For more than five decades, Anglo-American architecture critic and historian Kenneth Frampton has played a prominent role in architecture culture. During this entire period, he has taken a rather exceptional position, operating mainly in the registers of historiography while simultaneously maintaining an engaged relation with contemporary architectural practice. His award at the 2018 Venice Biennale as well as the recent acquisition of his archives by the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal and of his library by the University of Hong Kong illustrate the appreciation for Frampton’s contribution to various domains of architecture culture. As a theoretician, he developed perspectives that forge connections between the past and the present, positioning contemporary practice within cultural temporalities. His position between critique and history has had a strong influence on his theoretical thinking. Through theorems such as ‘tectonics’ and ‘material culture’, Frampton has furthermore constructed compelling bridges between historical and present-day design practice@en

What tools, procedures, and methods do architects use? The triptychs on display show their approach both in analytical and designerly ways. The first panel of each triptych represents an architectural question; the second panel represents a method. The third panel showcases the confrontation of that question and method. The project thus expands known architectural tools such as drawing, writing, and modelling. Through their thorough exploration of architectural tools, the presented triptychs show an in-depth understanding of the specific qualities of the architectural project. A better insight into the capacity of these methods supports more locally responsive and socially inclusive architecture, aiming for an urban architecture of collectivity.@en

The article describes research and design carried out in the Graduation Studio “Positions in Practice” (2015-2017) of the Chair of Methods and Analysis at Delft University of Technology , which focused on the urban context of Bogotá, as a laboratory for the definition of architectural positions. The study was part of the larger investigation “Constructing the Commons,” which takes as point of departure the idea that the city should be understood as the ultimate common socio-spatial resource: a collective cultural construct that is composed by and for its inhabitants. Around the notion of ‘the commons’, a challenging field of thinking has emerged in the fields of economy, political and social sciences, suggesting radically different ways to organize our societies. In these theories, however, there is little notion of the value of urban spaces as the main tangible forms in which the commons exist in society and organize social-spatial practices.

We aimed to develop experiments of analysis and intervention in urban areas, anchored within the strong theoretical discourse on 'the commons'. In this studio, the commons are not only understood as concrete architectural and urban figures, which represent an idea of commonality, such as squares, passages etc., but also as the rituals, and politics of co-operation that articulate an architectural project. In this view, an architectural project is not a single-authored venture, but rather a complex and layered process that depends upon multiple agencies that establish a commonality.
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Objective: This article describes an approach to a metrics-based evaluation of public space in hospitals using cross-disciplinary qualitative and quantitative analyses. The method, Indoor Public Space Measurement (IPSM), is well suited to researchers and designers who intend to evaluate user-centered spatial solutions in hospitals and similar facilities. Background: Healthcare is transiting toward a value-based policy at all levels. Choosing the right set of qualitative and quantitative analyses to support value-based design solutions is not always an easy journey for healthcare design consultants. This article seeks to pull together the key analyses to evaluate the impact of the hospital indoor public space on the psychosocial well-being of the hospital users. Method: A step-by step guide to performing key analyses to evaluate the impact of hospital indoor public space environment on the users’ psychosocial well-being is provided. A case study from the authors’ research is utilized to illustrate the application of the method. Results: Interpolating the results of all the analyses, the reader can identify where in the layout most of interactions among users occur, identify their typology and evaluate the contribution to the general psychosocial well-being, and know which group of users is more exposed to a specific typology of interaction. Conclusions: The IPSM method can help design consultants to measure the impact of the built environment of hospital public space on its occupants’ psychosocial well-being: factual knowledge about the users’ behavioral response with respect to wayfinding and social interaction. The application of the method is not limited to healthcare settings only. @en

The editors of this themed issue of SPOOL place the discussion on the possibilities and impossibilities of criticism within the field of the design disciplines at centre stage. We are especially interested in how criticism can make an active contribution to taking a position vis-à-vis what we have called, in earlier issues of SPOOL, the contemporary condition of ‘the landscape metropolis’. Criticism is an important means of reflection on the creative processes and interventions that are part and parcel of this landscape metropolis. It throws light on particular projects by describing and explaining them, but also by evaluating and generalising these reflections in relation to an entire discipline, be it landscape architecture, architecture, or urban design. As Miriam Gusevitch sharply notices: “Criticism is riskier than commentary. It is willing to judge and to condemn, to stake out and substantiate a particular position. Serious criticism is the careful and thoughtful disclosure of dimensions that might otherwise elude us...”

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They lived in a strange and shimmering world, the bedazzling universe of a market culture, in prisons of plenty, in the bewitching traps of comfort and happiness. Where were the dangers? Where were the threats? In the past men fought in their millions, and millions still do fight, for their crust of bread. Jéróme and Sylvie did not guite believe you could go into a battle for a chesterfield settee.@en

Foreword book of Abstracts The Tools of the Architect.@en

Tom Avermaete demonstrates how the work of Constantinos Doxiadis, Michel Ecochard, and Otto Koenigsberger expanded the definition of infrastructure, making it part of the development agenda. Regarding plans as an integrating framework rather than a fixed vision, these figures, despite their shortcomings, helped emphasize agency over one's environment as a fundamental need.@en