In November 2002, the Yale School of Architecture hosted the symposium "Eisenman/Krier: Two Ideologies," a two-day analysis—both celebratory and critical—of architects Peter Eisenman and Leon Krier. Eisenman, with an office in New York, and Krier, based in southern France, represent two opposing views in architecture: the modern and the classical. This dualism, which dates most explicitly to a face-off between the two architects during a meeting at Princeton University in 1977, continues to resonate within architectural design and theory today.

Published in this volume are the papers delivered at the conference, which focused on the themes of history, language, urbanism, and politics. The speakers included an exceptional array of historians and critics: Stan Allen of Princeton; Maurice Culot of the Institut Français d'Architecture, Paris; Kurt Forster of the Bauhaus University in Dessau; Phyllis Lambert of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; Joan Ockman and Mark Wigley of Columbia; Demetri Porphyrios and Vincent Scully of Yale; Robert Somol of the University of California, Los Angeles; Anthony Vidler of the Cooper Union; and Sarah Whiting of Harvard. Eisenman and Krier culminated the event with presentations that made evident their lifelong commitment to architectural language, to architectural scholarship, and to architecture itself as a vital element of society and culture.