University of Liverpool/ AIA IR - Robert Maxwell Memorial Lecture

Kenneth Frampton - Reflections on the predicament of architecture: seven points in retrospect

Woodcut: Celia Scott

When: Thursday 22 April 2021 @ 13:00 (Eastern US Time)/ 18:00 (UK time)

Description

The Liverpool School of Architecture, in association with the AIA International Region, is pleased to announce a new lecture series named after its alumnus Robert ‘Bob’ Maxwell (1922-2020). Maxwell, who graduated in Architecture and then took his diploma in Civic Design at the University of Liverpool in 1949, taught at the Bartlett, the AA and was Dean at Princeton University. The inaugural lecture will be delivered by Kenneth Frampton, Emeritus Professor at Columbia University.

Kenneth Frampton’s presentation will advance a critique of the current malaise in architectural education and of the equally debilitating state of contemporary practice. These aspects are evident in the current postmodern tendency to reduce architecture either to design of spectacular sculpture at a gargantuan scale or to the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology in order to favour the maximization of profit. Both of these Neoliberal impulses have deprived modern architecture of its former ameliorative character, namely, the formulation of the building task in a socio- ethical and spatially innovative manner. The lecture will attempt to trace the subtle ideological shifts and the changes in nomenclature that have accompanied our currently unsustainable degradation of the megalopolitan environment.

Introduction
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay, University of Liverpool
Mark Swenarton, University of Liverpool

Lecture
Kenneth Frampton, Columbia University

Conclusion
Marco Iuliano, University of Liverpool