Architecture and urbanism seem to be 'weak' disciplines, constantly struggling for a better understanding of their nature and disciplinary borders. The huge amount of metaphors appearing in the discourse of both not only reference to their creative nature but also indicate their weakness and the missing piece strengthening their own understanding: a definition of space for architecture and of city for urbanism. But using metaphors in this field implies a problem - though metaphors achieve to bring opposites together, there remains the question how literal they can actually become in order to relate to these subjects properly. In this volume, several authors from various fields using different approaches discuss this question.

Andri Gerber (PhD), born in 1974, is Professor for the History of Urban Design at the ZHAW in Winterthur. He is an expert of metaphors in the context of architecture and urban design. His research interests turn around the concept of space, from a phenomenological, a political and more recently from a cognitive perspective. Brent Patterson, architect, is working on a PhD in philosophy at Paris 8. He teaches history and theory courses at architecture schools in Paris including the Ecole Spéciale d`Architecture (ESA), where he is an associate professor.