ABSTRACT
The Introduction to Baudrillard for Architects first provides background information about Jean Baudrillard highlighting his early life in Reims, France, and his education in sociology and philosophy with Henri Lefebvre and Roland Barthes at the University of Paris X Nanterre. Both provided enormous inspiration for Baudrillard’s theoretical trajectory, but especially Barthes’ innovative structuralist perspective on popular culture and the way in which the latter is informed by values and beliefs. The Introduction also emphasizes the philosopher’s fluid and fragmentary approach to writing as he seeks to escape the confines of traditional academic discourse, and proposes a genealogical methodology to explore the book’s central concept – ambience – which is adopted as a framework to navigate and bring clarity to his writings and to fill inevitable gaps. Crucially, ambience also becomes a key thread for understanding a consistent narrative within Baudrillard’s work and a conceptual mirror through which other essential ideas (notably simulation and hyperreality) are reflected, as well as a pivotal concept to restore the importance of Baudrillard’s original theoretical setting, architecture.
