Oswald Mathias Ungers – The Thematization of Architecture

"This book on the subject of architecture is not intended to be a report on my work over the past thirty years. It is not my intention to present a complete documentation of my activity as an architect in the form of a life's work. My main concern was to summarize the ideas and thoughts that can be traced, in modified form, as guiding principles through various projects. It is also an account of my personal experience with architecture and the transformation of ideas into the reality of design. The book does not contain any completed projects. Almost all of the designs remained unbuilt. They were either rejected by jury committees as being too extreme or dismissed as special prizes. Although none of the designs was conceived as utopian, but rather oriented toward the possibility of concrete realization, the proposals in most cases were met with the objection of unbuildability. Only recently have a few projects been able to prove that an idea can also be built, or in other words, that realization cannot do without an idea."
The book is available in two editions – as a high-quality cloth binding with dust jacket and as a study edition with softcover.