Toward an archiTecTure of enjoymenT

Toward an archiTecTure of enjoymenT

Toward an archiTecTure of enjoymenT

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is a gothic novel by Jan Potocki (1761– 1815), a Polish aristocrat touring Napoleonic Europe, that recounts the story of a mysterious manuscript found in the Spanish city
of Saragossa and features the adventures of Walloon soldier Alphonse van Worden who, on his way through the mountains of Sierra Morena to Madrid, meets thieves, inquisitors, cabbalists, princesses, coquettes,
and many other colorful characters. With Potocki’s book in mind, I arrived in Saragossa on a warm evening of September 2008 to be received by Mario Gaviria, the renowned Spanish urban sociologist, planner,
and ecological activist. In the early 1960s Gaviria was a student of Henri Lefebvre (1901– 91) at Strasbourg University and became a friend and collaborator in the period when Lefebvre was formulating his theory of
production of space, published between 1968 (“The Right to the City”) and 1974 (The Production of Space) and developed further in De l’État (On the State, 1976– 78).

Henri Lefebvre