Foucault for Architects

Gordana Fontana-Giusti

jul 2013 · Routledge

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From the mid-1960s onwards Michel Foucault has had a significant impact on diverse aspects of culture, knowledge and arts including architecture and its critical discourse. The implications for architecture have been wide-ranging. His archaeological and genealogical approaches to knowledge have transformed architectural history and theory, while his attitude to arts and aesthetics led to a renewed focus on the avant-garde.

Prepared by an architect, this book offers an excellent entry point into the remarkable work of Michel Foucault, and provides a focused introduction suitable for architects, urban designers, and students of architecture.

Foucault’s crucial juxtaposition of space, knowledge and power has unlocked novel spatial possibilities for thinking about design in architecture and urbanism. While the philosopher's ultimate attention on the issues of body and sexuality has defined our understanding of the possibilities and limits of human condition and its relation to architecture.

The book concentrates on a number of historical and theoretical issues often addressed by Foucault that have been grouped under the themes of archaeology, enclosure, bodies, spatiality and aesthetics in order to examine and demonstrate their relevancy for architectural knowledge, its history and its practice.

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Gordana Fontana-Giusti is an architect, theorist and professor of architecture at the University of Kent, UK. She has taught at the Architectural Association, London and conducted research at Central Saint Martins College, London. Fontana-Giusti is the co-author of Complete Works of Zaha Hadid 4.vols. (Thames and Hudson, 2004) and Scale: Imagination, Perception and Practice in Architecture (Routledge, 2011)