Normal closure and injective normalizer of a group homomorphism

Let $\phi \text{\hspace{0.17em}⁣}:\mathrm{\Gamma }\to G$ be a homomorphism of groups. We consider factorizations $\mathrm{\Gamma }\stackrel{f}{\to }M\stackrel{g}{\to }G$ of $\phi$ such that either $g$ or $f$ are universal normal maps (namely, crossed modules). These two factorizations are natural generalizations of the usual normal closure and normalizer of a subgroup. Iterating these universal factorizations yield towers related, on the one hand, to hypercentral group extensions, Bousfield’s localizations, and relative Schur multipliers. Dually, they extend to a relative situation, the automorphisms tower of a centerless group. Our constructions have strong ties to topological constructions.