This book focuses on the first edition of Kenneth Frampton's Modern Architecture: A Critical History, published in 1980. It searches for clues and positions that will provide the reader with an unprecedented insight into the significance of Frampton's historiography of modern architecture. It explores selected themes in line with Frampton's many-faceted contribution, certain aspects of which can be noted between the lines of his ongoing criticism of the present-day architecture, which inevitably lead us to a critical understanding of the past, the modernity of architecture's contemporaneity. The compiled chapters attempt to open a window onto the constellation of themes that allowed Frampton to hold on to his anteroom view of history even amidst the flow of time and flood of temporalities spanning 1980–2020. The book elucidates how Frampton's critical presentation of the history of modern movement architecture and the book's classificatory mode (periodization?) contribute to our understanding of the contemporaneity of architecture today. 

Gevork Hartoonian presents a retrospective reading of the first edition of Kenneth Frampton's Modern Architecture: A Critical History, published in 1980. He provides novel insights into the significance of Frampton's historiography of modern architecture and beyond. In exploring selected themes from Frampton's ongoing criticism of contemporary architecture, this book leads us to a critical understanding of the past, the modernity of architecture's contemporaneity. It unpacks classificatory modes governing the three-part organization of Frampton's book, the constellation of which allowed him to hold on to an anteroom view of history amidst the flood of temporalities spanning the period 1980–2020. Contemplating Frampton's book as an artifact stripped of temporality, this original work reads Frampton's historiography in the intersection of selected epigraphs and three images illuminating the book's classificatory mode. Hartoonian presents a valuable companion to Frampton's A Critical History for readers interested in the successes and failures of contemporary architecture's philosophical and theoretical aspirations.