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Born in Paris in 1932, Paul Virilio is a child of the Third Republic. ... Virilio describes his childhood as one wracked by warfare, recalling the destruction of Nantes in 1942 as a traumatic event (1983, 2, 24). In the preface to The Insecurity of Territory, Virilio describes war as his father and his mother. ... "War," Virilio once claimed, "was my University" (1983, 24). ... Out of this show came Bunker Archaeology, a collection of the exhibitions photographs together with a brooding exegesis by Virilio on military space and the historical tendencies, institutions, personalities and aesthetics conditioning the spatiality of war.
By this time, Virilio was already a well established figure within the French architectural world. In 1963 with Claude Parent, Virilio founded the "Architecture Principle" group, and oversaw the construction of two important structures: the Sainte Bernadette de Nevers parochial center in 1966 and the aerospace research center of Thomson-Houston in Villacoublay during 1969. ...
Beginning with his pathbreaking Bunker Archaeology, Virilio has published a series of innovative and suggestive "think pieces" on transhistorical tendencies in warfare, technology, human settlement forms, communications, media and cinema, many but not all of which have been translated into English and other languages (see references). The wide ranging scope and eclectic nature of these writings have made Virilio a difficult intellectual to categorize. ...
Nevertheless, it is not difficult to identify the problematic that Virilio has been addressing since the 1970s. This problematic can be conceived of in terms of two triangles, the first disciplinary and categorical in a conventional sense (see Figure 1) while the second (see Figure 2) is more fully conceptual and idiosyncratic, revealing the three overarching themes that preoccupy or, perhaps as some might argue, obsess Virilio in his writings. ... As an architect, Virilio is deeply concerned with the nature of urban form. ... Playing the Latin roots of "urbanist" against the Greek derivations of "politician," Virilio turns this linguistic collision into an important observation. ... Like Louis Mumford with whom his writings share certain key elements, Virilio reimagines the city, in part, as the material anticipation and outcome of war making and urbanistic reasoning becomes, in part, the constant preparation for it (Mumford, 1963, 1970).
Approximate Word count = 1665
Approximate Pages = 6.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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