More than others are cited, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Skidmore, Owings Merrill (SOM), and Tadao Ando.As far as one compact, yet a fundamental survey of the evolution of the Modern movement, it is unquestionably the most complete chronicle, to the point that it is almost incomprehensible that a single author could possibly put together such an in-depth and exhaustive architectural history, the most trusted and authoritative source to date.A lot of what is new in the latest book is affected by the 2008 world financial crisis that first decimated the profession quite literally by reducing its workforce worldwide by a significant margin and then set it on a definitive course of diverting from producing ego-centric iconic buildings that have become an admirable goal since the late 1990s to the creation of eco-conscious environments with a social purpose and intentions that are more pragmatic than artistic.
Of course, history books are never up to date for long, and the current COVID-19 pandemic is an apt reminder of this fact. However, whats safe to predict is that the next such thorough history will likely come from a group of authors. Lets briefly touch on the authors principles to better understand his objectives and pattern of preferences. Kenneth Frampton (b. He maintains a constant dialogue with leading and most innovative practitioners and educators of our time. Trained as an architect, he started his career practicing architecture in London in the 1960s and then transitioned quite naturally into the role of editor, critic, teacher, and lecturer, and only recently retired from his position of the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University in New York. The central argument in his influential essay Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance is about tension between culture and civilisation, tradition and progress, prioritising the importance of specificity of place, local culture, and the relevance of being organic with the site to achieve synthesis. He insists that a building has an anachronistic aspect to it. Buildings are rooted in the ground in the most primitive ways. He is paying close attention to architects referencing each other. In a way, he moderates these fascinating conversations across geographic borders and generations. He reads plans like novels; the skill helps him to understand architects intents even better than personal visits, which he does not believe are essential. He was and remains to be a critic of the star system, celebration of the individual, and is a lot more sympathetic to the cultivation of what he calls quasi collective tendencies that may lead to a discourse of local groups, from which architecture of common qualities may emerge. These regional traditions can be observed in such places as Portugal, Holland, Japan, and now very vividly in China, as opposed to such diverse and fuzzy landscapes of ideas as in the United States, Great Britain or Russia. He says, I am critical of the tendency to aestheticize architecture. What is the boundary between art and architecture In other words, he is suspicious of conceiving buildings as huge art objects. And while he does not deny architectures ornamental aspect, he is critical of it being guided primarily by taste, reminding us of Buckminster Fullers Dymaxion principle of achieving maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input. He is against architecture with emphasis on brand, image, surface, and disappearance of structure. The last name is a reminder that Frampton starts his survey from 1750, when he says architects initiated their search for a true style through a precise reappraisal of antiquity. Closely behind the aforementioned dozen, there are such architects as Oscar Niemeyer, Fuller, Giuseppe Terragni, Alison and Peter Smithson, Mart Stam, and Jrn Utzon. Living architects are scarcely mentioned, often several names separated by commas, without going into details.
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