Book, Rule and the model, A[LS]

The Rule and the Model', by Françoise Choay, is a study devoted to built space and the city. But it does not exactly focus on the concrete world of the urban. It leaves aside the actually constructed buildings, only approaching space and the city as a written thing. Its object therefore belongs to the order of writing and text. These are texts that, called theory, seek, within the framework of their own disciplinary field, to determine the modalities for designing buildings or future cities. This is, as we can see, the speech that established what we call urbanism. But what is in focus here is not what has been consecrated in the tradition of the West as its feature established forever and on whose exclusive authority the generative procedures of the constructed world are intended to be based. This repetition that has become universal throughout the course of history, in the form of urban planning doctrines, it relegates the unusual and even scandalous character of its initial presence to the shadows. This is what appears in the founding texts, whose singularity A Rule and the Model analyzes, uncovering the nature of the reasons and myths that they implanted in urban thinking. In doing so, this book contributes essential elements of criticism and reevaluation that can help in the effort that is being undertaken today, in the world and in Brazil, to reformulate and renew the problem of building, with a view to new forms of action in this domain.