Architect, historian, critic, and educator Kenneth Frampton is this year’s recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded at the May opening of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. His well-known essays and books include Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980), now in its fourth edition, with a fifth under way. Born in the UK in 1930, he studied at the Architectural Association in London, then worked in the city as an architect for Douglas Stephen & Partners in the early 1960s. In 1962, Frampton also became the technical editor of the journal Architectural Design, a move that foretold his later commitment to writing. In 1965, he began teaching at the Princeton University School of Architecture and in 1972 joined the faculty of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York. Critic Cynthia Davidson spoke with Frampton in his Columbia office about his life’s work.
The Golden Lion typically goes to a practicing architect. But Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara, curators of this year’s Biennale, praised you for arguing for a “humanistic” component “throughout all of the various ‘movements’ and trends often misguided in architecture.” Have you been prevailing against the misguided?
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