Prompted by the international success of the first hardback edition, this monograph about one of the seminal figures of the Modern Movement, the Austrian philosopher, sociologist and urban planner Otto Neurath (1882-1945), is now being released in paperback. His ground-breaking ideas about the modern metropolis have been a major influence on the development of the twentieth-century city.

Otto Neurath was in contact with the leading intellectuals of his time, from Adolf Loos to László Moholy-Nagy, from Sigfried Giedion to Le Corbusier, and from graphic designer Gerd Arntz to the Dutch architect and urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren. Neurath was a member of the Vienna Circle, inventor of the renowned ISOTYPE pictorial system and a champion of the Unity of Science movement.

This volume provides surprising insights into one of modernism’s leading thinkers and offers a novel perspective on urban planning in the twentieth century.

Otto Neurath (1882-1945) is a long-neglected giant in the history of the Information Age. He was a philosopher who wanted to supersede philosophy, a museum administrator who despised conventional museums, a sociologist who distrusted sociological method and a city planner who was critical of the city. A founder of the Vienna Circle and the Unity of Science movement, a collaborator of figures as varied as Adolf Loos, Rudolf Carnap, Le Corbusier, Cornelis van Eesteren, Gerd Arntz, László Moholy-Nagy and Le Corbusier, he was profoundly important for a range of disciplines, including architecture, philosophy, economics, urbanism and design. In this book, author Nader Vossoughian frames him as a theorist of modernity who sought to foster participatory and interactive approaches to social and urban planning. In the epilogue, Vossoughian also suggests that Neurath’s example might offer us pragmatic strategies through which to engage the political sphere today.