Between the romance of public space and the fetishism for pleasure, a necessary demand for the healing of the city emerges.

Abstract

This paper aims to interrogate the romantic and fetish ideas related to urban public spaces since the eighties. For this purpose, such ideologies are related to Lefebverian postulates regarding an architecture of enjoyment and Koolhaanian legacy about the generic city. Both of them framed by the effects of globalization linked to architecture and urban planning. In turn, it pretends to question those relationships with the emerging lessons of the global pandemic related to city life, focusing on public space’s role.

It assumes that the urban disease was spread several decades before the pandemic, thus healing the city it is imminent in the 21st century. This implies to rebuild –or deconstruct- the fetishist paradigm of postmodern cities and their public spaces. Hence, it will be necessary, on the one hand, to conceive spatial designs which will satisfy common and real demands based on the experience of daily life. On the other hand, those designs have to face the contingencies the pandemic could reveal. Therefore, such demands require to reflect about the architect’s role, not as a romantic designer, but as mediator between the project, the needs and the technique, oriented towards the common good.