Walter Benjamin and Architecture

The essays compiled in this book explore aspects of Walter Benjamin's discourse that have contributed to the formation of contemporary architectural theories.
Issues such as technology and history have been considered central to the very modernity of architecture, but Benjamin's reflection on the subjects has elevated the discussion to a critical level. The contributors in the book consider his ideas in the context of digitization of architecture where one's perception of the object is transformed beyond its auratic dimension. They cover the early modernist infatuation with the machine, but also the current use of electronic technologies, which has reached the point where the very technologies themselves determine the processes of design and the final form. This book proposes that Benjamin's anthropological approach to the history of architecture should be considered as a major way out of historicism and the inclination to gauge the contemporaneity of architecture in association with technological progress.