This book deals with elemental basic architectural questions: the age-old subject of antithesis and thesis, unity and duality, contrast and harmony.

Architecture and freehand drawing are inextricably linked. Even in the Gothic period, the principle applied: what you can't build, you at least draw. The same applies to the sketches of Wolf dPrix, co-founder and CEO of Coop Himmelb(l)au. Over the 53 years of their creation, Prix's sketches formed the first stage of every design - despite rapid developments in digital architecture. Whereas his freehand drawings were proxies for completed projects in the 1960s and 1970s, today they serve as strategic guides to the firm's complex buildings. From 2,800 archival drawings, 1,300 examples were selected for publication to represent developmental dynamics in an archive-like format. As invaluable documents of architectural history, they illustrate some 320 selected projects.

Text in English and German. Mankind needs to relate to inanimate matter as well. Manking 'animates' stones, mountains, rivers, yes even the world and the cosmos so that it can communicate with them. There is quite clearly a need to initiate individual contact also with architecture, with our surroundings. This is easier if we can also recognise certain characteristics of our own bodies in the constructed bodies of the built environment. We can go well beyond the common phenomenon of corporeality to find countless analogies between buildings and human beings, thus demonstrating a first step towards an anthropomorphy of architecture. These statements become clearer if a column is interpreted as an anthropomorphic element. If certain features in facades are reminiscent of a pair of eyes, then architectural physiognomy helps us to a dialogue: the building is looking at us, in the direct sense of the word. In the world of Christian symbolism the church -- spatially and theologically -- is constantly compared with the body of Christ, and thus becomes an image of a man-god. The church is the 'mysterious body of Christ', and all parts of the building become metaphors of Christ and his congregation.The 'organic' architecture of the 20th century in its three-dimensional and sculptural manifestations constantly addresses the corporeality of biological creatures. In very recent times we are surprised how often the metaphor of man and architecture occurs: in the work of Ricardo Porro, Imre Makovecz, Santiago Calatrava, Reima Pietila and others. Zoomorphic architecture is a variant of anthropomorphic architecture. Elephants, birds, fishes, insects do not just appear in many current works of modern architecture like those of Frank O Gehry and Coop Himmelblau, they are also absurd manifestations of trivial architecture that has also to be considered in its everyday quality. If we are talking about 'expanded' architecture, then cities, the world and even the cosmos have to be included. Mankind is still moved by the transfer from man as microcosm to the universe as macrocosm.

Dissatisfied with the world we live in, we have been longing since time immemorial for two opposing topoi: the peaceful garden -- a carefree paradise -- the New City -- a harmonious community. Utopia has long been sought after by urban architects since the time of Thomas More. Other fictional cities followed, some of which were brought to fruition such as Brasilia and Palmanova. Yet these cities too have turned out to be imperfect, deeply rooted in their own period. For the author, all these places, though only fictitious, have long since been built and he strolls through them in company with the architects, planners, writers and philosophers, just as Thomas More and many others once led us through their cities.