The books' beautiful reproductions and finest quality printing and binding match those of the originals, while their 9-by-12-inch format makes them accessible and affordable. New introductions bring a modern voice to these texts, updating them to become invaluable contemporary resources.

    Highly precise, technical, and regulatory". -- Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Architectural Record

    The writings included in Theory of the Derive, many published here in English for the first time, are predominantly critical texts, revealing Situationism's aims, focus, breadth of vision, and development. Begun in 1957 by various artists and writers representing avant-garde organizations, the Situationist International was, from its inception, a revolutionary cultural organization. Seeing its project as one of merging art and life in practice, it developed over the next decade, implementing incisive critiques of post-war consumer culture and proposing radical projects of urban utopian design. Against the oppressive, stifling conditions imposed in technocratic city planning, the Situationist International sought to develop new forms of collective action and agitation that would promote free use and transformation of the urban environment. Its tactics, slogans, and visions of an alternative OEnitary urbanism' were especially influential in the events of the May 1968 uprising in France and have since been important influences on radical currents in many countries.

    Small in scale, low in price, but large in impact, these books present and disseminate new and innovative theories. The modest format of the books in the Pamphlet Architecture Series belies the importance and magnitude of the ideas within.

    The result was an environment that embodied and expressed the tensions and negotiations, conflicts, and compromises between the different groups.