Public space is perhaps the most obvious proof that, pace Margaret Thatcher, there is such a thing as society, that there are common projects which involve us all and precede us all. Public space exposes the collective dimension of our lives in an even more immediate manner than language, in which we are so immersed that it never appears to us as something else in front of us and at the same time as something unequivocally common to us, as for example Milan Cathedral does when we come out of the Metro station and see it there, enormous, with its facade on a scale that we are unable to get a hold on and drawing together the gazes of all the other people on the square, as heavy as the mountain from which it was quarried, transported, and reassembled piece by piece, and yet so orderly and regular, so clearly measurable and comprehensible...

The text is an excerpt from On Bramante (MIT Press, 2022).[+]