Occupying Architecture - Between the Architect and the User (Paperback, New)

Occupying Architecture focuses on the importance of the user in architecture, emphasising the cross-currents between design, theory and use, and the need for a wider cross-cultural approach to architecture. Proposing a complete re-working of the relations between design and experience to transform practices of the architect, the authors call for the dislocation of architecture from the profession and its relocation within an expanded cultural and social practice.
Beginning with the architect, the book proceeds to explore models for architectural practice that actively engage the issue of use, and concludes with examination of the user. The authors draw on illustrations and examples from London, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Bruges and elsewhere to discuss how and why architectural production and discourse ignores the user, focussing in particular on that which is being ignored. The apparant contradictions between the 'producer' and the 'product' of architecture are highlighted before the activities of the architect and the actions of the user are explored.
This book illustrates that architecture is not just a building: it is the relation between an object and its occupant.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415168155