| The figure of the flaneur as a peripatetic philosopher of the street as defined by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin provides an analytical tool to distil from the collective, or "crowd" the current state of modernity and decipher the direction society is moving towards in the future. By observing the occupants of the city and how they respond to each other within the context of the built environment, the flaneur reads the urban landscape gaining both practical understanding of the city as well as poetic inspiration from its characters and events. This practice is of relevance to architects in the design of civic architecture for the architect to better understand the city and his client: the crowd. This thesis proposes that the flaneur become architect is a choreographer/play[write] of the spaces he designs responding to the theatricality and spontaneity of the urban theatre. |
