Putting Architecture in its Social Place: A Cultural Political Economy of Architecture

As well as being shaped by bureaucratically codified state regulations, architecture is also fundamentally conditioned by the broader political-economic context in which it is commissioned, designed and understood. However, drawing attention to these noncodified regulations can be controversial, as it necessitates questioning the complex social production of architecture, in the process challenging those discourses that position architecture as a practice concerned primarily with the design of socially meaningful form and meaning. Such discourses have been problematised elsewhere and, building on these contributions, this paper suggests a framework for taking seriously architecture’s distinctive relationship with aesthetics and semiotics while also maintaining a sense of architects’ position as a cultural élite working in definite political-economic contexts. Drawing primarily on theories associated with Pierre Bourdieu and cultural political economy, the paper uses the case of iconic architecture to illustrate this argument. The central role of architecture in recent place-marketing strategies is understood as a resonance between the agendas of high-profile architects and those political and economic agencies ‘selling places’. The role of architecture in providing a culturalised frame within which economic transformation is embedded is a crucial consideration here. In short, this paper suggests the necessity of a non-reductionist, political-economic foundation to the regulation and built environment research agenda.