Building Citizens: The question of citizenry and the political agency of architecture

This is part of the Graveyard of Dead Abstracts project

To what extend can architecture be said to be political? It has long been maintained that architecture both reflects and forms the socio-political character of its inhabitants. The theoretical strand of the ‘New Materialists’ such as Bruno Latour, Daniel Miller, and Andrew Collier would however push us to go even further in this estimation and speak of the political agency of the architecture itself. This paper is concerned with applying this idea to the study of architecture’s role in the production of citizenry. It is argued that while some buildings actively assist in engaging individuals in the public sphere, others do not, promoting, rather, a passive homogeneity contrary to the ideals of liberal democracy. With a methodology derived from foundational work in ANT (Actor Network Theory), the political agency of three works of architecture are assessed, with particular respect to the engagement with, or potential for engagement with, the citizen: Viljo Revell’s Toronto City Hall, Enric Miralles’ Scottish Parliament, and OMA’s Seattle Public Library.