Hypercontextuality explores the psychological-social phenomenon through which architecture interconnects distant, past, and imagined contexts, profoundly altering the way spaces have been perceived, inhabited, and built since the mid-twentieth century. Through a fascinating journey across Europe’s cities, through its airports, and inside its neighborhoods, this book weaves together an exploration of works of architecture that have eradicated the postmodern concept of contextuality to reveal an increasingly hypercontextual world.

What do Disneyland Paris, a room in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, and a suburb of Amsterdam have in common? What links Sigmund Freud’s residence in London, Chinatown in Paris, and a neighborhood once defined by the Berlin Wall? Since the 1950s, as the number of people who have moved to and between different locations throughout the world as tourists and various kinds of migrants – even if for vastly different motives – has soared, the way spaces have been perceived, inhabited, and built has been profoundly affected. Although intensely contextual, these spaces reference distant, past, or imaginary contexts, rather than actual and present ones – a psychological, social, and architectural phenomenon that is increasingly characterizing the spaces of the contemporary world.

City Walks Architecture: Paris deciphers and explores the centuries of architecture in Paris that reflect the diverse ideals of the monarchies, empires, and republics that have shaped the city over the millennia. From its Gothic monuments to its most recent works of contemporary architecture, this series of itineraries through the city explores how Paris developed and how it has managed to integrate great works of contemporary architecture into a carefully preserved urban fabric. The twenty-five itineraries are organized around critical moments in the city’s history, drawing a chronological and geographic coherence between these seemingly incongruous historical moments. From the home and studios of iconic architects such as Le Corbusier and Hector Guimard and the emergence of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modernism, to how the portrayal of Paris in cinema and other forms of media has begun to influence the form of the city, this publication explores all sides of architecture culture in Paris.

Estranged Rome: delineare l’architettura della migrazione traces the origin and development of the impact of migratory phenomena on the architecture and the history of Rome. Focusing on the contemporary city, the book follows the historical-mythological Appian Way from its construction during the ancient Roman Empire to its fragmented “reincarnation” in the twenty-first century among transportation terminals and transformed urban neighborhoods. This new fragmented space dictates the textual and photographic journey of the book and reveals how both the development of ancient Rome and the contemporary city share similar relationships with their large foreign populations. In the early twenty-first century, the Eternal City is estranged by the profound influence of migration that moves through its spaces, transforming its architecture from the inside out.

By engaging the cultural, anthropological, and sociological issues that characterize the relationship among tourism, media, and architecture, the focus of this collection of essays is on the specific nature of the perception, experience, and form of Paris that allow illusion to replace reality. Based upon technologies such as cinema, television, and eventually the Internet, the mass diffusion of still and moving images was able to attain an increasingly powerful hold on our imaginations. As a result, and particularly with cities that are often the subject of such media, such as Paris, the global circulation of images has partially or entirely inhibited their evolution by insinuating the physical incarnation of their past or imagined forms into their future development, in part to satisfy the growing number of visitors who arrive in search of the city portrayed in media.

At a time when global tourism has reached unprecedented levels, seemingly unabated by terrorism and economic constraints, understanding the consequences of the relationship between media and urban identity is critical for an increasing number of cities around the globe. In Monumental Ecstasy & Deception, architecture and urban studies students from Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s New York/Paris Program, through collaboration with architecture students from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais, explored the complex relationship between media-based representations of Paris and the architecture, planning and preservation of the city. The results of that exploration define the intricate processes through which media transforms the experience and perception of Paris, with powerful and unexpected consequences on the actual city and those who visit it.

In Paris, the relationship among media, tourism, and memory is of immense significance; the city is both extensively represented in media and receives more visitors every year than any other city in the world. This collection of essays by architecture and urban studies students from Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the École Nationale Supérieure Paris-Malaquais explores and questions how the physical form of contemporary Paris both remembers and forgets its past, the expectations that can consequently be created in the minds of both inhabitants and visitors, and the commercial development and urban planning policies that can then transform the city in response to these expectations. Through analyses of the evolving urban form of Paris, these essays reveal much about the role of media and tourism in the future of architecture, planning and preservation throughout the next century.