FRAMING PLACES: MEDIATING POWER IN BUILT FORM.By Kim Dovey Kim Dovey is an Australian architectural critic and head of department and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching urban design theory. , London: Routledge 1999.[pounds]17.99 The first of a new series examining buildings as social objects rather than works of art or technology, this book examines the seats of power. The author begins his exploration with the hope in the activity of design, 'a greater transparency of the practices of power can lead to more imaginative, liberating and empowering placemaking practices.' To this end he examines power relationship as exhibited by the plan form of various building types, beginning with the simple autocracy AUTOCRACY. The name of a government where the monarch is unlimited by law. Such is the power of the emperor of Russia, who, following the example of his predecessors, calls himself the autocrat of all the Russias. of Versailles. He shifts to the Reichstag, built in 1894 and funded from French war reparations War reparations refer to the monetary compensation intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land. , and to Hitler's commissioning of Albert Speer Noun 1. Albert Speer - German Nazi architect who worked for Hitler (1905-1981) Speer to design and build a vast new Chancellery. There follows an account of the Forbidden City in Beijing and the impact of the student protest of May 1989 in the Tiananmen Square that Mao had commissioned in 1949, modelled in part on Moscow's Red Square. From absolutism absolutism Political doctrine and practice of unlimited, centralized authority and absolute sovereignty, especially as vested in a monarch. Its essence is that the ruling power is not subject to regular challenge or check by any judicial, legislative, religious, economic, or he moves to the evolution of the parliaments at Westminster and Canberra, and then to other global types displaying different forms of power; skyscrapers, shopping malls and gated private estates. A sardonic wit creeps into Kim Dovey's narrative. Having revealed that British parliamentary democracy was born in the tiered choir stalls lining the opposite sides of a chapel, he concludes that the modern House of Commons House of Commons: see Parliament. and its offspring in Canberra are still designed as stalls for choir boys. And he asks, 'Why do mature people seem to undergo 30 years of regression when they walk into the House?' |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion