Labour, Work and Architecture. (Critical Melancholia).

By Kenneth Frampton. London: Phaidon. 2002. [pounds sterling]29.95

This is a melancholy book. Its message seems to be that true architecture, though essential to human happiness, is a weak and ever diminishing force in the modern world. The melancholy mood is intensified when you realize that Kenneth Frampton has been voicing this opinion with remarkable consistency for almost forty years now. Twenty-four of his theoretical, historical and critical essays, grouped under those three headings, are offered in this hook as a representative selection.

They range from difficult theoretical pieces like 'The Status of Man and the Status of his Objects' of 1979 -- a not entirely convincing attempt to examine architecture's predicament in the light of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition -- to relatively straightforward critical articles like 'Minimal Moralia' -- a surprisingly sour chastisement of certain trendy Swiss Minimalists, written for the Cambridge student magazine Scroope in 1997. Some of these essays have become famous, at least in the small world of architectural theory. 'Towards a Critical Regionalism' seemed like a good stick to heat Postmodernists with when it was first published in 1983 and it still seems relevant in the age of globalization. 'Rappel l'Ordre' of 1990 reasserted the importance of construction at a time when architecture seemed in danger (it still is) of abandoning its connection with building altogether. The essay was the starting point of the important 1995 book Studies in Tectonic Culture (AR April 1996).

Frampton's writing can be rather stilted and pompous at times but, as this collection confirms, it is not just pretentious posturing. Fundamental seriousness cannot be denied, Certain themes recur: a suspicion of the avant garde, a refusal to see architecture merely as an art form, a dislike of the automobile and the suburbia it creates, a profound distrust of media-based architecture (Frank Gehry) and a profound respect for tradition-based architecture (Rafael Moneo, Alvaro Siza).

Frampton is not an optimist. He knows very well that the craft of architecture is losing the battle against the 'optimization of technology', hence the melancholy tone. But if his theoretical thoughts are too depressing, the reader can take refuge in the History section of the book, This is perhaps where Frampton is strongest. His scholarship is imaginative as well as thorough, shining lights into dark corners and making obvious connections that no one else seems to have noticed: between Louis Kahn and French Rationalism, for example, or between the interiors of Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos. It must be some measure of Frampton's skill and usefulness as a historian that my copy of his classic Modern Architecture: A Critical History has practically fallen to pieces.