Since founding the T.O.P. (-Turn On Planning-) Office in the 1970s, Belgian architect and artist Luc Deleu (born 1944) has been working on a critical, sociological and ecological approach to urbanism that he has named -orbanism- an eco-centric global urbanism that has anticipated such contemporary concerns as environmental pollution, overpopulation, food production and the conflict between the individual and the community. Orban Space traces Deleu's work and practice through a conceptual topography defined by seven terms: architecture, syncretism, depiction, sculpture, scale, mobility...

Offering new insights into the role of museums, Wouter Davidts (author of The Fall of the Studio) investigates the connection between architecture, the museum as an institution, the museum program and art. A museum's architecture may be deployed in a variety of ways: as an autonomous icon, as a flexible space, as a PR instrument, as a memory machine, as a stimulus to urban renewal, as a landscape theme, as a political trump card, as a storage depot for artifacts, and so on. Davidts explores these perspectives through several case studies--the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans...