Urban Metaphors Morphology

This edition of the book, first published in 1982 under the title "Morphologie - City Metaphors" by Lemis Yayın, includes the original German text, its Turkish translation, 57 pairs of visuals where the architect matches city-scale plans and diagrams with natural and everyday images, and a single word describing each of these visuals.

In his book, Ungers describes the method he followed in these pairings as follows:

"...the city images shown in this selection have not been analyzed according to functions and measurable criteria, as is common in frequently used methods; instead, they have been interpreted at a conceptual level that should draw attention to ideas, images, metaphors, and analogies. The interpretations were arrived at through a morphological understanding that is entirely open to subjective predictions and transformations.

The book offers a more transcendental view than the thoughts on which the essential design is based. In other words, it demonstrates a general principle that is similar in unequal situations or conditions. Three different planes of reality emerge: actual reality - the object; conceptual reality - the analogy; abstract reality - the idea represented as a plan, image or term."

The short but dense text in the book's introduction contains Ungers' unique interpretations of designing and thinking with images, metaphors and analogies, on imagination and imagery, metaphors, models, analogies, signs, symbols and allegories, and invites the reader to interpret the visual pairings that follow in the book with a fresh perspective.