Arcades Project

View of an arcade (the passage Choiseul, located in the second arrondissement of Paris), as an example of the characteristic architecture of the covered arcades of 19th-century Paris.

Das Passagen-Werk or Arcades Project was an unfinished project of German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, written between 1927 and his death in 1940. An enormous collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19th century, it was especially concerned with Paris' iron-and-glass covered "arcades" (known in French as the passages couverts de Paris).

Benjamin's Project, which many scholars[1] believe might have become one of the great texts of 20th-century cultural criticism, was never completed due to his suicide on the French-Spanish border in 1940. The Arcades Project has been posthumously edited and published in many languages as a collection of unfinished reflections. The work is mainly written in German, yet also contains French-language passages, mainly quotes.

  1. ^ Agamben, Giorgio (1993). Stanzas. Minneapolis: Uni. go Minnesota Press. pp. xvii.