A sweeping historical analysis of the complex relationship between social criticism and built form, Emancipating Space examines the interconnections of architecture and social climate. Including 45 black-and-white illustrations of buildings and public spaces, the book argues that those concerned with urban design and social change should make their contribution to bringing about a better world by designing spaces based in utopian or emancipatory theories. Author Ross King presents theories of social improvement and architecture since the enlightenment with an eye toward developing new urban design ideas for the postmodern era.


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1. Introduction: The Design of the City, The Progress of Modernity, and the Crisis of Postmodernity
2. Space and Power:The Enlightenment
3. Space and the Commodity: The Nineteenth Century and the Rise of Modernity
4. The Space of Revolution: 1900 and the Maelstrom
5. The 1920s as Crucible: Translation, Vkhutemas, and the Bauhaus
6. The Universal Space of the Twentieth Century: Voyages Against the Ebb
7. The Space of Signs: 1968, Modernity, and Postmodernity
8. "Postmodern"
9. Space and Deconstruction: Map as Myth
10. Conclusion: New Geography
11. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity versus Postmodernity
12. Conclusion: New Architecture, New Urban Design