Publication

  • Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory
    Lukasz Stanek
    Author
    University of Minnesota Press, 2011
  • GRANTEE
    Lukasz Stanek
    GRANT YEAR
    2011

Lukasz Stanek, "Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory" (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), cover.

The book Henri Lefebvre on Space is the first comprehensive account of Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space published in English. It confronts a broad conceptual overview of Lefebvre's theory with two largely forgotten sources of his thinking about space: his engagements into empirical research about everyday practices of dwelling in post-war France, and his exchanges with architects and planners in the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Lefebvre's theory was formulated between 1968 (The Right to the City) and 1974 (The Production of Space) in an encounter between his critical reflection on the general condition of modernity, his research about the processes of urbanization, and his project of urban spaces for the transforming society. Contextualizing Lefebvre's writings in French, Anglo-American, German, and Central European debates about architecture, city, and society of the last forty years, this book demonstrates the potential of his theory for urban research and design today.

Lukasz Stanek graduated in architecture and philosophy after studies in Poland and Germany. After defending his dissertation at the Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), and postdoctoral research at the Institut d'Urbanisme de Paris and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (Netherlands), he is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. In 2008 and 2009 he organized two international conferences about the theory of Henri Lefebvre, urban research, and urban design. He was the cofounder and editor of the first issue of Footprint. He has published chapters in books and in architecture journals such as Log, HUNCH, Haecceity, and Piktogram. He is the curator of the research and exhibition project South of Eastwest, which focuses on the transfer of knowledge in architecture and planning from socialist to postcolonial countries during the Cold War.