Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture

"The real triumph of this book is the way it manages to convince us that within construction there is as rich a world of meaning for architecture as within theory. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise: Mr. Frampton is, after all, a theorist himself. His 1980 book, 'Modern Architecture: A Critical History,' argued that modern architecture was as much a struggle for social and political expression as an esthetic statement, and he did not write 'Studies in Tectonic Culture' entirely to repudiate this view. What he did set out to do, I take it, is redress an imbalance that years of indifference to the physical imperatives of construction have left in our thinking about contemporary architecture. For his entire career Mr. Frampton has looked beneath the esthetic surface of buildings in search of deeper meanings, and he continues to do that here.Kenneth Frampton is the author of 'Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture', published 2001 under ISBN 9780262561495 and ISBN 0262561492.