Kenneth Frampton: Conversations with Daniel Talesnik presents seven interviews with the architectural historian reflecting on the long arc of his rich and influential career in the discipline. Spanning Frampton’s early years as an architecture student at the Guildford School of Art to his nearly fifty years as a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, the interviews trace not only the development and implications of his work but also the cultural, political, and discursive terrain surrounding it. Here Frampton outlines the formation of his seminal ideas of “critical regionalism” and “tectonic culture,” and also ruminates on how he understands his own role as a writer on architecture. The book includes an essay by Mary McLeod, which takes stock of Frampton’s “criticality” and his enduring impact on architectural practice. As a whole, Kenneth Frampton: Conversations with Daniel Talesnik is as much a portrait of a thinker as a record of the books, buildings, and ideas that have inspired such profound architectural thought.
We are delighted to welcome Kenneth and Daniel to discuss their recent publication in the AA Lecture Hall. The launch will include an opportunity for questions, refreshments and book sales.
KENNETH FRAMPTON is an architect, historian and critic. He trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. He has taught at a number of leading institutions, including the Royal College of Art, ETH Zurich, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, EPFL in Lausanne and the Accademia di Architettura in Medrisio, and was Ware Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York. Frampton is the author of numerous essays on modern and contemporary architecture. In addition to Modern Architecture: A Critical History, his publications include Studies in Tectonic Culture, Labour, Work and Architecture, and A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form.
DANIEL TALESNIK is a Lecturer in Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath. He is an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile and holds a MSc AAD and a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from Columbia University, awarded with the dissertation “The Itinerant Red Bauhaus, or the Third Emigration.” At the Architekturmuseum der TUM, where he worked between 2017-2022, he curated “Access for All: São Paulo’s Architectural Infrastructures” (2019), and “Who’s Next? Homelessness, Architecture, and Cities” (2021-2022), and is the co-editor of both exhibition catalogues. He has published numerous essays and book chapters, and is a contributing author and editor of the book Santiago de Chile 1977-1990: arquitectura, ciudad y política (Ediciones ARQ, 2020).
