Architecture Theory since 1968

(Paperback)

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In the discussion of architecture, there is a prevailing sentiment that, since 1968, cultural production in its traditional sense can no longer be understood to rise spontaneously, as a matter of social course, but must now be constructed through ever more self-conscious theoretical procedures. The development of interpretive modes of various stripes - post-structuralist, Marxian, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, as well as others dissenting or eccentric - has given scholars a range of tools for rethinking architecture in relation to other fields, and for reasserting architecture's general importance in intellectual discourse. This anthology presents 47 of the primary texts of architecture theory, introducing each with an explication of the concepts and categories necessary for its understanding and evaluation. It also presents 12 documents of projects or events that had major theoretical repercussions for the period. Contributors to this anthology include: Diana Agrest; George Baird; Jean-Louis Cohen; Jacques Derrida; Michel Foucault; Kenneth Frampton; Catherine Ingraham; Jeffrey Kipnis; Daniel Libeskind; Aldo Rossi; Denise Scott Brown; Jorge Silvetti; Martin Steinmann; Georges Teyssot; and Mark Wigley.

Reviews

If his masterwork becomes universally adopted by schools of architecture, Hays may yet reverse the current situation where it is rare to find two architects in the same room who have read anything in common at all.

Hays has done architectural discourse a great service...this collection insistently raises important questions and helps us elucidate problems that might not have otherwise occurred to us.

Author Bio

K. Michael Hays is Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. In 2000 he was appointed the first Adjunct Curator at the Whitney Museum for American Art. He is the author, among other books, of Modern Architecture and the Posthumanist Subject (1995) and the editor of Architecture Theory since 1968 (2000), both published by the MIT Press.