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Espacements, the original title of this work, sets out the pure research conducted at the end of the nineteen sixties by Françoise Choay on the transformation of urban space in France from the Middle Ages to the present day. For the first time, research examined long-term change as change in “urban scale”. The evolution is demonstrated through spatial arrangement in cities where the phenomena can still be seen and documented.
The author focuses on the spatial dimension of cities whose transformation remains largely unknown, if not altogether ignored. This transformation needs to be re-examined from a contemporary perspective which distances us from the space-time material experience and which as a consequence discards primary anthropological cognisance.
The questions raised about architecture and urban planning in this work, and the research perspectives, are clearly very pertinent today. These are the reasons behind the publication; it gives everyone access to a study that, although not recent, is both indispensable and fundamental.
Ernesto d’Alfonso is professor of architecture and director of the department of architecture and urban design at the Milan Polytechnic. He edited the edition of Lezioni di architettura by J.N.L. Durand and Architettura.
Françoise Choay is Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne and other French universities. She specialises in the history of urban form and theories of urban planning, and is also an art and architecture critic.
The book is available at the Skira bookstore in via Torino in Milan and in all Italian bookstore from February 2004.
French
