Architecture as Spatial Configuration of Politics

Abstract

The research examines the spatial configuration and reconfiguration of politics by bringing together intersections of political theory and architecture. Situated in the field of political science and theory, the study is interested in the consequences of attempting to understand architecture from the point of view of political theory and how it informs a broader theorization and conceptualization of what is politics. The aim of the study is to expand the notion of politics to better include the conceptualizations of space, architecture, and the built environment. The study restores the problem of conceptualizing and theorizing politics in relation to architecture in the history of political thought. In particular, the study revisits the long-standing difficulty to theorize architectural politics that is not dependent on and determined by external political forces and existing social relations. By approaching these theoretical and historical entanglements and disputes from new angles the research aims to move beyond the narrow conceptualization of political architecture present especially in political science and theory. In the study, political architecture refers to representations of external political ideologies and social relations through architecture. The research in general and the research articles in particular claim that such an understanding of politics is too narrow and suggest an alternative conceptualization: architecture as spatial configuration of politics. Understood in this way, architecture can be considered a process in which political ideologies, subjectivities, and compositions are not only materialized but also invented anew in new built forms. The study suggests a renewed theoretical framework for a spatial configuration of politics and its relevance for architecture by discussing the political thought of Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, and Jacques Rancière in particular. What the study attempts to show is that by analysing the intertwinement of architecture and politics in the writings of these authors, it is possible to conceptualize a renewed theoretical approach to architecture’s status and position in existing social relations. For Benjamin, Lefebvre, and Rancière, social relations are both maintained and contested through the modifications of space and architecture. For them, space is not a neutral container or a mere background for political activity. Instead, the configuration of space is simultaneously a configuration of politics – of which architecture provides a good example. Methodologically, the study belongs to the field of visual politics, which aims to understand visual culture, art, and architecture not only as representations of politics but political forces in themselves. The dissertation consists of four research articles. Alongside the research articles, the dissertation includes an introductory part that examines previous scholarship and theoretical and methodological questions concerning approaches to studying architecture from the point of view of political theory.

KEYWORDS: ARCHITECTURE, POLITICS, POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE, SPACE AND POLITICS, BENJAMIN, LEFEBVRE, RANCIÈRE