From Canada through Italy towards a Critical Phenomenology

This article intends to contextualize and resume the international conference “Towards a critical phenomenology” that took place on February the 8th 2013 at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). This text aims to outline the actual situation of the debate on theory of architecture and it quotes the most important essays through which phenomenology has given a fundamental contribution to architecture. It also points out the main issues the technological progress causes in relation to the process of design and in relation to the personality of the architect itself. In the matter of these issues, this article wants to sketch a brief profile of Marco Frascari, director of the Azrieli School since 2004 to 2012, whose work, everywhere well-known, is almost unknown in Italy where he born and studied.