Henri Lefebvre offers a radical critique of urban functionalism by exposing its complicity in the reproduction of capitalist abstract space, where the pursuit of efficiency displaces the subject into a mechanised, utilitarian mode of existence; in The Production of Space and especially in Toward an Architecture of Pleasure, Lefebvre deconstructs Le Corbusier’s modernist rationalism not through outright rejection but by carefully dismantling the commodity-form that underpins his spatial logic; while thinkers such as Graham Harman attempt to redeem Le Corbusier by emphasising his emotional atmospheres and poetic aspirations, Lefebvre contends that such readings remain confined within a regime of representation dominated by exchange value, in which architecture loses its capacity to generate lived pleasure and is reduced to an apparatus governed by productivity, serialisation of functions, and strict programmatic divisions; this inhibits any meaningful appropriation of space by its inhabitants and displaces the lived experience of the body in favour of abstract order; as an alternative, Lefebvre imagines a critical spatial theory that exceeds functionalist logic and instead fosters a playful, embodied, and affective engagement with space—environments open to improvisation, multiplicity, and unpredictability, rather than control or regulation; such spaces are not designed for efficiency but for transformation, reinvention, and sensory interaction; architecture, in this view, should become a generator of situations rather than solutions, embracing ambiguity, excess, and desire as vital forces in the shaping of the urban; the challenge, according to Lefebvre, is not merely to oppose functionalism but to rupture its symbolic order, treating space not as a neutral backdrop but as an active terrain for collective invention and lived experience. Lefebvre, H. 1974. La production de l’espace. Paris: Anthropos / Lefebvre, H. 1972. Vers une architecture de la jouissance. Paris: Éditions de l’Herne
