Kenneth Frampton: Conversations with Daniel Talesnik

Kenneth 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 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.