feb.
Sincerely, Your Architect
-The Politician
Suppose we accept the premise that architecture as a profession is fundamentally a social work operation. If that is the case, then architecture needs to be equitable and should be bound within the same civil rights regulations as all other professions that impact our social world. The foundational education of young architects in any accredited institution often begins with Vitruvius: a Roman architect and engineer from the first century BC. Vitruvius writes The Ten Books on Architecture as a treatise—or a thesis rather—on architecture. He writes in Greek and Roman style, which is well understood because he is a Roman architect and engineer working in the time of Emperor Augustus Caesar who had previously worked with Emperor Julius Caesar. Nonetheless, this model and architectural style are quite specific to and symbolic of, architectures of colonialism and cultural trauma. Vitruvius addresses his thesis to Augustus as a plea, hoping to convince the emperor that his design practice was the proper architectural method for the empire. Vitruvius’ entreaty to the emperor reads quite similarly to how many architects respond to a call for a project: a lightly worded introduction and a convincing argument as to why this design, or this method, or this practice, is the best fit for the job, including smug comments fawning over the excellence of a sovereign power. The rhetorical practice at the very core of an architectural application is a game of politics. The architect, being the one who must sell a product—whether themself, their work, or their practice—must sway a potential buyer or investor in favor of what they are selling, that is, the architecture. That stated, it would not be remiss to foreground the pattern of political gain and corruption at the underpinnings of architectural practice. In the case of Vitruvius, it behooves him, as the architect, to associate himself with the emperor’s social circle. Vitruvius’ mention of himself in connection to Augustus’ father, sister, and other like characters positions him in a similar social status as the government elite. The method by which politics carry architecture is nothing new.
Libero Andreotti, in the first chapter of Nadir Z. Lahiji’s Can Architecture be an Emancipatory Project? mentions: “Since the election of Ronald Regan to the presidency in 1980, no discipline has been immune to the deeply corrosive effects of the neo-conservative ideology he ushered in. … In the United States, the widespread imposition of neo-conservative doctrine had two major effects on architectural discourse. One was to initiate a long decline in the social awareness inherited from the 1960s. Given theory’s investments in that radical critique, this process was reflected in the changing position of theory in many schools and critical venues where, hemmed in by the taboos and prohibitions imposed by the corporatized structure of university departments and cultural establishments like the MOMA in New York, critical discourse came to display an increasingly passive and almost reverential character reminiscent of the polite conversation of an eighteenth-century salon. The other major effect was a cultural transformation for ‘hermeticism’ in the 1930s – a term used to describe the mechanism of containment whereby social and political critique are driven underground and made to resurface on a purely aesthetic level. […] Put simply, the shift from ‘the autonomy of architecture’ to ‘the architecture of autonomy’ opens the possibility of a movement outward and against the aestheticizing trend of the last four decades, towards a re-politicization of architecture that might reconnect with a long-suppressed utopian tradition of radical critique that was a central feature of Modern Architecture from the start.”
From Vitruvius to Regan, political—and therefore social—situations have served as major indicators of how politics and architecture exist relationally. The post-Regan assertion that architecture is autonomous has blurred our understanding of the many ways in which politics and architecture commune hand in hand. Because capital investment and reinvestment have driven architecture since the Regan era, it is important to recognize the failure of the architectural profession to cater to, design for, or even acknowledge differences i.e. Black, Brown, and Native aesthetics. The adoption, implementation, and display of Western colonial aesthetics have grown into a “universal American” aesthetic and therefore a cultural symbol based on violent uses of power. The recent reinstatement of the 2020 executive order, “promoting beautiful federal civic architecture”, by the current head of the U.S. government promotes the idea that classical and traditional styles are a preferred aesthetic standard that should represent U.S. national identity and its institutions. The decision to declare this so by an executive order highlights the importance of Vitruvius’ plea to the emperor and calls attention to how this violence has become interminable from the first century BC to our present 2025 AD. It is undeniable that an architect’s practice is embedded in racial violence, and in our current moment, it is important to recognize the agency of the architect in choosing to partake in or prevent spatial acts of violence.
Written by Keren Dillard
Edited by Tamara Evdokimova