Privacy and Publicness

Privacy and Publicity, drawing on the works of two prominent figures of the modern architectural movement, Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, argues that architecture became modern only when it came into contact with mass media, thereby shaking the foundations of traditional understandings of space and subjectivity. It questions the fundamental assumptions of accepted architectural perspectives and re-evaluates the method of architectural criticism.
In an intellectual journey spanning from the archive to the city, fashion, war, advertising, and the museum, the book traces the changes in how we experience spaces. It proposes looking at the architectural object – buildings, which are themselves a mechanism of representation – with fresh eyes, as it views architectural discourse as the intersection of many forms of representation, such as drawings, models, photographs, books, films, and advertisements.