Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment is the first publication in any language of the only book devoted to architecture by Henri Lefebvre. Written in 1973 but only recently discovered in a private archive, this work extends Lefebvre’s influential theory of urban space to the question of architecture. Taking the practices and perspective of habitation as his starting place, Lefebvre redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. He calls for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses.

"Stanek's work has already taken scholarship on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of space to an unprecedented level of philosophical sophistication. With the discovery of this new text, Stanek escorts Lefebvre to the center of architecture theory since 1968. Lefebvre’s conceptual text and Stanek’s exquisite Introduction together enable the possibility of thinking not about architecture, but thinking architecturally about how we inhabit our world. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment takes us toward a concept of the architectural imagination that is a powerful mediator between thought and action."

——K. Michael Hays, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) was a Marxist philosopher and sociologist. His many books include The Right to the City, The Production of Space, Everyday Life in the Modern World, and The Urban Revolution (Minnesota, 2003).

Łukasz Stanek is lecturer at the Manchester Architecture Centre, University of Manchester, and the author of Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (Minnesota, 2011).

Robert Bononno, a teacher and translator, lives in New York City. His recent translations include Speech Begins after Death by Michel Foucault (Minnesota, 2013) and Cosmopolitics I and II by Isabelle Stengers (Minnesota, 2010–11).