Architectural Design
Editorial Department
26 Bloomsbury Way, London,

2 May 1968

Kenneth Frampton Esq
Department of Architecture
Princeton University
Princeton
New Jersey, U.S.A.

Dear Ken,

Your article is magnificent. I’m not, as you know, keen on expletives and have in fact pruned down some of your initial adulatory comments, but I do mean magnificent. I will send you a galley as soon as the text is back from the printers.

Would you care to write a history of modern architecture for a Thames and Hudson paperback—similar to their books on surrealism or pop art. They envisage it as a great popular success, read by every student, recommended by all teachers, so there might even be money in it. Let me know and I will give you details.

Yours,

Robin Middleton
Technical Editor

THAMES AND HUDSON LTD
30-34 BLOOMSBURY STREET LONDON WC1B 3QP

14th June 1972

Mr. Kenneth Frampton,
New York, N.Y. 10028.

Dear Ken,

I have just finished reading your typescripts and am writing forthwith to record my reactions—they are coloured as much by life around me, in particular at AD, where I am as usual at loggerheads with the lady.

I started somewhat unsympathetically, thinking to read a history, in the old-fashioned sense, of the modern movement. But by the time I was half-way through I realized that what you were aiming at was a distillation, of essential ideas and activities. Certainly, there is no sense of a story or even of continuity in your chapters, in as much as they are not to be welded together in the mind of the reader, virtually unaided by the author. Not everyone is familiar with Giedion, and even those who are do not automatically accept his thesis as to the constituent factors in modern architectural history. You will need to do some explaining yourself. For when read as a whole, your book seems to give too great an emphasis to the ferro vitreous infrastructure—Paxton and Eiffel. The relationship of these to the later history is not made clear, it is simply taken for granted. If it is to be taken for granted then less detail is required in the early chapters on the 19th century figureheads; if it is not to be taken for granted you will have to provide the links and also hint at the reason for the virtual exclusion of such men as Loudon, Houreu, and Boileau.

Altogether, I might say, I find your earlier chapters unconvincing. The opening chapter is a disaster. I think the publication of Benevolo’s book in English during the mid-term of your activity has thrown you somewhat.

You have been induced to compete–expanding recklessly. And your expansion into the 18th century is reckless. Apart from the factual errors (I will be checking information and dates in my next run through) you seem to have very little knowledge and grasp of the period. The Banham quote at the beginning augurs well, but once the chapter starts one wonders how the hodgepodge could possibly have evolved. I wondered at first who had been reading, but decided soon enough that it was Kaufmann, who cannot have helped you much. I feel that the early chapter should be cut down to a general statement in the introduction. Later there are good bits—Tony Garnier, May, etc.—and in particular the Russian constructivist bits, though even here some link with Marinetti should perhaps be made and certainly hints of the turmoil in literary circles before the 1914-18 war in Russia made evident. The Corb chapters too, I liked, though there are funny lapses in the information you offer. I think more detailed information will have to be fed in throughout. Incidentally, I found in a chronological table for the Corb exhibition at the Arts Décoratifs, before he died, that in 1918 the retina of his left eye became detached and that he lost the sight of it. Did he ever regain it? And can this fact be held accountable for the change in his painting at this time? No-one here seems to know the answer for sure.

I am very eagerly awaiting the final chapters—I have no way of knowing how many are to come, for the original synopsis has clearly been superseded. I just hope that Stam will manage to creep in once again—his old age home has not been mentioned to date. Lissitzky also, I feel, receives less than his due in your treatment.

In the detailed editing I think we will have to transpose bits of information so that the whole can be read sequentially—someone will not be introduced by his familiar name in one chapter, to appear in a later one as ‘Dr. James Obispo, the renowned surgeon and biologist, trained at the School of Eurythmics, etc.’ The writing of the chapters out of order is no doubt responsible for such inconsistencies.

We will have a lot of work and arguing to do, but by the time we get here I will have gone through the typescript in detail, and we can begin.

Love,

Robin Middleton

The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies
Eight West Fortieth Street, New York, New York 10018.
Kenneth Frampton
Fellow

20 June 1972

Robin Middleton Esq.
Thames and Hudson
30-34 Bloomsbury St.
London WC1B 3QP, ENGLAND

Dear Robin:

Thank you for your letter simultaneously reflecting all your various editorial burdens. For some reason your style brought to mind Lord Curzon who, according to Harold Nicholson, is supposed to have looked out to the lights of Evian and to have said, with disdain while drawing the curtains, “My God, how ghastly. How positively ghastly.”

Quite clearly we shall have our work cut out, during the two weeks that I shall be in London from August 1st to 14th! In the interim, I feel that a detailed response to your letter might help. So here it is, as far as possible, point by point, but not in order!

1. The Ferro Vitreous Infrastructure

I realise, as anyone must, that the problem with conciseness is selection. The whole question of omission, inclusion etc. Why A and not B? It is hard to justify all this but let me try. My intention has to make the reader aware of the origins of the iron infrastructure in the mine and in the railroad and to become aware of the whole 19th century iron and glass achievement as an extension of that, just as oil & the internal combustion engine, determine more or less the shape of everything that is happening today. I am aware that this chapter still does not quite work, but I feel the main faults are:

 i. In places the sentences are too contracted and need expanding.

 ii. There is a problem at times with both sequence and linkage.

 iii. The language itself, in places, is rough (related to i.).

Despite these, I feel that the main argument is potentially sound and that it is correct and refreshing to put a certain emphasis on the continental railway station as a type. This accounts for the quotes at the beginning. Incidentally both Loudon and Horeau are credited; the former in the Paxton chapter, the latter in this one. True, no Boileau!

2. Paxton and Eiffel

Again I feel that I am correct in placing the work of these two men at the head of the critical history section. The reasoning is as follows:

 a. Their influence on architecture per se is felt even today. I am thinking of Frei Otto or Kinji Fumada’s Summerland; particularly in respect of Paxton. Then as I try to make clear but perhaps not clear enough in my section on Eiffel, that it is his heroic vision that surely lies behind a lot of constructivism (Not original—but true!).

 b. Both men are involved once more with a kind of cultural determinism. One can make the case that Paxton via Loudon came out of a landed reflex to the Grand Tours; out of a desire to eat exotic fruits in northern climes. ‘Nostalgia for the Sun!’ In the case of Eiffel, one may argue convincingly as I attempt to do that the Eiffel Tower was merely a large viaduct pylon related in turn to the mine and energy.

3. Intention & Introduction

Of course, I always knew that I would have to have an introduction. In fact I drafted one at the very beginning—but have not looked at it for 2 years, since I felt it was better to finish the whole thing and then to write the introduction. I had intended to explain therein, my attitude and the inherent problems of (a) conciseness, (b) history, (c) modern and (d) architecture. Also something in the nature of, ‘How to Read This Book!’ etc.! etc.

You are right, rather than attempting a straight account, I have striven for a distillation of the prime motivating forces behind both the development as a whole and the individual objects that make up that development. In short, I have stressed as far as I am able, technological and economic processes and contents, fundamental intentions, ideologies, ideas, processes… In brief the struggle of men to come to terms with industrialization. Above all I wanted to avoid an ‘and then’ kind of account, such as Joedicke produced. True, I shall have to say something about Giedion in the introduction.

4. Towards an Elemental Architecture

You are wrong about my being influenced by Benevolo in respect of this chapter. If anything influenced me it is the Banham quote which you approve of; from the Encyclopedia of Modern Architecture. I resent your comment vis-à-vis “reckless expansion”.

For what it is worth, I have shown this chapter to Francoise Choay who finds it to be an achievement, although she doesn’t altogether agree with some of the points I have made. I have yet to receive a detailed critique from her but will certainly try to get one in August. On the strength of this chapter, she wishes to see the rest of the text, with a view to a French translation.

Of course I realise that this is your period—and moreover there is no room for over confidence about the structure of this section, particularly the use of ‘elemental’. So I sincerely hope you will make a very close critique. Nonetheless I do think that a chapter of this title (or at least of this content) should remain. Without it, in my view, the whole story of 20th century architecture makes less sense.

By the way if you want to know the reading that has influenced in this chapter, it is Robin Middleton, Collins (the first part of Changing Ideals…) Kaufman (only on Blondel), Dora Wiebenson, Rosenbloom, Pevsner, Banham, Vidler. Vidler incidentally has vetted this text and finds it adequate (Not an authority I know but still about to publish a text on Ledoux).

I don’t understand your comment about Lissitzky. He receives quite a lot of attention. Have you really read the whole text? I left out Stam’s old-persons home on the grounds of conciseness. Could be included! Anyhow, clearly there is plenty to work on.

Finally, you will be receiving the next four chapters within the next four or five days. The remainder—the two chapters of the Critical Assessment & Extension into the Present—I will bring with me.

Judy Wolin, a student of mine, has started to work on the illustrations. The target is to have a complete list of illustrations by the end of August. I am enclosing a final synopsis.

Yours as ever,

Kenneth Frampton