Christian Norberg-Schulz was an architect, theorist and Norwegian historian who studied architecture at the Polytechnic of Zurich in 1949 and then continued his studies at Harvard University and at the Norwegian Institute in Rome.

Influenced by Giedion, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, he was a convinced Modern, thinking it was the only current valid twentieth century. In 1952, under the influence of Giedion, he founded PAGON (Group of Progressive Architects Oslo Norway) in order to have an independent Norwegian delegation of CIAM. He edited between 1963 and 1978 the architectural magazine Byggekunst, and during the 1960s began his long teaching career at the School of Architecture in Oslo, following the publication in 1963 of his influential Intentions in Architecture (1963) a book in which he investigated the theory of organization of space and built form, and stressed the importance of visual perception, influenced by Gestalt psychology. He developed a method of phenomenological analysis of the cities described in Genius Loci.

Influenced by The Language of Architecture Postmodern (1977) by Jencks , Norberg-Schulz joined the Po-Mo with some enthusiasm, perceiving in it new possibilities of expression, but in the 1990s, hurt by its growing isolation, pronounced that Po-Mo "was dissolved in playful superficiality" and returned to a major study of the theoretical foundations of modernity in its Principles of Modern Architecture, published shortly before his death.