ABSTRACT
The French philosopher Guy Debord, the outspoken and impassioned leader of the group, gained notoriety for his seminal work The Society of the Spectacle, a manifesto delineating his theories on the alienation of a consumer society. Convinced that the architecture of the city represented the most direct physical means of articulating a new vision for an autonomous society, Debord and the SI took their cause to the streets of Paris with the plight of urban living as their central concern. Debord and his constituents embarked on a highly publicized offensive to restore the life of the city back to its residents. The dynamics of human behavior in relationship to the ambient environment would be their focal point of investigation, with the implication that this artistic interplay had direct parallels to the transformation of society. To liberate architecture from its fixed position was to simultaneously liberate perception and thereby tip the balance of power back to the individual.
