Anybody

The Vitruvian Man, the Golden Section, and the Modular Man were once seen as idealized, iconic representations of the relationship of the human body to architecture. But the widespread practice of psychoanalysis, the development of genetic engineering, and the raised consciousness of the female body have altered not only the traditional idea of body but also how we inhabit the body, and how we make and inhabit space. How does the new understanding of the body relate to space? How does architecture adjust to this new idea of body? When does the body become the body politic? In Anybody, these and other questions are argued by thirty essayists, including architects Peter Eisenman, Arata Isozaki, Ben van Berkel, Enrique Norten, and Alejandro Zaero-Polo, and critics Fredric Jameson, Sylviane Agacinski, Elizabeth Grosz, Beatriz Colomina, and Brian Massumi.

Anybody is the sixth book in the ongoing series that began in 1991 with Anyone and was followed by Anywhere, Anyway, Anyplace, and Anywise. Each volume is based on a conference in which architects, philosophers, historians, theoreticians, artists, and intellectuals come together to present papers and discuss a particular theme from a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective. The conference upon which Anybody is based took place at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in June 1996. Anybody will be followed by Anyhow, Anytime, Anymore, and Anything.

Cynthia Davidson is the editor of ANY Magazine, the director of Anyone Corporation, and a member of the editorial board of the Writing Architecture series.