Topophilia and Topophobia offers speculative and historical reflections on the human habitat of the century that has just passed, authored by some of the world’s leading scholars and architects, including Joseph Rykwert, Yi-Fu Tuan, Vittorio Gregotti and Jean-Louis Cohen. Human habitats, ranging broadly from the cities of the twentieth century, highbrow modern architecture both in Western countries and in Asia, to non-architect/planner designed vernacular settlements and landscapes are reviewed under the themes of topophilia and topophobia across the disciplines of architecture, landscape studies, philosophy, human geography and urban planning.
Xing Ruan is Professor of Architecture at the University of New South Wales and is the author of Allegorical Architecture (2006) and New China Architecture (2006). He has published on a wide range of topics concerning legible relations between humans and the built world in some of the world’s leading scholarly journals, as well as professional magazines in China and Australia.
Paul Hogben is a lecturer in architecture at the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on promotional politics and the discourse of architecture over the twentieth century. This research has been published in Architectural Theory Review and Fabrications, the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.