How can architecture be located in the European intellectual tradition? Gerrit Confurius pursues the elements of an intellectual history of architecture in their variations and developments and also examines their connections. The study transcends academic boundaries, assembling the components for a philosophical foundation of architecture, drawing on architectural theory, approaches to architectural sociology and the history of semiotics, as well as spatial art concepts, political utopias, and literary motifs. The subject matter, composed more of ideas and theories than of material substance, being more thought than built, circles around a number of central conceptual pairs, such as places and borders, body and gaze, technology and bricolage, function and ornament, centre and periphery, and memory and permanence.
