The City as a Technical Being: On the Mode of Existence of Architecture

Peter Trummer

Hardcover | 16.51 x 3.18 x 24.13 cm | 307 pp

ORO Editions | 2024 | 9781957183558

The City as a Technical Being attempts to formulate a new ontology of the architecture of the city for academics, scholars, practitioners, students or anyone interested in cities, architecture urban design.

The city is the largest human artefact. It is made by us, yet simultaneously it makes us, as well as all other nonhuman entities. This book explores a simple question: How does the city affect the mode of existence of its buildings?

The tradition within architectural history that identifies the city as the origin of our buildings poses a challenge to architects, to theorise about the city’s form and use in order to rationalise our own actions. In opposition to other disciplinary approaches to the city and its architecture, the book argues not for type (Rossi, Ungers) as the deepest aspect of the architecture of the city. Neither will it be the function (Venturi & Scott Brown, Koolhaas) of the city to explain its material organisation, nor is matter considered (Jacobs, Banham) to be deeper than the real city. Instead, this book argues that the mode of existence of architecture is inherent to the city itself, which originates its architecture as part of its being as a technical object.