Description
The city is the largest human artifact. It is made by us, yet simultaneously it makes us, as well as all other nonhuman entities. Throughout its history it has spawned many new kinds of buildings, including the theater, the opera house, the museum, the bazaar, the shopping mall, the high-rise tower, and most recently, buildings like the pencil tower or the village on the roof of a shopping mall. This seminar on the city iss base on my recent book and will explore a simple question:
How does the city e?ect the mode of existence of its buildings?
The tradition within architectural history that identi?es the city as the origin of our buildings poses a challenged to us, as architects, to theorize about the city’s form and use in order to rationalize our own actions. In opposition to other disciplinary approaches to the city and its architecture, however, we will not try to de?ne types (Rossi, Ungers) as the deepest aspect of the architecture of the city.