Drawing on a long philosophical tradition from Kant to Adorno and Deleuze, as well on a series of debates in architectural and artistic discourse from the sixties onward, this book explores the possibility of reframing critical theory in a contemporary theoretical landscape that today seems more difficult to chart than ever.

Critique of Architecture offers a renewed and radical theorization of the relations between capital and architecture. It explicates the theoretical gymnastics through which architecture legitimates its services to neoliberalism, examines the discipline’s production of platforms for happily compliant consumers, and challenges its entrepreneurial self-image. Critique of Architecture also addresses the discourse of autonomy, questioning its capacity to engage effectively with the terms and conditions of capitalism today, analyses the post-political turns of contemporary architecture theory, and reckons with the legacies and limitations of critical theory.

This polemic is essential reading for anyone converned with the state and direction of architecture and urban planning today and will provake wide-ranging discussion.

Architecture and Ideology consists of twenty-two essays arranged in four thematic units: Ideological Context of Architecture, City and Power, Morphology and Ideological Patterns, and Designers and Ideology. The subjects that are investigated and elaborated are connected with the influences of different 20th century political and social ideologies on urban development and the architecture of various European cities, from the east and the west. The authors are professors and scientific researchers from various European universities and institutions and theoreticians of architecture, architectural historians and aestheticians, and architecture practitioners. The majority are from Serbia and other countries from the former Yugoslav Republic, namely Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, though countries such as Hungary, Russia, Italy, Austria, Germany, Netherlands and the UK are also represented. The essays will be of interest to university professors and students, researchers in the history and theory of architecture and city, and professionals in art and architecture, as well as sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

The Architecture of Neoliberalism pursues an uncompromising critique of the neoliberal turn in contemporary architecture. This book reveals how a self-styled parametric and post-critical architecture serves mechanisms of control and compliance while promoting itself, at the same time, as progressive. Spencer's incisive analysis of the architecture and writings of figures such as Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Rem Koolhaas, and Greg Lynn shows them to be in thrall to the same notions of liberty as are propounded in neoliberal thought. Analysing architectural projects in the fields of education, consumption and labour, The Architecture of Neoliberalism examines the part played by contemporary architecture in refashioning human subjects into the compliant figures - student-entrepreneurs, citizen-consumers and team-workers - requisite to the universal implementation of a form of existence devoted to market imperatives.

A significant ideological transition has taken place in the discipline of architecture in the last few years. Originating in a displeasure with the ‘starchitecture’ system and the focus on aesthetic innovation, a growing number of architects, emboldened by the 2007–8 economic crisis, have staged a rebellion against the dominant mode of architectural production. Against a ‘disinterested’ position emulating high art, they have advocated political engagement, citizen participation and the right to the city. Against the fascination with the rarefied architectural object, they have promoted an interest in everyday life, play, self-build and personalization. At the centre of this rebellion is the call for architecture to (re-)assume its social and political role in society. The Efficacy of Architecture supports the return of architecture to politics by interrogating theories, practices and instances that claim or evidence architectural agency. It studies the political theories animating the architects, revisits the emergence of reformist architecture in the late nineteenth century, and brings to the fore the relation of spatial organization to social forms. In the process, a clearer picture emerges of the agency of architecture, of the threats to as well as potentials for meaningful societal transformation through architectural design.

Looking back over the twentieth century, Hartoonian discusses the work of three major architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and Bernard Tschumi, in reference to their theoretical positions and historicizes present architecture in the context of the ongoing secularization of the myths surrounding the traditions of nineteenth century architecture in general, and, in particular, Gottfried Semper's discourse on the tectonic. Providing a valuable contribution to the current debates surrounding architectural history and theory, this passionately written book makes valuable reading for any architect.