The Status of the Categories of the Virtual and the Real in Contemporary Architecture and Urban Design

This paper proposes a theoretical examination of the notions of the virtual, the real and the indexical in contemporary urban design within the context of the author's work that spans from architectural history and theory via contemporary critical theory to urban theory.

The paper critically examines the status of various claims and compares this condition with the similar phenomena in the domain of representation in the past. The comparison is made with the emergence of perspectival representation and the urban theory in the fifteenth century,and their subsequent dissemination that have determined the production of architecture around Europe. These events had profoundly changed the urban landscape of Europe, by means of the 'virtual' and representational categories.