Power/Architecture

On the correlation between two societal phenomena. With selected projects by Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and many more

Power and architecture are fundamental to the question of how contemporary society and archi- tecture work together. Since power lacks a comprehensive logic, coherence, and instrumentalization capability, the question refers both to the autonomous powers of the architectural forms and toa set of external powers represented through architecture. The presented series of projects based on current and extreme syntheses of comprehensive and complex world-views enables mappinga network of powers that align, intersect, in ect, and diverge from each other: collective power, ordaining power, economic power, technological power, ritual power, cultural power, media power, and domestic power. The issue of counter power is then discussed against this background.Through eight essays by contributors, along with images, drawings, and documents, the book renders visible a set of entities, informal conventions, stakeholders, and means involved in the creation of architecture; that is, the dynamics of the collective that ceaselessly tests the architectural composition of the common world.