ANN ARBOR—Kenneth Frampton, internationally renowned architectural critic and author, will deliver the 1999 Raoul Wallenberg Lecture at 6 p.m. Feb. 12. Hosted by the University of Michigan’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the event will be in Room 2104 of the Art and Architecture Building on U-M’s North Campus.

Frampton, the Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University, will speak on “Megaform as Urban Landscape.” The lecture is free and open to the public.

Frampton has written extensively about architecture and culture. In his recent book “Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture,” Frampton challenges the current postmodern infatuation with style. His view of design pivots on the tectonic details of form and character in construction. He says that the “structural unit is the irreducible essence of architectural form”—that architecture is expressed in terms of its material qualities, constructive processes and resistance of loads.

The Wallenberg Lecture Series “keeps alive the memory of Raoul Wallenberg’s acts of compassion for generations of students and teachers and celebrates architecture and urban planning as a humane social art.” Wallenberg, a 1935 graduate of U-M’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning, has been called one of this century’s most outstanding heroes. In 1944, as first secretary of the Swedish delegation in Budapest, he is credited with saving more than 100,000 Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis. The following year, Wallenberg was captured by the Russians. Although his fate is unknown, rumors persist that he is held in Russia even today.

For more information about Wallenberg, Frampton or the lecture series, contact Maureen Perdomo at (734) 764-1300.

Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture