The Language of Cities

The director of the Design Museum defines the greatest artefact of all time: the city.

We live in a world that is now, in the majority, urban. So how do we define the city as it evolves in the twenty-first century? Drawing examples from across the globe, Deyan Sudjic decodes the underlying forces that shape our cities, such as resources and land, to the ideas that shape conscious elements of design, whether of buildings, or space. Erudite and entertaining, he considers the differences between capital cities and the rest to understand why it is that we often feel more comfortable in our identities as Londoners, Muscovites, or Mumbaikars than in our national identities.

DEYAN SUDJIC is Director of the Design Museum. He was born in London, and studied architecture in Edinburgh. He has worked as a critic for theObserver and the Sunday Times, as the editor of Domus in Milan, as the director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and as a curator in Glasgow, Istanbul and Copenhagen. He is the author ofB is for Bauhaus, The Language of Things and The Edifice Complex.