









































AMSTERDAM (2018)



While the importance of public space seems 
mostly undisputed, much disagreement continues 
to emerge concerning its purposes, its boundaries, 
its characteristics, its use, and most importantly the 
extent of the threats it faces. 

Different visions of public space have taken 
form in the works of such diverse architectural 
and urban practitioners, historians and critics, as 
Camillo Sitte, Kenneth Frampton, Rem Koolhaas, 
Michael Sorkin, Margaret Crawford, and Jan Gehl, 
but also of urban sociologists like Setha Low and 
Lyn Lofland, activists such as Jane Jacobs and Mike 
Davis, as well as such influential philosophers and 
political theorists as Henri Lefebvre, Hannah Arendt, 
Jürgen Habermas, and Chantal Mouffe. Many of 
them have read public space from a humanistic, 
pluralistic, democratic perspective, offering various 
descriptions of what it might mean in the broader 
context of a democratic society’s organization. And 
while their ideals of social interaction and political 
debate do not necessarily constrain the definition 
of a public space to a physical location, historically 
these values frequently find tangible expression in 
the Greek agora, the coffee shop, the city square, 
the town hall, the parliament, and especially the 
street. The built environment therefore offers more 
than just functional areas or aesthetic experiences. 
It is a force that shapes a world-in-common, groun-
ded on encounter and appearance, discussion and 
mediation, with all the tension and conflict that 
implies.

Today, this ideal of public space must address 
new challenges and renewed versions of the old, 
from recent developments in cities and societies 

Public Space. The real and the ideal. 
Editorial

André PatrÃo, Hans Teerds, 
Christoph Baumberger, and Tom Spector



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such as smart-cities, Big Data, and gentrification, to such well-established 
problems as segregation, commodification, and surveillance. The recent 
history of public spaces finds them increasingly privatized, controlled, 
monitored, and scripted. They are designed to accommodate leisure and 
tourism, shopping and sporting, transportation and traveling, often with 
little regard for the social and political ideal of encounter and exchange, 
thereby neglecting to make room for the struggles and disputes inherent to 
it. But, it has turned out, that even in highly controlled spaces social and 
political life can occur, as shown for example in the 2022 protests in Iran, 
where despite the risk of arrest and even death, people take to the streets 
to protest against the restrictions to women’s participation in public life. 
This state of affairs presses the questions: How important is architecture 
and urban design for public life after all? Does design still draw concrete 
outlines for public life and its socio-political dimensions, or can these be 
catered for elsewhere? And how does philosophy help elucidate and tackle 
these problems?

These and many other topics concerning public space were discussed at 
the 5th Biennial Conference of the International Society for the Philosophy 
of Architecture, organized by ETH Zürich and the EPFL. After a one-
year postponement due to the outbreak of a pandemic and the public 
health restrictions that ensued – and added another topic of concern to the 
agenda – the conference met in 2021 at Monte Verità, a former utopian-
like hub of alternative cooperative life in the Swiss canton of Ticino, 
standing in the beautiful landscape between the Alps and Lago Maggiore. 
What followed were four days of lively, varied, intense exchanges between 
more than eighty speakers, including philosophers, architectural theorists, 
architects, urban planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and 
scholars of many other fields. Ten contributions, including all four keynote 
lectures, have been published in this special double issue of Architecture 
Philosophy.

To prepare the ground for such a sprawling topic, the first article briefly 
surveys pivotal moments in the history of public space and the ways it 
has been read, touching upon several of its key themes and recurring 
philosophical figures. Sven-Olov Wallenstein’s ‘Public Space: Conflicts 
and Antinomies’ moves from the fabricated idea of an ideal Greek polis to 
Kant’s constitution of one in the spirit of the Enlightenment, a foundational 
moment for the modern notion of a public political space. The accounts 
that followed, until this day, have often stressed the rise and looming fall 
of public space, perceived as perpetually and increasingly under threat. 
However, public space has also been described as inherently conflictual, 
not anomalously (divergences to be reconciled) but constitutively (the 



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clashes of those divergences are what characterizes 
public space). These versions do not converge, nor 
does one exclude the other. As Wallenstein states, 
they “[…] can neither be fused into a common 
story, nor can we simply choose between them; 
perhaps they can be said to constitute something 
like the antinomy of public space.”1 

A leading proponent of the conflictual view is 
Chantal Mouffe, who made her case in the lecture 
published here under the title ‘On the Political: 
Public Space and the Possibility of a Critical 
Architecture.” Liberal philosophical discourses, 
Mouffe claims, react to the antagonist dimension 
of the political as a problem to be resolved, either 
through a rational compromise between different 
interests or a consensus grounded on free discussion. 
However, “[…] despite what many liberals want 
us to believe, the specificity of democratic politics 
is not to overcome this ‘we/them’ opposition, but 
how to construct this opposition, compatible with 
the recognition of pluralism.”2 Mouffe proposes 
agonism as an alternative, one which embraces the 
existence of conflicting interests not by regarding 
the other as an enemy, as in an antagonistic relation, 
but as a legitimate adversary. Public spaces, therefore, 
function at their best not as places of accord but of 
dispute. The construction or challenge to hegemonic 
political identities also unfolds outside of political 
institutions, importantly through artistic practices 
– in which Mouffe includes architecture.

How do these philosophical ideas play out in the 
built environment? In ‘The Space of Appearance 
within the Megalopolis: Architectural Culture-
Politics of São Paulo 1957-2017’, Kenneth Frampton 
calls attention to the contemporary challenges 
that arise for public spaces – in their political and 
constructive senses – with the recent transformation 
of the polis into the megalopolis. In São Paulo, 
the most populated city in Brasil and one of the 
biggest in the world, he discovers numerous works 
that open a space of appearance in the Arendtian 

      THE BUILT 
ENVIRONMENT 
OFFERS MORE 

THAN JUST 
FUNCTIONAL AREAS 

OR AESTHETIC 
EXPERIENCES. 

IT IS A FORCE THAT 
SHAPES A WORLD-

IN-COMMON.

“

”



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sense, such as the SESC Pompeia by Lina Bo Bardi and Marcelo Ferraz, 
the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo by 
João Vilanova Artigas, and the SESC 2017 by Paulo Mendes da Rocha. 
In these examples, Frampton says, one can admire a distinctive Paulista-
school “[...] accommodation of socio-cultural and politically progressive 
programs within the fabric of tectonically articulated, monumental form.”3 

Many different agents participate in the design and use of public urban 
spaces besides – though by no means excluding – architects and urbanists. 
Hans Teerds’ interview with Margaret Crawford, ‘A Site of Struggle,’ 
explores more contemporary case-studies in the United States, particularly 
in California. The shopping mall, once the target of Crawford’s ineludible 
critiques on the privatization of public space, reappears in a more favorable 
light. As she points out, “[…] many people now go to malls more for public 
interaction rather than to actually buy something. Physical shopping can be 
understood as a positive force shaping public space, as compared to online 
shopping from home.”4 Crawford also commented on recent examples 
where the use of public spaces turned contentious – antagonistic, even 
– involving, for example, migrant workers waiting for a ride in front of 
private stores, street-vendors in Los Angeles, barbecuers at a public park in 
Oakland, and the Black Lives Matter movement, which Crawford labels as 
“[…] the most important public space development in the last 10 years.”5 
Each of these particular instances illustrates and reasserts the recurring idea 
throughout all the keynote speakers of public space as a place of struggle.

An influential claim from within this struggle issued decades ago by 
Henri Lefebvre – another well-known author in the discussion of public 
space – was a focal point of Saul Fisher’s ‘Architectural Responsibilities and 
the Right to a City.’ He revisits Lefebvre’s notion of “the right to the city” 
so as to renderer it “feasible, generic, and so broadly amenable to many 
of its adherents,” while illustrating the effects of its denial through several 
hypothetical scenarios of contemporary life.6 Fisher’s crucial question 
goes even further though: if we are to accept such a right, then what 
responsibilities does it entail for architects?

The question may also be asked of the right to refuge from public space. 
Erika Brandl speaks of adequate housing as a basic need in ‘Property, 
Necessity, and Housing: Reconsidering the Situated Right to a Place to 
Be.’ She stresses that the question “‘Why must something be done inside 
and not outside the house?’ is another way of asking ‘Why are dwellings so 
necessary to us?’”7 Through the works of Jeremy Waldron, Richard Epstein, 
and Alejandra Mancilla, Brandl demonstrates how political philosophy 
not only sheds light on architectural problems of domesticity, but also on 
what architectural practice can do to address them.



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Beyond the framework of a dichotomy between 
the private and the public lays the Chinese notion 
of jianghu, as explained by Esther Lorenz in 
‘Anonymity in Jianghu: Hong Kong’s Urban Space in 
Times of Crisis.’ Jianghu has come to define a realm 
deliberately apart from societal and political order. 
Lorenz uses this word, which literally translates 
into “rivers and lakes,” to better understand a 
description of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, a 
movement inspired by the Bruce Lee quote “be 
like water.” Through uncontrollable anonymous 
digital means, protesters coalesced like flash-floods 
to turn unexpected places like roads and roofs into 
ephemeral political public spaces. According to 
Lorenz, “[w]hat we witnessed in 2019 in Hong 
Kong was the emergence of a contemporary form of 
jianghu, as a hybridization of digital space, material 
space, and spatial practices.”8

Conversely, even the most stereotypical typology 
of public space does not guarantee a site for social and 
political aggregation. Stella Evangelidou analyzes the 
design strategy behind an intervention on southern 
Nicosia’s main square, in ‘Parametric Design in the 
Historic Urban Domain: The Case of Eleftheria 
Square by Zaha Hadid Architects.’ Parametricism, 
she argues, operated not simply as a design tool 
but as an architectural ideology; polemical from 
the project’s conception and selection to its use 
after construction. As Evangelidou sees it, “[t]he 
hyper-aestheticized and non-functional forms have 
displaced political actions from the site. Eleftheria 
Square has lost its quality as a topos politikos.”9

The powerful potential of architecture, whether 
positive or negative, intended or not, upon the 
social and political dimensions of public space is 
at the center of Margit van Schaik’s study of its 
most symbolic sites. ‘What Architecture Does – 
An Embodied Approach towards the Impact of the 
Built Environment’ considers how the architectural 
properties of the Dutch Parliament Building affect 
the manner in which politics is conducted in the 

     The BLACK 
LIVES MATTER 

MOVEMENT IS THE 
MOST IMPORTANT 

PUBLIC SPACE 
DEVELOPMENT 

IN THE LAST 
10 YEARS.

“

”



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country, but keeps some distance from deterministic claims. As she says, 
“[…] a window does not determine you look through it, but it does 
influence what you will see if you do.”10 Van Schaik grounds her outlook 
on input from philosophy of mind, psychology and neuroscience, brought 
together in the theories of embodiment advanced by Francisco Varela and 
Evan Thomson.

A different approach to one’s embodied experience of place adopts 
Bernard Rudolsky’s sandals as a medium. ‘On Foot: Embodied 
Atmospheres,’ by Andreea Mihalache, suggests that “[m]ore than footwear, 
the sandals are a design manifesto expressing the connection between 
feet and floors, always in touch through the intimacy of the sole […].”11  
Against the long-standing dominant formal and sight-centered attitudes 
in both philosophy and architecture, Mihalache urges for the embrace 
of subjective experience of atmospheres as a design criteria, which has 
precedent in the two disciplines’ history nonetheless. Roaming around 
houses, strolling down streets, the tactile experience of walking partakes in 
the finding of one’s ground – literally and figuratively.

All ten contributions offer deeply informative, intellectually stimulating, 
thought-provoking insights. They tackle plenty of topics, engaged from 
diverse research frameworks, and look at distinct case-studies from 
multiple times and places, to reach a variety of significant claims which 
may overlap or conflict, but all contribute to an understanding of the 
real and ideal characteristics of public space. These results emerge from 
a historically productive dialogue between two disciplines while thinking 
together. That long and fruitful tradition continues in this special issue of 
Architecture Philosophy.

Endnotes
1. Sven-Olov Wallenstein, ‘Public Space. Conflicts and Antinomies’, in: 

Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 13.
2. Chantal Mouffe, ‘On the Political, Public Space and the Possibility of a 

Critical Architecture’, in: Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 
29. 

3. Kenneth Frampton, ‘The Space of Appearance within the Megalopolis. 
Architectural Culture-Politics of São Paulo 1957-2017’, in: Architecture 
Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 45.

4. Hans Teerds, ‘A Site of Struggle. An Interview with Margaret Crawford,’ 
in: Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 51-52. 

5. Ibid., 58.
6. Saul Fisher, ‘Architectural Responsibilities and the Right to a City’, in: 

Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 63.



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7. Erika Brandl, ‘Property, Necessity and Housing. 
Reconsidering the Situated Right to a Place to 
Be’, in: Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 
(2023), 85.

8. Esther Lorenz, ‘Anonymity in Jianghu. Hong 
Kong’s Urban Space in Times of Crisis’. in: 
Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 
113.

9. Stella Evangelidou, ‘Parametric Design in the 
Historic Urban Domain. The Case of Eleftheria 
Square by Zaha Hadid Architects’, in: Architecture 
Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 135.

10. Margit van Schaik, ‘What Architecture Does. 
An Embodied Approach Towards the Impact 
of the Built Environment’, in: Architecture 
Philosophy, Vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 149.

11. Andreea Mihalache, ‘On Foot. Embodied At-
mospheres’, in: Architecture Philosophy, Vol 6, 
no.1/2 (2023), 165.


