ABSTRACT
The editors’ introduction sets a context for Vesely's essays by tracing the arc of his research and teaching on the history and philosophy of architecture and the city. By asking how architecture contributes to the culture, Vesely is able to make fundamental contributions to our understanding of both architecture and philosophy. Vesely develops the situations of praxis in order to discover our modes of involvement with architecture; and this, in turn, offers new ways of understanding the institutional character of an urban context. Treating examples from antiquity to the present, Vesely re-opens the question of tradition in the current conditions of fragmented references and commitment to technology. The essays published here complement Vesely's book, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, which was concerned to understand the nature of creativity in architectural and urban order.
