Nathaniel Adam Coleman

Although the work of Henri Lefebvre has become better known in the English speaking world since the 1991 English translation of his 1974 masterpiece, The Production of Space, his influence on the actual production of space, of architecture and the city, has been less pronounced. Even if he is now widely read in schools of architecture, planning and urban design, Lefebvre's message for practice remains elusive; inevitably so because the entry of his work into the consciousness of the Anglosphere has come with repression of the two most challenging aspects of his thinking: romanticism and utopia, which simultaneously confront modernity while being progressive. Arguably, contemporary discomfort with romanticism and utopia obstructs movement of Lefebvre's thinking from being an object of theoretical interest to actually influencing practice. Utopia is the lynchpin of Lefebvre's enterprise. Understanding and acting upon architecture and the city with Lefebvre but without utopia impoverishes his theoretical construct. His ideas on practice and the methods he elaborated are fundamentally utopian. Although utopia may seem to have no place in the present, Lefebvre reveals this as little more than a self-serving affirmation that 'there is no alternative' to social and political detachment. Demanding the impossible may end in failure but doing so is the first step towards other possibilities. To think about Lefebvre is to think about utopia, and thinking about utopia when thinking with Lefebvre is to make contact with what is most enduring about his project for the city and its inhabitants, and with what is most radical about it as well. Lefebvre for Architects offers a concise account of the relevance of Henri Lefebvre's writing for the theory and practice of architecture, planning and urban design. This book is accessible for students and practitioners who wish to fully engage with the design possibilities offered by Lefebvre's philosophy.

Although architectural drawing tends to be thought of as either a technical necessity in relation to organizing the labor required to construct buildings or as though decorative, akin to alluring pictures in a gallery, its main task is anticipatory. Architectural drawings are prefigurative, or, as is argued in this chapter, ought to be. When the anticipatory illumination of architectural drawing is recuperated, the division of labor between architecture, as either brainwork or managerial, and building as physical exertion, is problematized. Returning drawing in architecture to its prefigurative – anticipatory – vocation articulates a method for improving the results of the built environment: technically, emotionally, and artistically.

In 'The duty to miscegenate', I harness John Stuart Mill's 19th century theory of social freedom to explain and to dismantle contemporary racialised and gendered injustice. In the first chapter—Social stigmatisation: 'a social tyranny'—I argue that persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women were, in the past, unjustly stigmatised by legal penalties against 'miscegenation' and are still, today, unjustly stigmatised by white male avoidance of cross-racial marriage and companionship. In the second chapter—Encounters that count: 'a foundation for solid friendship'—I argue that we can dismantle this stigmatisation, by engaging in regular and frequent cross-racial commensality with persons racialised-and-gendered-as-black-women. In the third chapter—White right: 'a right to avoid'—I argue that, although we have a right to avoid commensal encounters with others, we do not have a right to avoid persons we racialise as black. On the contrary, we have a duty to encounter them, on terms of equality and intimacy.

Architecture and the architect, threatened with disappearance, capitulate before the property developer who spends the money. And best of all is finding a place to be in the early years of a better civilisation. As the articles in this special issue on the problematic of architecture and Utopia attest, the final word on the influence of Utopia on architecture, and of the veracity of claims that modern architecture in particular was utopian, is a long way off. Definitions are elusive, as is any real sense of persistent or consistent clarity about what exactly is intended by nominating this or that architecture or city plan utopian. At the very least, the articles that follow are testament to the ..