ABSTRACT
How to make cities for and with citizens? What is an appropriate “form” for user-based architecture? To a certain extent such questions summarize debates in the 1970s, when an increasing number of architects hailed the postmodern language as the logical expression of participatory architecture. This chapter situates the notion of the user in this historical alignment. 1 Perhaps too quickly written into history as driven by purely aesthetic or formal concerns, architectural postmodernism was often shaped by political ideologies in which the user stood front and center. The design of the built environment was no longer placed in the hands of “genius” architects and planners at the expense of individual users, but instead developed together with them. However, this democratic ambition of “user emancipation” was—a few exceptions aside—never entirely divorced from aesthetics.
