An analysis of how the concepts of the observer and user in architecture and urbanism have been transformed since the early 20th century.

How were the concepts of the observer and user in architecture and urban planning transformed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries? Marianna Charitonidou explores how the mutations of the means of representation in architecture and urban planning relate to the significance of city's inhabitants. She investigates Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's fascination with perspective, Team Ten's interest in the humanisation of architecture and urbanism, Constantinos Doxiadis and Adriano Olivetti's role in reshaping the relationship between politics and urban planning during the postwar years, Giancarlo De Carlo's architecture of participation, Aldo Rossi's design methods, Denise Scott Brown's active socioplactics and Bernard Tschumi's conception praxis.

»The volumes discussion offers an appropriate reading textbook and reference for teaching a handful of ideas and concepts that have been essential for the formation of contemporary architectural praxis.«

Autorentext

Marianna Charitonidou (Dr.-Ing.) is architect engineer and urbanist, historian & theorist of architecture and urbanism, expert in sustainable environmental design and curator. She is principal investigator at Athens School of Fine Arts and founder and principal of Think Through Design Architectural, Urban and Landscape Design Studio. As lecturer at ETH Zurich, she curated the exhibition »The View from the Car: Autopia as a New Perceptual Regime«.