In all books and encyclopaedias on the history of modern architecture, we find a large number of pages devoted to the avant-gardes and the emergence of the modern movement of the interwar period, and as many again to the reconstruction and expansion after the Second World War. In between, as if out of incomprehension or agreed silence, there remains a large gap of the dark years of war, exile and misery about which hardly anything can be said. Yet it is precisely those dark years that - like many of the most revealing years in cultural history - produce extremely innovative experiments. Voluntarily withdrawn or forcibly expelled and pushed to the margins of the bourgeois reality of life, architects and artists begin to shape an image of reactions to an untenable cultural situation of which we still know little today. In "Experiments with Life Itself", Francisco González de Canales analyses a constellation of scattered cases in the period between the end of the 1930s and the end of the 1950s, which he calls domestic self-experiments. Every book relating the history of modern architecture features a large number of pages dedicated to avant-garde designs and the formation of the modern movement in the interwar years, and a similar number devoted to reconstruction and expansion after the Second World War. Meanwhile, as if owing to lack of understanding or convenient silence, there is void of dark years, of wars, exile and misfortune about which little can be said. However, it was in these dark times, as in so many other revealing moments in the history of culture, that experimental and profoundly invigorating experiences were taking place. Architects and artists voluntarily or forcibly driven to the margins of social importance began to react to a culturally unsustainable situation of which we know very little even today. In Experiments with Life Itself, Francisco Gonzalez de Canales studies a series of unrelated cases from the late 1930s to the late 1950s that he refers to as domestic self-experimentation.