It has been a gift of gods for architects, historians, and common readers interested in 20th century culture and architecture when long-awaited The Situationist City by a renowned architecture researcher Simon Sadler was issued in 1998. Since those times a book has gained a number of positive reviews and is ranked very high among the books on 20th century urbanization. It is a fascinating, profound, based on thorough research book which main concern is the description of the movement of Situationist International whose main objectives were to undermine the conservatism of the Western world investigating and examining Situationists premises, their role in the revolution of 1968, the architectural and cultural consequences of the movement that affected the development of modern cities structure.
The Situationist International is a movement that started in France and reached its peak during the revolutionary events in 1968. The leader of this group was Guy Debord who drew inspiration from the innovative, revolutionary ideological movements of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche to manifest his understanding of architecture trying accusing the existing attitude to urban areas. Situationists draw a wide response that influenced modern tendencies, such as postmodernism and pop art.
The book consists of three parts, each focusing on some particular aspect of Situationists movement. The first part of the book is entitled The Naked City and dwells on the criticism that Situationists expressed towards the urban environment of those times. Situationists disapproved of glamorization, spectacular ideology, “nothingness” of cities and implementation of technology into the architecture and the life of common people claiming that it brings no use for people. Situationists saw technology as a negative result of bureaucratic, imperialistic western society.
The second part of the book, Formulary for a New Urbanism: Rethinking a City, concentrates on the principles and beliefs Situationists put forward towards urban architecture and urban life. Situationists strived to develop new understanding of the city trying to abandon pomposity in architecture and make it more open and playful, not constrained by some strict rules. Another aspect that Situationist stressed is the necessity to let citizens to decide upon the architecture of their cities but not imperialistic architects. Thus, Situationists called for new revolutionary view upon building and city construction.
In the concluding part of the book entitled A New Babylon Sadler concentrates on actual projects proposed by Situationists for urban reconstruction. Despite Situationist allowed some formal elements in their ideal city, they based their plan on combination of sublime elements intending to construct situations in architecture.
One of the benefits of the book is that it is written in clear, concise language that is easy to understand. However, it is not plain or boring. Another strong point of the book is that it based on research of actual facts and events and provides reliable and logically consistent analysis of the Situationists actions. Moreover, the narration is supported by pictures and maps of Situationists that is a major advantage. It should be noted that the structure of the book is very easy to follow to keep track of author’s thoughts about the issue in question. What I particularly like about this book is that it provides plenty of citations of Situationists activists, which helps a reader to get involved in the situations described, to feel the atmosphere of those times, to get an impression of being there and taking part in those events.
From my perspective, the book has got no negative or weak sides. I would highly recommend it to everybody who is interested in urban culture or the movement itself.