Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction: more about less; the poverty of modernism; the organization of this book. Part 2 The naked city - realities of design and space laid bare: nurturing the "real life" of the city; beyond the rational city; from "plenty" to "excess"; carving out the spaces of culture and politics; urbanism and power; defending urban mix. Part 3 Formulary for a new urbanism - rethinking the city: from the rational to the sublime; making sense of psychogeography; a passion for maps; drifting as a revolution of everyday life; language, time and the city. Part 4 A new Babylon: constructing situations; a "detourned" city; a technological baroque; unitary urbanism; Constant's New Babylon; the structure of New Babylon; New Babylon's utopian fun; disorientation; a cybernetic architecture; the debate over technocracy.

Promotional Information

With Sadler's The Situationist City, the historification of the Situationists' battle against a functionalist and dehumanizing urbanism centers a new level of thoroughness. With clarity and precision Sadler identifies the key concepts behind the Situationists' encounter with the city and revealing places them within a context of other, too often neglected, attempts to build 'the hacienda.' -- Simon Ford, Victoria & Albert Museum, author of The Realization and Suppression of the Situationist International The Situationist City makes an important contribution to the burgeoning literature on the Situationists International. Emphasizing the situationists' initial phase of activity -- unity urbanism -- Simon Sadler locates the movement within European postwar culture, mapping the relation to mainstream architecture and urbanism as well as to more experimental architectural practices. Here, traced for the first time, are links between the situationist project and the ideas of Le Corbusier, Team 10, the Independent Group, Archigram, and others. A fascinating, engaging, and opinionated history of an avant-garde whose critique of architecture and culture seems ever more prescient. -- Joan Ockman, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation Imaginative, scrupulous, well-illustrated and very timely. -- Sarah Wilson, Courtauld Institute of Art

About the Author

Simon Sadler is Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban History at the University of California, Davis.

Reviews

It is a pleasure to see a work that situates the Situationists. Sadler has performed a necessary and welcome correctiveto our understanding of this strange but endearing crew.
*American Book Review*

This concise and clearly written work shines light on...this intriguing and increasingly influential 'hidden' avant-garde.
*San Francisco Bay Guardian*