The discipline of architecture has gone through something of a metamorphosis in recent years. There is evidence of a clear shift both in the nature of debates within architecture and in its relationship with other academic disciplines. Not only are architects and architectural theorists becoming more and more receptive to the whole domain of cultural theory, but cultural theorists, philosophers, sociologists and many others are now to be found increasingly engaged with questions of architecture and the built environment. This volume was born of a desire to support this development, and to reinforce these links. It attempts to situate architecture within a broader cultural context, and to consider not only how debates from cultural theory, philosophy and so on might begin to inform a discussion about architecture, but also how architecture and the built environment might offer a potentially rich field for analysis for cultural studies and other disciplines.

CONTENTS

Preface vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction xii

PART I MODERNISM 1

Theodor W.Adorno 4

Georges Bataille

Walter Benjamin 22

Ernst Bloch 41

Siegfried Kracauer 50

Georg Simmel 63

PART II PHENOMENOLOGY 78

Gaston Bachelard 81

Martin Heidegger 94

Hans-Georg Gadamer 120

Henri Lefebvre 132

Gianni Vattimo 140

PART III STRUCTURALISM 154

Roland Barthes 158

Umberto Eco 173

PART IV POSTMODERNISM 196

Jean Baudrillard 199

Jürgen Habermas 214

Fredric Jameson 224

Jean-François Lyotard 256

PART V POSTSTRUCTURALISM 266

Andrew Benjamin 269

Hélène Cixous 286

Gilles Deleuze 292

Jacques Derrida 300

Michel Foucault 329

Paul Virilio 358

Sources 369 Selected Bibliography of Major Writings 372 Index 378