A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form,by Kenneth Frampton; edited by Ashley Simone. Lars Müller Publishers, October 2015, 304 pages, $40.
In A Genealogy of Modern Architecture, the prolific historian, critic, and theorist Kenneth Frampton presents a documentation of a course he used to teach, which involved comparative critical analyses of 14 pairs of more or less canonical modern buildings completed between 1924 and 2007. Frampton systematically analyzes the pairs, which have similar programs and were built about the same times, according to the same categories: type versus context; public, private, semipublic, and service spaces; route/goal; structure/membrane; and, finally, what the author calls a “connotational summation”—an explanatory overview that places each individual building in a historical context. Included are houses, office buildings, civic structures, concert halls, and museums. Even though the ideologies that underpin the designs of many of the pairs differ substantially, Frampton’s measured, detailed, and consistently analytical method minimizes attention to design conception in favor of close consideration of the varied buildings’ sheer physical, constructed reality. This is why only executed designs for buildings make up the entire set of comparisons, extensively illustrated with photographs and diagrams.
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