essay was included in a book The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, though Frampton is critical of postmodernism. Frampton's own position attempts to defend a version of modernism that looks to either critical regionalism or a 'momentary' understanding of the autonomy of architectural practice in terms of its own concerns with form and tectonics which cannot be reduced to economics (whilst conversely retaining a Leftist viewpoint regarding the social responsibility of architecture). In 2002 a collection of Frampton's writings over a period of 35 years was collated and published under the title Labour, Work and Architecture.