Kenneth Frampton

Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor Emeritus at Columbia GSAPP, where he taught from 1972-2020. He was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London and has worked as an architect and as an architectural historian and critic. In addition to Columbia, Frampton has taught at a number of leading institutions including the Royal College of Art in London, the ETH in Zurich, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, EPFL in Lausanne, and the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio.

Kenneth Frampton is the author of Modern Architecture and the Critical Present (1980), Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995), American Masterworks (1995), Le Corbusier (2001), Labour, Work & Architecture (2005), A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form (2015), and L’ Altro Movimento Moderno (2015), to be published in English in 2021 as The Other Modern Movement. The expanded fifth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History was published in January 2020.

Frampton’s teaching was the subject of the 2017 exhibition Educating Architects: Four Courses by Kenneth Frampton at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where his archive is held. Metropolis Magazine named him a Gamechanger in January 2018, the same year he was recognized with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale for Architecture.

The Kenneth Frampton Endowed Lecture is an annual lecture series at Columbia GSAPP.