During his long career, Yona Friedman crossed three continents and nine decades of a tragic and exciting history of the recent past. He regularly disappeared and reappeared in different contexts and disciplines, often seen by architectural historians as an eccentric utopist. Nevertheless, he constantly stimulated architects and planners to face capital issues such as mobility, participation and non-plan thus debating with some of the most interesting personalities of his time (Konrad Wachsmann, Team Ten, Constant but also Nicholas Negroponte, Ilya Prigogine and Ivan Illich). The recent book The Dilution of Architecture (Zurich: Park Books 2015) has been the first occasion for a general evaluation of his dense thought in comparison with the development of the current architectural debate.
Manuel Orazi is an architect, researcher and publisher. He holds a PhD on the work of Yona Friedman from the SSAV Foundation and the IUAV in Venezia . Since 2002 he works for the publishing house Quodlibet based in Macerata, where he curates their architectural books. He currently teaches at the University of Ferrara and regularly writes for “Log” magazine, "Domus" and several Italian newspapers.