The Production Sites of Architecture

The Production Sites of Architecture examines the intimate link between material sites and meaning. It explores questions such as: how do spatial configurations produce meaning? What are alternative modes of knowledge production? How do these change our understanding of architectural knowledge?

Featuring essays from an international range of scholars, the book accepts that everything about the production of architecture has social significance. It focuses on two areas: firstly, relationships of spatial configuration, form, order and classification; secondly, the interaction of architecture and these notions with other areas of knowledge, such as literature, inscriptions, interpretations, and theories of classification, ordering and invention. Moving beyond perspectives which divide architecture into either an aesthetic or practical art, the authors show how buildings are informed by intersections between site and content, space and idea, thought and materiality, architecture and imagination.

Presenting illustrated case studies of works by architects and artists including Amale Andraos, Dan Wood, OMA, Koen Deprez and John Soane, The Production Sites of Architecture makes a major contribution to our understanding of architectural theory.

Sophia Psarra is Professor at the Bartlett, University College London, UK. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University. Her research explores the relationship between spatial characteristics, use, social relations and cultural meaning.

Psarra has collaborated on the relationship between layout, exhibition narratives and visitors’ experience with cultural institutions such as the MoMA in New York and the Natural History Museum in London. She has won first prizes in international architectural competitions and her work has been exhibited at Venice Biennale, the George Pompidou Center, NAI Rotterdam, and in London, Berlin, Milan and Athens. She is the author of Architecture and Narrative (2009) and The Venice Variations (2018).