Frampton Thoughts
This is the third time in a history class I have read and thought about Kenneth Frampton and Critical Regionalism. The first two times I was in Charleston and now this semester. I’ve always liked reading this text because it’s a thought-provoking reading. During my second time reading through Frampton’s text, my professor gave the class a set of questions/topics to respond to after we read. Instead of giving my responses to them, for this blog, I figured I’d pose those same questions and topics to the class and see which one you’d like to respond to and give your thoughts on.
They are as follows:
2. Distinguish the difference between civilization and culture.
3. Explain what Hannah Arendt meant when she said, “Utility established as meaning generates meaningless.”
4. Explain why avant-garde can no longer be sustained as a liberative movement.
5. Describe Frampton’s notion of the arrierre-garde.
6. Explain the fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism and how it is at variance with populist employment of “communicative or instrumental signs”.
7. What is the importance of the “place-form” in the metropolis?
8. Cite the five realms where Critical Regionalism involves a more directly dialectical relationship with nature than does the abstract, formal tradition of rationalist modern architecture.
9. What does Frampton mean by the tectonic as distinct from the merely “technical” or the “scenographic” in architecture?
10. Explain how the “tactile resistance of the place-form” can suggest a strategy for resisting the dominance of universal civilization.
Like you, I’ve also had my fair share run ins with Frampton’s writing. My first time reading it was in Charleston as well. I think it's an interesting read when thinking about it in the context of a place such as Charleston which is well-known for its culture and history. There is something about details and craft and visible human error that makes a place or a building relatable. People don’t come to Charleston to see the replicable apartment buildings or the Medical District, they come to see the single houses, rainbow row, the mansions at the Battery. In those forms of architecture, you can write the history of the place.
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