Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory

Acknowledgments

253 Writing this book involved a lot of talking, and I am grateful for all the conversations that this book occasioned and was sometimes a pretext for. I thank the former students, friends, collaborators, colleagues, and companions of Henri Lefebvre, including Nicole Beaurain, Ricardo Bofill, Philippe Boudon, Maïté Clavel, Monique Coornaert, Dan Ferrand-Beshmann, Jean-Pierre Frey, Mario Gaviria, Rémi Hess, Michèle Jolé, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Thierry Paquot, Anne Querrien, Henri Raymond, Catherine Régulier, and Serge Renaudie. I greatly benefited from interviews I was granted by them, their knowledge of Lefebvre’s life and work, and access to private archives. This book owes a lot to conversations with Ljiljana Blagojević, M. Christine Boyer, Neil Brenner, Grègory Busquet , Jean-Louis Cohen, Laurent Devisme, Jean-Pierre Garnier, Michael Hays, Patrick Healy, Edward Soja, and Jean-Louis Violeau. I particularly appreciate two people without whom this publication would have been impossible: Ákos Moravánszky and Christian Schmid, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Since my grant at the ETH in 2003–4, when the research resulting in this book was initiated, through the work on my dissertation, to my current research at the chair of architecture theory at ETH Zurich, I have been discussing my work with them and enjoying their persistent and invaluable support and encouragement. This book was developed from my dissertation, defended at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, and supervised by Arie Graafland, whose comments, criticism, and endorsement were always helpful for my work. I also thank the institutions that assisted me in this research during the past six years. My position at the Faculty of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology allowed me to develop my dissertation, and the travel grants I received from this university were indispensable for my research in Paris between 2005 and 2007. This work was initiated at ETH Zurich with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. My gratitude also goes to the Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving en bouwkunst, which funded my research at the Institut Acknowledgments 254 Acknowledgments d’UrbanismedeParisin2008,andtothescholarsattheinstitut,includingLaurent Coudroy de Lille, Thierry Paquot, Stéphane Tonnelat, and in particular Michèle Jolé, for their hospitality and assistance. Much of the research for this book was completed during my fellowship at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2008–9); my work greatly benefited from discussions at the academie, especially from the seminar “After 1968,” headed by Katja Diefenbach. Henri Lefebvre on Space is significantly indebted to two conferences focused on the work of Henri Lefebvre, urban research, and design—“Rethinking Theory, Space, and Production: Henri Lefebvre Today” (2008) and “Urban Research and Architecture: Beyond Henri Lefebvre” (2009)—which were organized by Ákos Moravánszky, Christian Schmid, and myself at ETH Zurich, the Delft University of Technology, and the Jan van Eyck Academie, with the support of these three institutions as well as that of the Swiss Federal Scientific Foundation and the Brupbacher Fonds. Some ideas in this publication were developed during seminars at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and sharpened in conversations with PierVittorio Aureli, Vedran Mimica, Miguel Robles-Durán, and Roemer van Toorn. My research on the theory of Henri Lefebvre was presented during seminars and conferences at various institutions, including the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Amsterdam University; Berlage Institute, Rotterdam; Center for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld; Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin University of Technology; Central European University, Budapest; Delft University of Technology; École Normale Supérieure—Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon; Fordham University, New York; Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, Utrecht; Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris; Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Södertörn University College, Stockholm; Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich; and Warsaw Museum of Modern Art. I thank the participants of these events for their comments and criticism. Elke Beyer, Neil Brenner, Katja Diefenbach, Michael Hays, Rémi Hess, Mark Jarzombek, Tahl Kaminer, Ákos Moravánszky, Christian Schmid, and Laurent Stalder read the manuscript or its parts at various stages, and I greatly benefited from their comments. At the origins of this theoretical and historical book lies empirical research on the contemporary practices of architecture and urban space in Nowa Huta, a new town constructed since the late 1940s by the socialist regime in southeastern Poland. This earlier study allowed me to formulate many of the...