This book brings together Kenneth Frampton's essays from the 1960s to today which epitomize his reflections on the historical-theoretical entanglements of architecture with place, the public realm, cultural identity, urban landscape and environment, and the political question of the "predicament" of architecture in the new Millennium. The essays explore Frampton's contention that architecture's imperative is to assume a significant responsibility for the edification and stewardship of the Arendtian 'public world.' One of the most theoretically sophisticated and politically committed architectural thinkers, Frampton's work breaks emphatically with the limits and norms of much contemporary practice and restores a sense of richness and social consequence of architecture's 'unfinished project,' while offering abiding lessons not only for architecture but for social, cultural, and design criticism alike. By employing his deep understanding of the process of designing and crafting buildings, Frampton peels back the layers of a building to reveal its meaning, to understand its relevance, to evaluate its impact. He inhabits the world between thinking and doing, observing what is being done, capturing with incisive clarity the inner workings of projects, charting their equally possible outcomes. Just in case we might forget in this busy, digital world, Frampton reminds us that people's experience of architecture is of highest cultural importance.