Emancipatory Horizons: The Possibility of a Revolutionary Architectural Practice

Description

Architecture has always been tied to social change, but also to social reproduction. Architects have sought to challenge social structures before, but this tendency seems to be in utter decline, is an emancipatory practice of architecture still possible? What prevents architecture from engaging in radical social and spatial transformation? To find out if it can still have a progressive function within society, its material relation to capital must be unravelled. The active human body, abstract labour, abstract space, fixed capital, landed property, and rent are crucial concepts to understand the spatial logic of capitalism. This research examines these theoretical issues through the historical case of UNCTAD III building in Chile, one of the last attempts to challenge the capitalist production of space. Through this case the difficult questions concerning the role of architecture within capitalist society and what are the possibilities for an alternative practice in our current conditions can be addressed. A radical alternative through architecture must acknowledge both its autonomy and dependence from the cities produced by capitalism if it wishes to address concrete change. Cover Half title Title page CC information Dedication Abstract Contents Acknowledgements List of Figures Introduction Part I: The Material Basis of Architecture 1 The Relations to Nature 2 The Artificial Order 3 The Architecture of Acts and the Abstraction of Labour Part II: The Production of Architecture under Capitalism 4 The Social Production of Architecture 5 Real Abstraction: Architecture as Capital 6 The Formal: Architecture as Political Mediation Part III: UNCTAD III and the Dialectics of Defeat 7 1971, Utopia: Industry, Modernism, and Class Struggle in the Chilean Road to Socialism 8 1973, Tragedy: The Neoliberal Utopia and the Road to Postmodernism 9 2010, Farce: GAM and the Flattening of History as Spectacle Conclusions: A Revolutionary Architecture? Notes List of References