Architecture as Cultural and

Political Discourse

This book is concerned with cultural and political discourses that affect the
production of architecture. It examines how these discursive mechanisms
and technologies combine to normalise and aestheticise everyday practices.
It queries the means by which buildings are appropriated to give shape and
form to political aspirations and values. Architecture is not overtly political.
It does not coerce people to behave in certain ways. However, architec-
ture is constructed within the same rules and practices whereby people and
communities self-govern and regulate themselves to think and act in certain
ways. This book seeks to examine these rules through various case studies,
including the reconstructed Notre Dame Cathedral, the Nazi era Munich
Königsplatz, the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Prora resort,
Sydney’s suburban race riots, and the Australian Immigration Detention
Centre on Christmas Island.

Daniel Grinceri is a practising architect in Perth, Western Australia; he

recently received his PhD on this topic from the University of Western
Australia.
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An Architecture of Parts Assembling the Centre:

Architects, Building Workers Architecture for Indigenous
and Industrialisation in Britain Cultures
1940–1970 Australia and Beyond
Christine Wall Janet McGaw and
Anoma Pieris
Towards an Articulated
Phenomenological Interpretation The Films of Charles and
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Phenomenal Phenomenology A Universal Sense of Expectation
M. Reza Shirazi Eric Schuldenfrei

Architectural System Structures

Intersections of Space
Integrating Design Complexity in
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Searching for the Unmeasurable
Kasper Sánchez Vibæk
Nikolaos-Ion Terzoglou,
Kyriaki Tsoukala and Charikleia
Space Unveiled
Pantelidou
Invisible Cultures in the Design
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Edited by Carla Jackson Bell Ars et Ingenium
The Embodiment of Imagination
Architectural Temperance in Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s
Spain and Rome, 1700–1759 Drawings
Victor Deupi Pari Riahi
Kahn at Penn Mid-Century Modernism in
Transformative Teacher of Turkey
Architecture Architecture Across Cultures in the
James Williamson 1950s and 1960s
Meltem Ö. Gürel
Designing the British
Post-War Home Bruno Taut’s Design Inspiration
Kenneth Wood, 1948–1968 for the Glashaus
Fiona Fisher David Nielsen

Drawing the Unbuildable Conflicted Identities

Seriality and Reproduction in Housing and the Politics of
Architecture Cultural Representation
Nerma Cridge Alexandra Staub

The Idea of the Cottage in Through the Healing Glass

English Architecture, Shaping the Modern Body through
1760–1860 Glass Architecture, 1925–35
Daniel Maudlin John Stanislav Sadar

Cut and Paste Urban Architecture as Cultural and

Landscape Political Discourse
The Work of Gordon Cullen Case Studies of Conceptual Norms
Mira Engler and Aesthetic Practices
Daniel Grinceri
Wooden Church Architecture of
the Russian North Sacred Architecture in a Secular
Regional Schools and Traditions Age
(14th–19th centuries) Anamnesis of Durham Cathedral
Evgeny Khodakovsky Marie Clausén
This Page is Intentionally Left Blank
Architecture as Cultural and
Political Discourse
Case studies of conceptual norms
and aesthetic practices

Daniel Grinceri
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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 2016 Daniel Grinceri
The right of Daniel Grinceri to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Grinceri, Daniel, author.
Title: Architecture as cultural and political discourse: case studies of
conceptual norms and aesthetic practices/Daniel Grinceri.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. | Revision of author’s
thesis (doctoral)—University of Western Australia, 2011. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036933| ISBN 9781138916807
(hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315689371 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society—Case studies. |
Architecture—Political aspects—Case studies. | Identity
(Psychology) in architecture—Case studies.
Classification: LCC NA2543.S6 G73 2016 | DDC 720.1/03—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036933

ISBN: 978-1-138-91680-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-68937-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents

List of figures ix
Preface x
Acknowledgments xi

1 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 1

Culture 5
Politics 10
Architecture 12
Aestheticisation 15
2 Meaning and the death of architecture 23
‘This will kill that’ 24
The gargoyle in architecture 26
The ‘spirit’ of the age 33
Legibility and the architectural (con)text 39
The book and the building: the libraries of
Labrouste and Perrault 44
3 Statements on architecture: meaning and
determinism in the Athens Charters 56
The politics of the Athens Charters 57
The hermeneutics of continuity 67
The Declaration of Dresden 72
Architecture and the statement 77
4 Aesthetics and politics: the building of Nazi Germany 88
Nazi ‘evil’ and the ‘ordinary’ 89
Neo-classicism and National Socialism 92
Words in stone 95
The Königplatz 99
‘Denazification’ 102
Culpability 106
viii Contents
5 The camp and the resort: exclusion and
inclusion associated with ‘bare life’ 114
The zone of indistinction 115
Volkloser Raum 121
The Nuremberg Law 125
Strength through Joy 131
‘Ethica more Auschwitz demonstrata’ 135
6 Spatial contestation and suburban riots 142
Territory and belonging: the Cronulla riots 143
Australian ugliness and the myth of the bush 147
Social exclusion: Macquarie Fields 153
Disaffected locals: Redfern 158
Making up the nation 162
7 The architecture of indefinite and mandatory detention 167
The grey zone 168
The stateless individual 172
Sovereign power and ‘the state of exception’ 175
Managing Australia’s borders: inside Woomera 179
8 Architecture and ethics: competition for the Christmas
Island detention centre 188
Creating ‘limbo land’ 188
Island detention 192
Architecture and ethics 196
From ‘white elephant’ to ‘breaking point’ 200
9 Apparatus 206
Conclusion 206

Index 211
Figures

2.1 Bird with open beak and unicorn demon chimera,

Notre Dame de Paris 31
2.2 ‘The Community Bookshelf’, Kansas City
Library carpark 47
3.1 The front entry to St. Mary’s Cathedral following
completion of refurbishment works in 2009 70
3.2 The reconstructed Frauenkirche Cathedral in
Dresden reopened in 2005 73
4.1 ‘Ehrentempel’ and ‘Führerbau’ (background) on the
Königsplatz in Munich, circa 1937 101
4.2 The Führerbau, view from the intersecting roads
of the Königsplatz with the remains of one of the
Ehrentempels in the foreground, 2007 103
5.1 Prora, building complex, view from sea side, 2008 133
7.1 November Compound, Woomera Detention Centre, 2002 180
8.1 Christmas Island detention centre 193
8.2 Christmas Island detention centre ‘break out’ cages
to allow detainees fresh air during lock down 195
Preface

This book is concerned with cultural and political discourses that affect
the production of architecture. Moreover, it examines how these discursive
mechanisms and technologies combined to normalise and aestheticise eve-
ryday practices. The notion of culture plays a role in constructing meanings
and identities. Understanding this is important to architecture because build-
ings are often thought to bring about this and other ideals. Yet this book
queries the role of architecture in the production of ‘culture’. It asks whether
buildings are capable of informing the attitudes and values of both indi-
viduals and populations, as it is popularly believed they do. It asks whether
architecture possesses an inherent ability to achieve this end. Some buildings
are thought to promote the values and meanings of a particular community
as a representation of ‘high’ culture and art whereby the lives of people are
thought to be improved, or alternatively disadvantaged, because of certain
types of architecture in their midst. But can buildings alone, their material
substance, aesthetics and symbolism provide for such edification? Impinging
on this discussion, politics involves the appropriation of certain represen-
tational tools, like architecture, to portray and preserve an imagined ideal
of the self and ‘culture’, and by extension, the nation-state. Through such
acts of appropriation, governments do not impose such values or systems
of belief, but are able to give them representational form and doing so by
presuming to act in the interests of ‘the people’. Architecture serves to give
shape and form to such political aspirations. However, architecture is nei-
ther political – it does not coerce people to behave in certain ways – nor
produce certain ways of political thinking by itself. Architecture is a compo-
nent of a cultural and political discourse, constructed within the rules and
practices by which people commonly self-govern and regulate themselves
to think and act in certain ways. This book seeks to examine these rules, in
so much as they effect the production of the built environment along with
those values which make for a certain type of ‘architecture’ and the practices
of the architectural profession.
Acknowledgments

Special thanks to my family: Megan, Jordan, Taylor and Cameron Grinceri

for their patience and support; and to Winthrop Professors William Taylor
and Michael Levine for their advice and commitment.
This Page is Intentionally Left Blank
1 Architecture as cultural and political
discourse

In the introduction to one of the many books showcasing the work of Rem
Koolhaas, arguably one of architecture’s most well known and influen-
tial celebrities, Aaron Betsky presents a rather simplified and stereotypical
image of architects in general. From his description, perceptions of archi-
tects oscillate somewhere between being servile capitalists “willing to place
large structures where they don’t belong”,1 and “diva-like” artists who
pursue their own agenda at the expense of client and budget. Perhaps as
a result of this egoism, architects, Betsky claims, see themselves as unap-
preciated, overworked and underpaid, forever “trying to communicate
the importance of good design to an uncomprehending public”.2 From my
experience as a practising architect it is difficult to disagree with Betsky’s
observations. On the whole, architects are motivated by a desire to contrib-
ute something worthwhile to the built environment. However, no matter
how well intentioned, architects are often frustrated by the inevitable pro-
cess of negotiation and compromise that might significantly impact on a
building’s suitability, economic viability and public acceptance. Sometimes
it is more a matter of how one finds solutions to these frustrations, such
as by-laws, budget, client changes and so forth, that produces appropriate
architecture rather than any particular talent for design itself.
Yet star architects like Rem Koolhaas, while still complaining about not
being understood or receiving the right commissions, seem to be the excep-
tion.3 They have ostensibly risen above the everyday tedium of architectural
practice to become, as Betsky puts it, “the conscious collector, manipulator
and projector of images”.4 When these architects produce a new work it
generally assumes a status of significance. It becomes reviewed in all the
major architectural publications and admired for the way it supposedly
challenges common conventions and expands the horizons of architecture
and design. Moreover, the building itself becomes revered as an object of
‘high’ art and ‘culture’ because it, by most accounts, reveals to its observers
something about the building’s setting and its inhabitants. In other words,
so it is assumed, it makes for a better environment in which to live. This
sentiment is perhaps best summarised by Kazuyo Sejima in his speech at
2 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
the 2010 Venice Biennale where Koolhaas was presented the Golden Lion
award for a lifetime of achievement in architecture. Sejima declared: “Rem
Koolhaas has expanded the possibilities of architecture. He has focused
on the exchange between people in space. He creates buildings that bring
people together and in this way forms ambitious goals for architecture. His
influence on the world has come well beyond architecture, people from very
diverse fields feel a great freedom from his work”.5 It is this praise that
many architects aspire to, in the hope that their ‘art’ will also be deemed
important and somehow transform the way people live and think for the
better. I recall, as an undergraduate student both deriding, yet admiring
the egocentricism of Ayn Rand’s architect hero Howard Roark in the
Fountainhead, who never compromised his ideals and aspirations for an
architecture that would significantly benefit the world. But one might ask:
can buildings alone ever achieve this? Certainly, one can point to the many
examples of other star architects that have transformed the economy of
a city through the addition of one of their architectural ‘masterpieces’.
Jorn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao readily come to mind. These iconic buildings have not only
brought in the much sought-after tourist dollar, but also an increased sense
of identity and greater recognition to the city in which the buildings reside.6
Indeed, the success of such buildings has inspired many other cities and
institutions to attempt to change a city’s identity through architecture.7
But having said this, architecture is a product that, given the right context,
might symbolise certain objectives, but does it have the power to transform,
coerce, guarantee or even determine certain economic, social or personal
outcomes, like a change to a city’s identity?
In this regard, Koolhaas is unique amongst most other architects because
he downplays, even denies, the significance of his architecture. As he once
acknowledged in conversation with his students: “There is an unbelievable
overestimation of the power of architecture in terms of the good it can do,
but even more, in terms of the bad it has done or can do”.8 Interestingly,
here, Koolhaas echoes Michel Foucault when the philosopher and historian
declared in an interview with Paul Rabinow that the “architect has no power”.
Foucault continues: “If I want to tear down or change a house he built for me,
put up new partitions, add a chimney, the architect has no control . . . I would
say that one must take him – his mentality, his attitude – into account as well
as his projects, in order to understand a certain number of the techniques of
power that are invested in architecture”.9 The question of power as addressed
in Foucault’s later work is essential to this book. It is not my intention to
formulate a theory of power and architecture, nor to consider architecture as
an object of power, as such a discursive strategy is likely to be “condemned
in advance and to set the analysis of power on a wrong course”.10 Foucault’s
remarks on power dismissed conventional understandings and conceptions of
power, yet he offered them not as a theory of power but as a tool kit for the
analysis of power relations.11 With this in mind, this book intends to adopt
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 3
this ‘tool kit’ as a means of analysing the built environment and the power
relations through which meanings circulate in the formation of the self and
the governance of a population. Foucault proposed that the architect and his
work are the subjects of power, suggesting that their values and attitudes are
constructed within the same field of legibility and understanding as the rest
of society. In other words, they do not possess an exemplary and self-evident
authority of the kind a doctor might be thought to hold. Thus, according to
Foucault, if an architect’s work is to resonate with a particular audience it is
more likely to be the result of the architect’s ability to draw upon and perhaps
symbolise or give form to particular ways of thinking that circulate within
that audience rather than exhibiting an inherent capacity to change the way
people think.
When architects describe the aesthetic effect of a particular building they
generally focus on its physical features. Foucault, however, is more interested
in the particular ways of thinking that imparted a distinctiveness to such
features and made them meaningful. One example given by Foucault is the
addition of the chimney to European middle age houses. Foucault explains
that at a certain moment it was possible to build a chimney inside the house,
as opposed to open fire inside the house. It was at that “moment all sorts
of things changed and relations between individuals became possible”.12
Foucault enquires why the chimney came about at that particular point in
time, “or why did they put their techniques to this use?”13 Thus for Foucault
the chimney came into existence at a time when people were tending towards
a different kind of relationship inside the home. As a result, the chimney
facilitated these changes by making the house a more comfortable place in
which to live. Typically, such architectural changes which come to be seen
as impacting on the lives of individuals are attributed to a single originating
idea. However, of interest to Foucault is not the authorship of such ideas
like comfort, but rather the exploration of the ‘techniques’ that made the
chimney possible and meaningful in new ways. He explains: “It is certain,
and of capital importance, that this technique was a formative influence on
new human relations, but it is impossible to think that it would have been
developed and adapted had there not been a strategy of human relations
something which tended in that direction”.14 By ‘strategy’, Foucault does
not intend to describe a deliberate plan or system with the ability to deter-
mine a particular outcome, but rather a ‘technique’ that derived from a series
of needs and innovations. Here, ‘strategy’ refers to, as Paul Hirst explains:
“A definite pattern of means and objectives that can be discovered operating
across a number of sites”.15 The chimney is thus one example of a number
of techniques that tended towards the improvement of social relationships,
comfort and healthy living.
The work of Michel Foucault is important to this study, particularly
his writing in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), which examines
how knowledge is put into practice through discursive formations in spe-
cific institutional settings to regulate the conduct of others. In particular,
4 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
it examines how the circulation of knowledge and power operates within
specific mechanisms and technologies, whereby a variety of diverse elements
like regulations, laws, scientific statements, philosophic propositions, and,
as it applies to this book, “architectural arrangements”, become normal-
ised and aestheticised in everyday practice.16 Arguably, Foucault is one of
the most cited authors in the social sciences and humanities and remains
popular among architectural theorists. The attraction of architects to
Foucault’s work may in part be explained by his repeated references to space
and particular spaces (like the prison, clinic and asylum) in his writing.17
However, certain aspects of Foucault’s work are often underdeveloped in
architecture. For instance, the panopticon is often used as an example of
how architecture determines the conduct of individuals and contributes to
the meaning of ‘penality’ and ‘the penitentiary’ at a given time by assigning
various roles to the actors caught within the building’s spatial confines.18 Yet
it is not Foucault’s intention to assert that the panopticon fully determined
the behaviour of its occupants to the exclusion of their subjective responses
to the building form and interior arrangement. He uses the example of the
panopticon to demonstrate that the architecture has no ‘power’ over indi-
viduals, regardless of the building’s form, which could have just as easily been
a “large shed”.19 According to Foucault, what makes the inmate regulate his
own behaviour is not the architecture of the panopticon, but rather the gaze
of the warden, which involves the inmate in a form of disciplinary power and
establishes their capacity for self-reflection and moral reform. Contrasting
this partial application of Foucault’s reasoning, theorists like Paul Hirst
and Robin Evans have opened the way for architects to more fully question
‘conventional’ understandings about architecture, particularly architecture
and power.20 In addition, authors such as Paul Rabinow, and more recently
Giorgio Agamben, have employed Foucault’s methods for analysing the
associations between built form and history, sovereignty and biopower.21
These will be examined later in this book.
Foucault provides a framework for analysing knowledge and ways of
thinking, particular to a time and place. This book follows and develops his
arguments that knowledge is caught up in technologies of power that pro-
duce individuals as subjects which in effect normalise discursive practices.
With this in mind, architecture and its associated components, both parts
of buildings and the text written about buildings, can be regarded as form-
ing a ‘statement’, having specific conditions of emergence and enunciative
functions that produce a common interpretation within a particular cultural
field.22 This is an important aspect of Foucault’s thinking because it denies
that buildings contain any inherent capacity to produce a common meaning
for those within a given ‘culture’. Instead, his point places the production
of such meanings within discursive formations that largely determine what
a ‘culture’ is or can be.
This book examines the built environment, and how architecture par-
ticipates in the formation of certain values, in particular, those which are
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 5
commonly held to form part of our cultural identity. Moreover, three key
themes are addressed: One, how certain ways of thinking take part in the
governance of groups of people, and how this makes use of and brings about
certain types of buildings. For instance, amongst other case studies, this
book will discuss the Australian immigration detention centre at Christmas
Island, in order to demonstrate how buildings are brought about in response
to specific discursive constructs (in this case a fear of immigration). Two, this
book considers the manner in which space becomes utilised as a resource for
power, whereby buildings are co-opted for the production of national iden-
tity by including certain people at the expense of the excluded ‘other’. Such
a case demonstrating the ‘resourcefulness of buildings’, their availability to
define and extend forms of power and knowledge – including attitudes aris-
ing from a making of self-knowledge and social recognition – is entailed in
the concentration camps and other architectural programmes of the Third
Reich. And three, this book raises ethical questions about the involvement
of architects in the procurement of such projects, in that architects, like
anyone else, are not exempt from ordinary moral requirements regardless of
their expertise and professional capacities.
Buildings are produced within discursive frameworks that have a direct
impact on one’s expectations for meaningful architecture and how one,
consequently, conducts oneself within certain spaces. Architecture is best
understood not only by examining its form and materiality, but also, and
more importantly, by examining the features of discourse that delimit
knowledge in a particular field making for certain types of ‘architecture’.
According to Betsky, the architect is one of a group of “identity providers”
who help establish a sense of place or community.23 Yet such an effect is
less the result of the architect’s ability to shape the world than to provide
form to certain modes of thought, speech and conduct. Understanding how
discourse shapes the production, design and usefulness of buildings is sig-
nificant to architecture; it does not diminish the role of the architect, but
perhaps better positions their expectations and capabilities.

Culture
It is worth considering the main terms presented in this book in order to
explain their relevance to the various case studies presented in the subsequent
chapters. Comprehending how ‘culture’ participates in the production of
meaning – and particular meanings at a given time – is important to archi-
tecture because buildings are thought to be consequential and expressive
objects representative of core values and identities. It is a basic fundamen-
tal of social science that the same thing or object might acquire different
meanings dependant on the ‘culture’ in which it is found. Yet ‘culture’ is
very difficult to define. Terry Eagleton for instance claims that ‘culture’
is one of the most complex words in the English language.24 The term
itself is highly problematic as it can lend its authority to a variety of concepts
6 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
and phenomena: American culture, high culture, modern culture, urban
culture, counter-culture, sub-culture and so forth. Given that ‘culture’ is
an imprecise or variable entity, to what extent does ‘culture’ participate in
the production of meanings? Etymologically speaking, culture has its ori-
gins in agriculture, crops and their cultivation. However, with modernity it
has come to acquire additional and alternative significances. The term has
come to denote, for instance: “the arts and other manifestations of human
intellectual activity . . . the customs, civilisations and achievements of a
particular time and people”.25 Noticing this variability, Eagleton suggests
that the word charts a “semantic shift” in the unfolding of human history. It
measures changes: “From rural to urban existence, pig-farming to Picasso,
tilling the soil to splitting the atom . . . But the semantic shift is also para-
doxical: it is the urban dwellers who are ‘cultivated’ and those who actually
live by tilling the soil who are not”.26 Thus, ‘culture’ is an activity, but it is
also used to single out different types and qualities of people, perhaps for
the purpose of denigrating them, so that individuals lacking a certain form
of ‘refinement’ might be described as being ‘un-cultured’.
While the changing meaning of the word ‘culture’ is perhaps evidence
of humanity’s increasing urbanisation, ‘culture’ also raises numerous,
sometimes contradictory, philosophical issues too. For example, it raises
questions of freedom and determinism, identity and difference, subjectiv-
ity and normalisation – all of which will be explored in greater detail in
later chapters. Briefly, however, cultural freedom is encompassed by one’s
sense of equality and liberty to act in accordance with one’s own free will,
whereas cultural determinism suggests that one’s will is entirely deter-
mined by that which surrounds one. From a determinist’s perspective, it is
believed that one’s actions are wholly or partly prefigured and governed
by the physical environment, providing very little to no freedom to deter-
mine one’s own actions. In this regard it is difficult, on the one hand, to
accept that the physical environment does not play some sort of role in
influencing certain modes of conduct.27 Yet, on the other hand, buildings
cannot guarantee specific outcomes as there are too many other factors at
play, such as social, economic, political and personal influences. Similarly,
buildings cannot guarantee freedom. Foucault posits that architecture can
be neither entirely liberating nor oppressive. He comments: “If one were
to find a place, and perhaps there are some, where liberty is effectively
exercised, one would find that this is not owing to the order of objects,
but, owing to the practice of liberty”.28 Foucault claims that architecture,
or the spatial order of a place, cannot solve social problems. Rather, it
can produce positive effects when the “liberating intentions of the archi-
tect coincide with the real practices of the people in the exercise of their
freedom”.29 Similarly, ‘culture’ as a category of material artefacts cannot
guarantee freedom; neither can it determine particular forms of behaviour,
for such practices can never be inherent in the structure of things nor in
the order of objects.
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 7
‘Culture’ is typically construed as having a dialectical dimension which
suggests that it is involved in the process of human development and pro-
gress. However, of main concern here is its ‘constructivist’ dimension: the
notion that the self is shaped and reshaped by a series of discursive practices
that cut across multiple disciplines.30 In this way, knowledge is essentially
produced through discourse, whereby certain forms of conduct and speech
become normalised and accepted by a group of people as a ‘true’ reflec-
tion of the ‘way things are’. This view, according to Foucault, describes the
body as “totally imprinted”31 – not only by the surrounding environment,
but by the way it is described and talked about. Constructivism denies the
dialectical approach to cultural studies, where history is seen as part of a
progression toward a particular end, in preference to a methodology that
focuses on the processes through which individuals govern and regulate
themselves.32
Architects and theorists alike tend to speak of architecture as a cultural
object as though it were a register of the past that can teach us something
about ourselves.33 Giving voice to this position is Richard Hooker, who,
typically for a historian, declares in his summation of the cultural signifi-
cance of architecture: “All architecture communicates to the members of a
community the ‘meaning’ of their actions. That is, how their actions relate
to the rest of the human, material, and spiritual worlds . . . Architecture
can be ‘read’, that is, you can discover how a culture ‘writes’ for other
members of that culture; it is a culture talking about the meaning and
organisation of the life of that culture. This also means that whenever a
member of a culture looks at a work of architecture, they understand that
it has meaning and that this meaning governs their actions and under-
standing of the world”.34 According to this position, ‘culture’ is seen as
the origin and substance of built form that not only reveals something
of the society to which it belongs, but also ennobles the community that
produced it. For instance, significant works of art and architecture are
said to be denotive of particular cultures, thus expressive of their way of
life, beliefs and attitudes. The prominent architectural theorist K. Michael
Hays in his treatise on ‘critical architecture’, which is concerned with
the reciprocal influence between culture and architectural form, asserts
that the interpretation of meaning from architecture is simply a matter
of uncovering the cultural situation relevant to the time and place it orig-
inated. Hays proposes that “each architectural object places itself in a
specific situation in the world, which constrains what can be done with it
in interpretation”.35 To this end, Hays reveals that a ‘critical architecture’
is defined by its inherent differences from other cultural manifestations,
whereby these differences “produce knowledge both about culture and
about architecture”.36 Notwithstanding this common endeavour, this book
queries whether architecture possesses any inherent meaning, or imparts
any specific knowledge, that reveals something of the cultural situation in
which it is found. It asks whether architecture has the capacity to generate
8 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
meanings which “govern one’s actions and understanding of the world”.
Moreover, it queries the role of architecture in the production of ‘culture’,
and whether buildings are capable of forming the attitudes and values of a
population, and if so, how?
The view that promotes architecture as essentially a cultural activity
from which one can derive some knowledge hardly seems a contentious
issue. Yet it seems clear that architecture is not akin to a text. If people
share a mutual understanding of a building’s meaning this is not the result
of its ability to be ‘read’ in any single, clear and mutually comprehensible
manner.37 Rather, as will be argued, a consensus of interpretation depends
upon a people’s common access to language, whereby an individual’s inter-
pretation is as much shaped by social formations as the building under
scrutiny is made into an object of significance to be interpreted. In this
way, we move away from the view that assumes meaning is an intrinsic
characteristic or capacity of an object, to the notion that meanings are
socially and personally formative. Stuart Hall’s assertion is helpful here, he
claims: “Culture is about ‘shared meanings’ . . . Language is the privileged
medium in which we ‘make sense’ of things, in which meaning is produced
and exchanged. Language is central to meaning and culture and has always
been regarded as the key repository of cultural values and meanings”.38
Language is capable of constructing meaning, not because there is an
inherent link between a word and a thing, but because language operates
within a “representational system”.39 This system connects, uneasily at
times, words, things and groups of people who are drawn or often obliged
to interpret them and so understand themselves in certain ways. Hall con-
tinues: “Language is one of the media through which thoughts, ideas and
feelings are represented in a culture”.40 Similarly, architecture is capable
of representing values, ideas and feelings, not because it is a language, but
because it is brought about and utilised as a result of the practices of a
group of people. Architecture too is a representational medium.
This book contends that architecture is not endowed with inherent
meaning and value, rather, architecture acquires meaning through lan-
guage, or more particularly, discourse. Discourse, as Foucault proposes,
differs from language, although it works within a representational system,
it constructs the rules and practices that produce meaning and provides a
language for talking about things. Discourse provides the framework to
talk about what might be described as ‘cultural practices’, which refers
to those practices that participate in the governance of individuals, not
only through forms of sovereign government but also those practices that
regulate the conduct, thought and speech of individuals. These practices
produce, for example: institutions, regulatory decisions, laws, admin-
istrative measures, scientific statements, welfare, medical assistance,
philosophical and moral propositions – not to mention architectural forms
as well.41 Foucault calls these practices discursive formations. These con-
sist of a group of ‘statements’ coincidental to time and place giving rise
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 9
to meaning. According to Foucault’s conception of discourse, as outlined
in his work The Archaeology of Knowledge, statements are not the free
product of the mind, rather they have ‘surfaces of emergence’ or particular
institutional conditions of knowledge under which certain meanings and
forms of behaviour appear.42 An example would be the introduction of laws
and policies that regulate minimum requirements for natural ventilation
and sunlight into habitable rooms. Although they emerged from growing
concerns relating to air quality in nineteenth-century England they still
influence building codes today.43 These regulations not only transformed
the way people live (resulting in, for example the abolition of the window
tax), but also began to inform a new architectural aesthetic. Typically we
refer to this new style of architecture as ‘modernism’, which is identifi-
able by an extensive use of glass and clean open spaces, as opposed to the
dark cluttered spaces of the Victorian era. Historians tend to acknowledge
specific architects like Joseph Paxton designer of the Crystal Palace as the
originator of this movement.44 Yet what is missing in this association is
an analysis of the various conditions or ‘surfaces of emergence’, whether
derived from economic, technological or social conditions that gave rise
to new modes of social interaction as well as new forms of production and
architecture.
In addition, the emergence of a ‘statement’ is also dependent on what
Foucault calls ‘enunciative modalities’, whereby certain individuals or insti-
tutions are qualified to speak with authority on a particular subject, such
as a doctor’s diagnosis of an ill patient. Michel Foucault’s work will be
explored in greater depth in later chapters; here it suffices to suggest the
relevance of discourse for the study of architecture. As such, architecture
is considered a component of discursive formations. Thus, by examining
how discourse enters into various fields we can understand how buildings
are planned and utilised, becoming representative of certain attitudes and
values – typically described as ‘culture’.
Further to this specific application of Foucault’s work, this book seeks
to draw upon aspects of Foucault’s work, and others like Stuart Hall and
Nikolas Rose, to develop additional tools for understanding the circum-
stances from which meanings are derived from architecture. Discourse not
only constructs meanings but also regulates bodies within space, affecting the
way buildings are made to function. In this manner, the following chapters
are concerned with how architecture, being a representational construct, is
enmeshed within relationships of knowledge, power and space. With ref-
erence to Foucault’s earlier work, in particular Discipline and Punish and
The Birth of the Clinic, this book investigates the operation of “institutional
apparatuses”45 and their technologies that affect the operation of power
and its governance over a population. To this end, power may intercede in
discourse in order to modify it and introduce new practices, bringing about
changes to not only laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, etc,
but also architectural forms and styles. All of these, are generally considered
10 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
to be the product of ‘culture’, yet none are predetermined or fixed, as it is so
often assumed, but subject to the way knowledge is proscribed in a particular
time and place.

Politics
In making use of the term ‘culture’ it is important to recognise that the con-
cept also has a spatial dimension, whereby the terms ‘culture’ or ‘cultures’
conjure a world of human differences, specifically, differences between peo-
ple that are physically and geographically – i.e. ‘spatially’ – specific. As such,
different human characteristics or traits are thought to be possessed by
people of specific locations. As the anthropologists Gupta and Ferguson
explain: “Culture is conceptualised as a diversity of separate societies, each
with its own culture . . . a separate, individual cultural entity, typically asso-
ciated with ‘a people’, ‘a tribe’, ‘a nation’, and so forth”.46 It is taken for
granted that each nation embodies a distinct culture relative to their place
on a map. Yet cultures do not naturally divide themselves according to a
border, a nation or a state. Such a proposition poses many problems in
a world of increased communication and mobility (not to mention the global
hysteria relating to refugees, displaced and stateless peoples), whereby the
presence of ‘others’ appears to threaten the social stability of an imagined
cultural community. While such issues are not new, this book seeks to
explore the relationship between culture, space and power, whereby the
worldwide phenomenon of increased border protection seeks to protect an
imagined idea of ‘culture’ against those who threaten to destabilise it.
The notion that people become bound to a particular place is important
because it explains how people come to identify themselves as adhering to
certain customs and traditions. Space, in this sense, becomes a “resource
of power”,47 whereby politicised notions of ‘culture’ and space become a
means for identifying the whole and excluding others. As such, buildings
become useful not only to carry out state sanctioned activities, but also
because they define space. Even at their most basic level, buildings construct
physical barriers, they can be used to detain, to keep out, and to represent
the strength and fortitude of a nation. Consider, for example (discussed in
later chapters), the Nazi concentration camps, or the Australian immigra-
tion detention centres. While they do not compare in terms of the harm
inflicted upon individual subjects, both can be described as ‘apparatuses’ for
the proliferation of certain imagined ideals through the exclusion of others.
In this way, ‘politics’ as referred to here is concerned with the production of
identities and notions of belonging, and in particular the manner in which
space and buildings are utilised in this process.
In addition to this, it must be recognised that culture does not establish
a site of commonality, uniquely acquired by geographic propinquity, but
rather ‘culture’ is politicised in order to create subjects of individuals by shap-
ing their perceptions of the world around. As Hall points out: “Moreover,
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 11
they [cultures] emerge within the play of specific modalities of power, and
thus they are more the product of the marking of difference and exclu-
sion, than they are the sign of an identical naturally-constituted unity”.48
Identities are neither naturally unified, nor are they possessed or owned
by individuals, they are, as Gupta and Ferguson reiterate: “A mobile and
often unstable relation of difference”.49 As such, politics involves the “social
management” of a population, whereby certain practices like; health, law and
education, are passed to government who presume to act in the “interests of
the people”.50 At this point ‘culture’ becomes political, which explains how
power, supported by forms of knowledge, intercedes in discourse to modify
and transform certain beliefs and practices. Such an explanation, however,
suggests that power does not necessarily radiate from a single position, from
those in authority, but circulates amongst all forms of social interaction.
This implies, as Hall points out: “that we are all, to some degree, caught up
in its circulation”.51 What’s more, power is not negative, but productive, as
Foucault remarks: “It induces pleasure, forms of knowledge and produces
discourses. It needs to be thought of as a productive network which runs
through the whole social body”.52
In his writings concerning sovereign power, the Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben asserts that Foucault seems to have orientated his analysis
of power according to two distinct directives of research. Firstly, the study
of “political techniques”, whereby the State assumes the role of caring for
and protecting natural life, and secondly, the examination of “technologies
of the self” by which the processes of subjectification bind the individual
both to his identity and an external power.53 Yet according to Agamben the
point at which these two directives converge remains unclear in Foucault’s
work.54 Hence Agamben proposes to extend Foucault’s thesis by declar-
ing that the point at which these modes of power intersect produces the
“exception”. In this way, the “exception” is a kind of exclusion. Agamben
explains: “But what is excluded in the exception maintains itself in rela-
tion to the rule in the form of the rule’s suspension”.55 In other words,
the rule is applied to the exception by being withdrawn from it. In this
book, Agamben’s theory is exemplified through the spatial dimensions of
the ‘camp’. Here the ‘camp’ becomes a place where the law is literally sus-
pended by the law. Examples include the Nazi controlled concentration
camps, or the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, and also, as explored
in later chapters, the Australian Immigration Detention Centres. In these
locations individuals are withheld access to law by the law that allows their
incarceration. In effect, this ‘exception’ has the double effect of excluding
unwanted ‘others’, like Jews, Muslims and ‘boat people’ respectively, but at
the same time solidifies the values of the populous by making distinct their
values from the excluded ‘other’.
Politics involves the appropriation of certain representative tools, such as
laws, institutions and architecture, in order to portray, represent and pre-
serve an imagined sense of identity. Governments do not necessarily impose
12 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
such values or systems of belief, but are able to give them representative
form by acting in the ‘interests of the people’. Having said this, the politici-
sation of the self, which in relation to this book refers to notions of identity
formation, belongingness, sameness and otherness, enables ‘socially legiti-
mised authorities’, such as politicians, regulators, theologians, academics
and other experts to construct the images of a nation. As Nikolas Rose
points out, the interference of these authorities takes place in all aspects of
daily life and at a diversity of sites, such as schools, clinics, homes, work
places and courtrooms.56 For instance, school curricula might be adjusted,
as under the Howard Government in Australia, to reflect certain ‘core
values’ like integration, as opposed to multiculturalism under the previous
administration, or through the implementation of laws to ban certain forms
of religious apparel, like the burqa or head scarf. In effect, knowledge serves
to perpetuate and legitimise specific discursive formations which inform
an individual’s understanding of certain processes and/or endorse certain
modes of conduct, thought and speech. Architecture not only serves to
provide shape and form to certain discursive practices but also facilitates
certain activities, sometimes to the exclusion of others.

Architecture
In recognising that there is no fixed architectural language for represent-
ing political ambitions, policies and other practices, it does not follow that
architecture lacks the potential to promote a political agenda – rather it
does so as an ingredient in the discursive process. Whether intended or
not, architecture may become appropriated to represent a multitude of
ambitions. Therefore, it is pertinent to ask: can a building espouse specific
principles? Put simply, can a building incorporating certain aesthetic ele-
ments, like a neo-classical stone façade or a modern glass curtain wall,
be described with all seriousness, as some have claimed, as socialist or
democratic architecture? Consider, Norman Foster’s restoration work on
the German Reichstag in Berlin, in which the cupola (which was partly
destroyed by fire during the uprise of the Nazi’s and further demolished by
the bombing of Berlin during WWII), was replaced by a glass dome. Foster
uses the transparency of the glass to make connections between democracy
and the Germany government following its reunification.57 In comparison,
Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio in Como also uses glass as a metaphor
for the transparency of Mussolini’s fascist government. Given the dubious-
ness and contradiction of the pair of claims, it is highly unlikely that any
building product, style or design – in particular glass – can represent certain
beliefs in a straightforward manner. Mindful of this caveat, this book is
concerned with the manner buildings are produced in response to certain
discursive practices. It asks not only how they might mean something, but
how can they respond to particular practices that define the values and
morals of a nation?
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 13
In answering this latter question, consider briefly Nicolae Ceausescu’s
Imperial Palace in Bucharest, or as it is now called the House of the
Republic or People’s Palace. This example shows that a building, no matter
how uncomfortably, may be used to represent the values of a government
despite the changed politics of those who occupy it. Built during the 1980s,
Ceausescu’s Palace required the reconstruction of the centre of Bucharest
in an effort to reflect the ‘greatness’ of his regime through the architecture
of the city. To do so, Ceausescu had demolished numerous centuries’ old
churches, monasteries, hospitals, schools and homes, resulting in the dis-
placement of more than 40,000 residents and hundreds of businesses and
other essential amenities in the area. In total, one fifth of the city was razed.58
In its place, Ceausescu carved through a wide central boulevard lined with
water fountains and ornate neo-classical facades to act as the backdrop to
a long promenade that focuses on the Imperial Palace at the top of Arsenal
hill, the city’s highest point. Costing more than $10 billion, the Palace is
said to be one of the largest and most expensive buildings in the world. Yet
in the aftermath of the collapse of Ceausescu’s regime and his subsequent
execution in 1989 debate was dominated by concerns about what to do
with this grandiose structure that would seemingly be a continual reminder
of Ceausescu’s violent and hated dictatorship. Some argued that the Palace
should be demolished. Others considered that it would be better served as
a casino or hotel. Despite these proposals, the new Romanian government
decided to make use of the monumental building for its own purposes,
whereby the Imperial Palace become transformed into the People’s Palace
and the house of the new democratic republic.
In the essay The State as a Work of Art, Renata Salecl asks how pre-
sent day Romanians now perceive the Palace. To her surprise, Salecl reveals
that Ceausescu’s Imperial Palace has become “the most precious symbol of
democracy in Romania”.59 Yet this claim is somewhat contradictory, for
how can the same building be described as the representation of democ-
racy and freedom, yet have originated in the mind of a tyrant? Could it
be that neither democracy, communism, or for that matter any other form
of politics, is inherently connected to the built form of the Palace or any
other building. Rather, buildings become representative of particular val-
ues as a result of how they are described and talked about, to which the
physical features of architecture may lend various meanings representative
form. Similarly, Barthes described the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of Paris, not
because of any inherent capacity to do so, but because it is so easily seen.
Such monuments may achieve prominence, becoming representative of a
city and a point of attachment for national pride and identity, not because
they are examples of ‘good’, well thought-out architecture, but rather as
Barthes points out, because “they are there”. He explains: “The Tower
attracts meaning the way a lightning rod attracts thunderbolts; for all lov-
ers of signification, it plays a glamorous part, that of a pure signifier, i.e. of
a form in which men unceasingly put meaning (which they extract at will
14 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
from their knowledge, their dreams, their history), without this meaning
thereby ever being finite and fixed: who can say what the Tower will be for
humanity tomorrow?”.60 In other words, buildings like the Eiffel Tower in
Paris and the People’s Palace in Bucharest are capable of forming identities
and giving rise to particular meanings because they are so readily identifi-
able. Such buildings become representative of ‘cultural’ values and attitudes
because they more easily facilitate a connection between the words used to
describe the thing and the thing itself. Barthes explains how the Eiffel Tower
is perceived by the ‘world’: “First of all as a universal symbol of Paris, it is
everywhere on the globe where Paris is said to be stated as an image; from
the Midwest to Australia, there is no journey to France which isn’t made,
somehow, in the Tower’s name, no schoolbook, poster, or film about France
which fails to propose it as the major sign of a people and of a place”.61 In
this way, it is not the things-in-themselves which produce meanings, but
rather buildings become objects of knowledge through discourse. Keeping
this in mind, architecture not only derives it meanings through discursive
forms but it is also procured in the same manner. As such, particular forms
of knowledge may result in the specific utilisation of spaces or the construc-
tion of new buildings to carry out particular functions in the interests of
certain ‘essential’ policies or procedures. In effect, the architecture plays a
key role in contributing towards the ‘aestheticisation’ of various political
constructs by becoming a ‘statement’ or a component of discourse giving
rise to particular meanings.
The example of Ceausescu’s Palace is also noteworthy because it raises
another issue addressed by this book, being the ethical responsibility of
architects in the procurement of such projects. In other words, one should
ask whether architects should be held accountable for facilitating particular
building outcomes which adversely affect the wellbeing, freedom and rights
of certain individuals. Consider Anca Petrescu and the 700 or more architects
who contributed towards the design of the Imperial Palace: one might ask
whether they should be held accountable, along with those who ordered and
carried out the forced removal of tens of thousands of Bucharest residents
so that construction might proceed, for the extraordinary burden placed
upon the Romanian citizens to fund the project? Yet questions relating to
the effects of certain types of architecture and their political motivations
are often ignored in architectural ethics. The ethical debate as it relates to
contemporary architecture is dominated by what Karsten Harries describes
as the main task facing architects, being the interpretation of “a way of life
valid for our time”. 62 By this, Harries invokes a complexity in architecture
that is more than just aesthetic, but, rather, capable of “speaking to us of
how we are to live in the contemporary world”.63 Yet whether architecture
is capable of this task, as Harries believes, is open to conjecture as previously
discussed. Another popular argument regarding the ethical responsibility of
architects focuses on the environmental considerations of building design.64
However, while such debates are certainly valuable, they do consider the
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 15
full effect of architecture as a component of discourse and its capacity to
represent the values of a group of people. Other elements of architectural
ethics, like Paul Jaskot’s Architecture of Oppression, examine the architec-
ture of the Nazi regime and its acquisition of building materials through
the use of forced labour. Here Jaskot queries the relationship between art
and politics in Nazi Germany, whereby he claims that aesthetic decisions
were also political decisions in that both goals “drove the implementation of
specific oppressive labour practices or influenced the timing of institutional
decisions”.65 With this in mind, this book is concerned with the question of
whether architects should lend their expertise to the procurement of build-
ing projects that intend to marginalise and exclude certain kinds of people
for particular political aims. To this end, architects, like Petrescu, should
not escape responsibility for providing the means by which certain regimes
attempt to represent themselves through various architectural forms.

Aestheticisation
In view of the preceding illustration of the fluidity of meaning and the
implications of ‘interpretive regimes’ with relation to culture, politics and
architecture, this book is further concerned with the question of how cer-
tain values and attitudes within society become politically motivated and
aestheticised in the built environment. In this investigation, it is necessary
to examine how the self – and by extension the population – is produced,
and assigned what Ian Hunter calls an “aesthetic existence” – being the
means by which the self is identified with its surroundings, thereby bring-
ing about certain expectations for the kind of people we imagine ourselves
to be. In exploring how the self is positioned by discourse and whether the
constructed object attests to this description of selfhood, it is worth noting
Hunter’s warning regarding the historical “misconstruction of the ways we
relate to the domain of ‘aesthetics’ in the present”.66 Hunter claims that the
conception of ‘aesthetics’ and its domain of influence has been limited by
the narrowly defined field imposed upon it by cultural studies, where the
term is seen as part of the study of labour and politics. Thus, aesthetics is
relegated to the realm of ethics and taste, and self- and group interests con-
ceived of in an economic sphere without full consideration of the broader
social context for aesthetic perception, its production, circulation and con-
sumption by “groups and institutions”.67 Thus, with relation to Ceausescu’s
Imperial Palace, its meaning is largely (if not entirely) attributable to the
interests of the ruling class, not only Ceausescu’s communist dictatorship
but also, as identified, the new democracy. For this reason, Hunter argues
that aesthetics cannot be relegated to the realm of economics and taste, but,
rather, the broader social context in which values circulate and ultimately
consume the identities of individuals.
In progressing this view, Hunter points to two distinct yet converging
theories that overturn this former limited understanding of the aesthetic
16 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
domain. The first relates to the reconstruction of the “ethical sphere” itself,
as advocated by Foucault, a field that does not consider ideas and values
arising in or forming a ‘cultural’ sphere as naturally existing or ‘essential’,
but instead relates to the way in which the self is constructed. Or as Foucault
would say, the ethical sphere is composed of “technologies for problema-
tising conduct and events that permit individuals to compose themselves
as ‘subjects’ of their actions and experiences”.68 In this way, attitudes to
do with, for instance: abortion, sexuality, single parents, euthanasia, stem
cell research, criminals and asylum seekers, to name a few, are composed
within the limits of this ethical sphere (which accounts for some degree
of flexibility for a diversity of views while the parameters of the debates
remain relatively stable). Thus, for Hunter, following Foucault, aesthetics
might belong to ethics, yet it does not simply consist of values, ideas and
doctrines. Instead, as Hunter describes it: “Aesthetics should be described
as a distinctive way of actually conducting one’s life – as a self-supporting
ensemble of techniques and practices for problematising conduct and events
and bringing oneself into being as the subject of an aesthetic existence”.69
In this manner, aesthetics is not only the consideration of the appearance of
things but the art of ‘self fashioning’. Similarly, for Foucault, the aesthet-
ics of existence entails “those intentional and voluntary actions by which
men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform
themselves”.70 Consequently, by considering the self as constructed within
a specific social framework one should be better placed to understand how
cultural values and meanings are productive and associated with the built
environment.
It is within this framework that the issue of Nazi architecture is explored
in chapters 5 and 6 of this text. Some conventional histories of this era
describe the German people as suppressed and the unwilling participants in
the Third Reich. However, in recent years this stance has come under chal-
lenge, whereby historians like Daniel Goldhagen have put forward the view
that ordinary Germans from all walks of life brutalised and murdered Jews
both willingly and zealously.71 In his account Hitler’s Willing Executioners,
Goldhagen reveals that the ‘right to kill’ was made possible by the desire to
advance one’s self above another. Based on this pretence, the ‘fashioning’
of the self and by extension the German national character was founded on
the idealisation of health and improved living standards and required the
elimination of defectives, those who were determined to be physically and
racially degenerate. In this way, the protection of the national body against
those who threatened to destroy it became seen as one’s moral duty and
thus enabled the systematic extermination of millions of Jews and other so
called degenerates.
The second and convergent theory of the ‘aesthetic existence’, accord-
ing to Hunter, has grown out of recent criticism of dialectically driven
theories of politics and economics formulated by Hegel and Marx and
their followers. This criticism includes the scholarship of Nikolas Rose
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 17
and Peter Miller who argue that the way in which “human beings
govern themselves and organise their economic lives” does not derive from
the terms of conventional social theory, like class and ideology.72 Rather,
such developments are contingent upon and emerge in a variety of “circum-
stantial technologies”, like those, as Hunter points out, in which Puritanism
unexpectedly brought about forms of behaviour conducive to a capitalist
economy. Hunter explains: “Such circumstantial technologies lead in no
particular direction and realise no general form of ‘man’ as a ‘species being’.
From this perspective, then, political, ideological, and cultural interests
must be analysed in terms of the available institutions of the formation and
deployment; and they must be analysed without recourse to the notion of a
privileged set of interests . . .”.73 Rose asks how one might write a history
of the contemporary “regime of the self”. He reasons that in order to do so
one must not attempt to write a history of changing ideas of persons as has
been done in philosophy, literature and culture, but rather the approach
should involve the “genealogy of subjectification”. Rose explains: “My
concern, however, is not with ‘ideas of persons’ but with the practices in
which persons are understood and acted upon – in relation to their criminal-
ity, their health and sickness, their family relations, their productivity, their
military role, and so forth. It is unwise to assume that one can derive, from
an account of notions of the human being in cosmology, philosophy,
aesthetics, or literature, evidence about presuppositions that shape the con-
duct of human beings in such mundane sites and practices”.74 For Rose,
a “genealogy of subjectification” as it concerns the self not only avoids a
history of ideas, but rather, seeks to investigate the practices and techniques
from different times and places that produce humans with different emo-
tions, beliefs, psychological and other character traits.
By way of explanation, consider Paul Rabinow’s discussion of the 1832
cholera epidemic in Paris. The event set the stage for the abandonment of
previously held medical understandings of disease as a result of new social
considerations with relation to hygiene, sanitation and health.75 Rabinow
explains how the epidemic had a profound impact upon many aspects of
French thought and culture. He writes: “The cholera epidemic not only
provided a clear impetus for change, but opened the way for new scien-
tific discourses, new administrative practices, and new conceptions of social
order”.76 Newly formed government authorities established and regulated
acceptable practices relating to housing standards, sanitation and health. In
this manner, the crisis necessitated a fundamental physical and moral change
to living standards. As a consequence, city planning schemes implemented
public works programmes, rail and canal networks; wider avenues were
carved into the densely populated areas of the city; and the water supply
was greatly improved. “The cholera epidemic catalysed a new set of relation-
ships, spurring a more precise and powerful analysis of the milieu focusing on
‘conditions de vie’ that included local biological and social variables . . . The
apparatus of finely grained observation of the social body – supervised by
18 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
physicians, aided by architects, and backed by the police – in the service of
the health of the population and the general good, had a long career ahead”.77
From this event, as Rabinow reveals, health reform significantly modified the
way people lived bringing about specific laws, institutions and architectural
forms. This transformation of society and the city cannot be attributable to a
single idea relating to disease or the ‘diseased’ person, but rather to changing
attitudes towards sanitation and hygiene.
Where this had a direct impact on building design and the city is clearly
evidenced by the introduction of underground sewers, flowing water and
so forth. But beyond such mechanical changes cities also began the process
of what we now call ‘modernisation’.78 For example, popularised notions
of miasma resulted in significant changes to the layout of medieval Paris,
cramped conditions and interweaving streets were transformed for the pur-
pose of better facilitating air flow and population movement. To this end,
Haussmann was responsible for cutting through the densely populated and
irregular alleyways of the old city to construct the wide boulevards and
open spaces, views and squares typically associated with Paris today.
Changes and transformations in health and sanitisation resulting from
the cholera epidemic, for example, became such a part of the daily lives
of individuals, not only in Paris but throughout the western world, that
they have become normalised and accepted as the standard for living. Yet
such reforms were not guided by an evolutionary hand to generate specific
cultural outcomes, and do not come ready made. Rather, they have to be,
as Rose explains; “invented, refined, and stabilised, to be disseminated and
implanted in different ways in different practices – schools, families, streets,
workplaces and courtrooms”.79 In effect, the self is subject to processes of
‘governance’ that regulate acceptable forms of speech, conduct and activity
within society. That is not to say that governments per se hold the power to
compel certain attitudes and conduct, for it is essential not to ‘over-valuate’
or too greatly attribute the ‘power’ of the State and its ability to unify or
even functionalise social and economic activity. Indeed, Foucault points out
that the power often attributed to the government is a “mythical abstrac-
tion” and no more than a “composite reality”. He declares: “The State’s
importance is a lot more limited than many of us think. Maybe what is really
important for our modern times . . . is not so much the State-domination
of society, but the ‘governmentalisation’ of the state”.80 Governments, as
described by Rose and Miller, are the “historically constituted matrix”
that articulates all those normative values held by the people, formalised
and expressed through the representational capacity of the governing body
source. Thus, by analysing the inter-dependencies between political ration-
alities and governmental technologies, “we can begin to understand the
multiple and delicate networks that connect the lives of individuals, groups
and organisations to the aspirations of authorities”.81
This is evidenced, as described earlier, in the operation and expansion
of Australian detention facilities during the Howard era. In this manner,
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 19
the indefinite incarceration of so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ was condoned
by the majority of Coalition voters who endorsed the government’s treat-
ment of asylum seekers at the 2001 federal election, following the Tampa
Crisis.82 This endorsement was not borne out of the government’s desire
to treat ‘others’ poorly, but a desire to capitalise on latent and overt preju-
dices that already existed amongst the general Australian population. This
endorsement granted the government a mandate to detain asylum seekers
and implement new programs for the prevention of unwanted arrivals. The
direct intention was to make known that the government was willing to act
upon the majority’s concerns and capable of maintaining or restoring the
populist perception of what it means to be an ‘Australian’.
According to Hunter the convergence of these two theories arising from
the ‘aesthetic existence’ of the self signals the end of a political and cul-
tural theory inaugurated by Hegel. In so doing, we avail ourselves of the
tools to better understand the ‘aesthetic’ domain, by treating ‘culture’ and
society as one of the “contingencies that make us what we are”.83 To this
end, this book examines the effect of culture, politics and architecture on
the production of the self in order to better understand how meanings and
meaningful practices are constructed within the discursive framework of
the built environment.

Notes
1 Aaron Betsky, “Rem Koolhaas; The Fire of Manhattanism Inside the Iceberg
of Modernism”, Considering Rem Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan
Architecture (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2003), 26.
2 Ibid., 27.
3 Refer to Arthur Ludlow, “How Architecture Rediscovered the Future”, The New
York Times, 18 May 2003.
4 Betsky (2003), 27.
5 Quoted in Anna Winston, “Koolhaas Wins Venice Biennale Award”, bdonline, 20
July 2010. Available at http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/koolhaas-wins-venice-
biennale-award/5002986.article (Accessed January 2010).
6 Refer to Deyan Sudjic, The Edifice Complex (New York: Penguin Books,
2005), 318.
7 As Ludlow points out, this development is encapsulated by a remark that the direc-
tor for the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Rome made to Koolhaas,
who had entered the competition (which Hadid eventually won) to design its
new museum. “We need a building that does for Rome what the Guggenheim did
for Bilbao”. In response Koolhaas comments: “That is a staggering statement,
because Rome doesn’t need to be put on the map”. Refer, Ludlow (2003).
8 Rem Koolhaas, Conversations with Students ed. Sanford Kwinter (New York:
Princeton Press, 1996), 65. Quoted in Rafael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and
Design Strategies (Barcelona: ACTAR, 2004), 311.
9 Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power”, The Foucault Reader ed. Paul
Rabinow (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 247–248.
10 Ibid., 87–88.
11 Refer to Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain, Michael Foucault (London:
MacMillan, 1984), 225.
20 Architecture as cultural and political discourse
12 Foucault (1991), 253.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 254.
15 Paul Hirst, Space & Power; Politics, War and Architecture (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2005), 170.
16 Refer to Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1972), and Michael Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews
and Other Writings, 1972–1977 ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books,
1980), 196.
17 Refer to Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1992). Beatriz Columina and Jennifer Bloomer, Sexuality and Space (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1992).
18 Refer to Elliot Felix, “Form and Situated Meaning”, Theory of City Form, Spring
(2004), 8.
19 Hirst (2005), 177.
20 Ibid., 155–178. Robin Evans, Translations From Drawings to Building and Other
Essays (London: Architectural Associations Publications, 1997), 55–91.
21 Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). Giorgio Agamben, Homo
Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
Giorgio Agamben, The Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive
(Brooklyn: Zone Books, 1999).
22 Refer to Foucault (1972).
23 Betsky (2003), 26.
24 Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 1.
25 Refer to The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary 4th ed. (Melbourne: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
26 Eagleton (2000), 2.
27 Refer to Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960).
28 Foucault (1991), 246.
29 Ibid.
30 Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs Identity”, Question of Cultural Identity
ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 11.
31 Foucault (1991), 83.
32 Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 3.
33 Refer to Christian Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture (Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 1965), 122.
34 Richard Hooker, What is Architecture? Available at http://richard-hooker.com/
sites/worldcultures/ARCHI/BASELINE.HTM (Accessed June 2009).
35 K. Michael Hays, “Critical Architecture; Between Culture and From”, Perspecta,
Vol. 21 (1984), 17.
36 Ibid., 27.
37 Refer to Michael Matias, “Is Meaning in Architecture a Myth?” Philosophy and
Architecture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 121–140.
38 Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices
(London: Sage Publication, 1997), 1.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Refer to Foucault (1980), 194.
42 Hirst (2005), 157.
43 Refer to Helen Mallinson, ‘Metaphors or Experience; The Voice of Air’,
Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, Summer (2004), 161–177.
 Architecture as cultural and political discourse 21
44 Refer Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1980), 32–33.
45 Refer to Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (New York: Vintage Books,
1973), and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
(London: Penguin Books, 1977).
46 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, Culture, Power and Place: Explorations in
Critical Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 3.
47 Hirst (2005), 1.
48 Hall (1996), 4.
49 Gupta and Ferguson (2001), 13.
50 Refer to Tony Bennett, “Putting Policy into Cultural Studies” Cultural Studies ed.
Lawrence Grossberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 24–29.
51 Hall (1997), 50.
52 Foucault (1980), 119.
53 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer; Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1998), 5.
54 For further commentary on Agamben’s claims regarding Foucault, refer Jacques
Derrida, The Beast & the Sovereign Vol. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2008), 92–95, 315–317 and 324–330.
55 Agamben (1998), 16–17.
56 Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, Governing the Present (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2008), 1.
57 Consider Jeremy Till, who states that just because one designs a transparent
cupola it does not necessarily mean that the governmental processes within can
be deemed equally transparent, rather, this situation “is a fake transparency that
demeans the whole notion of democracy”. Jeremy Till, Occupying Architecture:
Between Architect and the Community (London: Routledge, 1998), 61.
58 According to Renata Salecl, Ceausescu intended to represent his ideological
ambitions of Romania through the built monuments of his government. To this
end, the demolition of the historical district of Bucharest was vital, not only
to provide the space for Ceausescu’s architectural monuments, but rather the
destruction of the city was a deliberate attempt to erase the past. For Ceausescu
the architectural remnants of the historical district represented “the previous
symbolic order” which he believed no longer applied under his reign. Salecl states:
“By razing the historical monuments, Ceausescu aimed to wipe out Romanian
national identity, the fantasy structure of the nation that is forged around histori-
cal old buildings, churches, and then establish his own version of this identity”.
Refer to Renata Salecl, “The State as a Work of Art”, Architecture and Revolution
ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 1999), 102.
59 Ibid., 104.
60 Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (New York: Hill &
Wang, 1979), 4.
61 Ibid.
62 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (Massachusetts: MIT
Press, 1998), 2 and Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1941), xxxii. Refer also to David Watkins, Morality
and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
63 Harries (1998), 13.
64 Refer to Warwick Fox, Ethics and the Built Environment (London: Routledge,
2000).
65 Paul Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 2000), 3.
66 Ian Hunter, “Aesthetics and Cultural Studies”, in Cultural Studies ed. Lawrence
Grossberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 347.