Reflections On Architecture Society And Politics

Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics brings together a series of thirteen interview-articles by Graham Cairns in collaboration with some of the most prominent polemic thinkers and critical practitioners from the fields of architecture and the social sciences, including Noam Chomsky, Peggy Deamer, Robert A.M. Stern, Daniel Libeskind and Kenneth Frampton. Each chapter explores the relationship between architecture and socio-political issues through discussion of architectural theories and projects, citing specific issues and themes that have led to, and will shape, the various aspects of the current and future built environment. Ranging from Chomsky’s examination of the US–Mexico border as the architecture of oppression to Robert A.M. Stern’s defence of projects for the Disney corporation and George W. Bush, this book places politics at the center of issues within contemporary architecture.

Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics brings together a series of thirteen interview-articles by Graham Cairns in collaboration with some of the most prominent polemic thinkers and critical practitioners from the fields of architecture and the social sciences, including Noam Chomsky, Peggy Deamer, Robert A.M. Stern, Daniel Libeskind and Kenneth Frampton. Each chapter explores the relationship between architecture and socio-political issues through discussion of architectural theories and projects, citing specific issues and themes that have led to, and will shape, the various aspects of the current and future built environment. Ranging from Chomsky’s examination of the US–Mexico border as the architecture of oppression to Robert A.M. Stern’s defence of projects for the Disney corporation and George W. Bush, this book places politics at the center of issues within contemporary architecture.

What can political theory teach us about architecture, and what can it learn from paying closer attention to architecture? The essays assembled in this volume begin from a common postulate: that architecture is not merely a backdrop to political life but a political force in its own right. Each in their own way, they aim to give countenance to that claim, and to show how our thinking about politics can be enriched by reflecting on the built environment. The collection advances four lines of inquiry, probing the connection between architecture and political regimes; examining how architecture can be constitutive of the ethical and political realm; uncovering how architecture is enmeshed in logics of governmentality and in the political economy of the city; and asking to what extent we can think of architecture-tributary as it is to the flows of capital-as a partially autonomous social force. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the salience of a range of political theoretical approaches for the analysis of architecture, and show that architecture deserves a place as an object of study in political theory, alongside institutions, laws, norms, practices, imaginaries, and discourses.

The relationship between politics and the public relations industry is controversial and, at times, polemic. However, one component of this relationship that has yet to be investigated is the role of architecture. Arguing for a fundamental reconfiguration of our understanding of ‘political architecture’, this book suggests it is not only a question of constructed buildings, but equally a case of mediated imagery. Considered through examples of architecture as a backdrop for photo shoots by politicians in the democracies of the United States and the United Kingdom, this book suggests these images give us both a better understanding of recent developments in the Western political economy and the architectural and urban developments of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. Using case studies of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, this book represents a ground-breaking triangular analysis that will be essential reading for scholars in architecture, politics, media and communication studies.

This timely and thought-provoking collection of essays offers a detailed examination of contemporary architectural practice in the 1990s. Reflections on Architectural Practices in the Nineties grew out of a year-long symposium at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, which took stock of pressing issues in order to speculate on future paths for both education and practice. Among the many challenges the architecture profession is currently facing are a constantly volatile economic climate, rapid technological change, and a general globalization of society. Reflections presents 29 essays by leading critics, scholars, and designers, essays that grapple with these and other issues and provide strategies for confronting them. Several additional perspectives are presented through brief passages and images of built work, so that the whole forms a collage of broad, diverse viewpoints. George Baird, Thomas Fisher, and Andrew Saint are among those who provide overviews of architectural practice and education. Mack Scogin, Carl Sapers, and David Harvey, among others, discuss contemporary professional responsibilities and ethics. Forms of practice in the 1990s are discussed by a variety of participants including Max Bond, David Dillon, Rob Quigley, and Sharon Zukin. Rem Koolhaas, Saskia Sassen, and William Lazonick, with others, discuss the impact of the global economy on architecture. Finally, Peter G. Rowe presents some possible implications for design education. Reflections on Architectural Practice in the Nineties is an essential compendium for anyone in the ever-changing future of architecture.

The post humanist movement which currently traverses various disciplines in the arts and humanities, as well as the role that the thought of Deleuze and Guattari has had in the course of this movement, has given rise to new practices in architecture and urban theory. This interdisciplinary volume brings together architects, urban designers and planners, and asks them to reflect and report on the (built) place and the city to come in the wake of Deleuze and Guattari.

Governing by Design offers a unique perspective on twentieth-century architectural history. It disputes the primacy placed on individuals in the design and planning process and instead looks to the larger influences of politics, culture, economics, and globalization to uncover the roots of how our built environment evolves. In these chapters, historians offer their analysis on design as a vehicle for power and as a mediator of social currents. Power is defined through a variety of forms: modernization, obsolescence, technology, capital, ergonomics, biopolitics, and others. The chapters explore the diffusion of power through the establishment of norms and networks that frame human conduct, action, identity, and design. They follow design as it functions through the body, in the home, and at the state and international level. Overall, Aggregate views the intersection of architecture with the human need for what Foucault termed "governmentality"—societal rules, structures, repetition, and protocols—as a way to provide security and tame risk. Here, the conjunction of power and the power of design reinforces governmentality and infuses a sense of social permanence despite the exceedingly fluid nature of societies and the disintegration of cultural memory in the modern era.

In 1975, the Nigerian authorities decided to construct a new postcolonial capital called Abuja, and together with several internationally renowned architects these military leaders collaborated to build a city for three million inhabitants. Founded five years after the Civil War with Biafra, which caused around 1.7 million deaths, the city was envisaged as a place where justice would reign and where people from different social, religious, ethnic, and political backgrounds would come together in a peaceful manner and work together to develop their country and its economy. These were all laudable goals, but they ironically mobilized certain forces from around the country in opposition against the Federal Government of Nigeria. The international and modernist style architecture and the fact that the government spent tens of billions of dollars constructing this idealized capital ended up causing more strife and conflict. For groups like Boko Haram, a Nigerian Al-Qaida affiliate organization, and other smaller ethnic groups seeking to have a say in how the country’s oil wealth is spent, Abuja symbolized everything in Nigeria they sought to change. By examining the creation of the modernist national public spaces of Abuja within a broader historical and global context, this book looks at how the successes and the failures of these spaces have affected the citizens of the country and have, in fact, radicalized individuals with these spaces being scene of some of the most important political events and terrorist targets, including bombings and protest rallies. Although focusing on Nigeria’s capital, the study has a wider global implication in that it draws attention to how postcolonial countries that were formed at the turn of the twentieth century are continuously fragmenting and remade by the emergence of new nation states like South Sudan.

Psychoanalytic Reflections on Politics: Fatherlands in mothers’ hands is a playful exploration of how people’s desires, fantasies, and emotions shape political events and social phenomena. It highlights the mythical sources of today’s political projects, the power of political imagination, and the function of symbolism in political thought. Eszter Salgó argues that the driving force for the formation of political communities is fantasy – ‘illusions’ in a Winnicottian sense, ‘phantasies’ in a Lacanian sense, ‘phantoms’ as described by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, and ‘dreams’ as interpreted by Sándor Ferenczi. She introduces the metaphor of the ‘fantastic family’ as a symbolic representation of political communities, both to reflect on people’s deeply felt desire to find in public life the resolution, love, and wholeness of early childhood, and to unveil the political elite’s readiness to don the mask of the ‘ideal parent’. The book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book explores the theories of Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan: the matrimony on the stage of politics between the ‘good-enough mother’ and the Symbolic Father which inaugurates the story of democracy’s ‘fantastic family’. The second part presents the ‘fantastic families’ of selected countries such as Hungary, Italy, and the world community to explain the proliferation of cosmogony projects, and to document the failure of the political elites to offer a satisfactory performance of their maternal and paternal functions. Psychoanalytic Reflections on Politics: Fatherlands in mothers’ hands presents a new way of considering the art of politics, based on the understanding that people perceive reality through imagination and unconscious fantasy. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, and academics from across the disciplines of politics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, and art.

As a second attempt, after Architecture Beyond The Anthropocene, already available online, this book is presenting a new set of reflections in a time at a pivot point. 62 young architects to be, are facing their own future and roles in a world experiencing massive changes on all levels: climatic, economic, political, cultural, social. The confusions, the wonderings, the hopes, and maybe above all, the questions, amass. To navigate in this unknown and volatile territory, a series of speculating lectures on architectures varying foundations and possible creative paths were offered, along with a list of books, presented at the end of this book.