This course will examine the built environment in Europe during the long eighteenth century as the product of social, administrative, and intellectual transformations that began to radically challenge traditional spatial configurations and conventional notions of identity. In cosmopolitan centers like London and Paris, an unprecedented explosion of print media, rapid rises in literacy, and the development of a public sphere outside official power structures opened debate in the arts to previously marginal figures. A range of new voices thus emerged that impacted policy decisions in the urban realm and proffered advice and guidance in thinking about aesthetics and artistic production. The rise of science and the expansion of state administrations held out the possibility that cities and institutions could be reshaped to improve human welfare through better hygiene and the expansion of commerce. Influential new classes defined by wealth or specialized knowledge generated. The creation of building types for a range of new activities. Elite domestic space in particular reflects a wholesale transformation of social priorities motivated by the novel concept of privacy. Through the work of theorists and authors who have examined the relationship between space and power, place and meaning, location and difference, this course will examine the use and articulation of spaces to construct individual, corporate, and national identities in a variety of Enlightenment contexts.