Prof. Mark Jarzombek

LATEST PUBLICATIONS:

(*) Architecture of First Societies: A Global Perspective (Wiley Press, 2013). It is the first textbook in several decades to study the rich history of architectural production beginning from our first social formations some 200,000 years ago. The text moves from first societies to chiefdom cultures leading up to the fateful encounter with colonialism and other forms of modernity. The book is richly illustrated with photographs, custom-made drawings and maps.

(*) "Kant, Modernity, and the Absent Public," in The Missed Encounter of Radical Philosophy with Architecture, edited by Nadir Lahiji (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 69-78.This article starts with a passage in Kant's Critique of Judgment to tease out of thought his perplexing critique of the concept of 'the public'. I trace this forward into the question of how we understand modernity and try to envision what a Kantian City would look like.

(*) "Are We Homo Sapiens Yet? From Sapiens to Hunter/Gatherers" Thresholds 42 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Department of Architecture), pp 10-17. In this article, I sketch out the history of our attempt to conceptualize our early history (as in "homo sapiens," "Stone Age," "hunter-gatherers" etc.) in order to point to how the problem of that history stretches the limits of what 'history' can accomplish, especially when written from the perspective of a civilizational bias.