ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the important theoretical debates in critical space as they arose during the 1980s, when Paul Virilio began his architectural investigations at the request of the French Minister of Equipment and Housing, Roger Quilliot. The chapter has contemplated Virilio’s chief architectural and theoretical encounters during the 1980s. This chapter has offered a key architectural and intellectual framework. According to Virilio, architectural theory is only valuable when it has a practical purpose, when it is practised; he is not interested in architectural theory but in constantly theorizing architecture. It has contemplated the origins of his conception of critical space within his own research on the overexposed city, the interface of virtual space, and the contamination of real space by virtual space. The chapter situates the abstract theoretical developments within the architectural context of Virilio’s research and in the historical context of the 1980s, with its sudden confusion between reception and perception or the transformation of matter into light.
