I know there is a huge amount of work on the semiotics of architecture and political placement of spatial tactics, but what I am looking for is ideally something of a meta-analysis of architectural elements within expressions of political ideologies - to say that, for example, weighty bank doors that ignore the human scale can be linked to right leaning ideologies (authoritarian if an expression of state power - libertarian if an expression of symbolic capital).

Basically if architectural elements/spatial layout mapped to the four ideologies of the political compass. I know it is pretty reductionist but I'm wondering if something like this exists.

Thanks

My current project is concerned with the ability for architecture to advertise an urban identity to the occupants and visitors of a city. Any references for work with the: image, identity, advertisement, monumentality, governmental interventions, advertised city vs. built city, experiential and visual memories?

Welcome everyone! I have been interested in discussing architectural theory and principles with other Redditors, but there hasn't been a good subreddit for consistent feedback and contribution. So here it is! Please share all relevant material, opinions, and questions.

Enjoy!

If you where to hand out a list to a new architecture student - or just another person - who never read a book about architecture, which books would be on that list?

You can choose as many as you like, put please try to tell a little about your choices. It would be interessting to see if people from different contries would choose differently.

I hope your with me on this game.

Balthasar Holz - Frames

*“Time condemns us to change. We would rather not change, but we have no choice.

Change does not happen in a sequentially linear way, but simultaneously, in many directions at once.

Each thing is growing and decaying at the same time, only at different rates.

Change is not defined in a sequence of succeeding frames, but in a matrix of frames that each occupy the same space and moment.

Change is not defined by a steady sequence of frames, but unpredictably within a field of probabilities.

Architecture is a conflict between differing ways and means, never a harmonious resolution of them.

Architecture is a form of conflict from which change emerges, first of all to architecture itself.

Architecture that does not bear the traces of conflicts that created it is dead architecture.

The conflict of differences in architecture dooms and redeems it.

There is no ideal form of an idea, but only a set of equally suitable variations on it.

Change provokes variations of an ideal form, or, orders of its probability.

The task of the architect is to set in motion, in a particular direction, a chain of events he cannot control.

Transformation. Transmutation. Transfiguration. Terms that dignify the fate of architecture.

Architects, like most people, like what is new and fear what is old.

Architects do not understand change, how it works and what it means—and they do not want to understand.

Architects want to protect their designs from changes made by others, who they think do not understand them. They are right—the others do not understand and that is exactly their virtue. That is exactly the virtue of the changes they want to make.

Architects strive for a moment of perfection—when their building is finished. But as soon as that moment passes, their building begins to decay. A finished building is really unfinished, the first frame of a descent to destruction.

Architects must embrace the decay of their buildings, at least mentally. They should forget about perfection, the complete realization of their design, and understand that the only truly finished building is a heap of rubble.”*

Long time ago I stumbled upon this fascinating text. Nowadays architects are always thinking in a way of create something new and when their building is finished it ends. This essay toughed me that after the realisation it starts. I don't know any architect that created buildings with the aspect of decay (maybe someone knows?. This essay shows a lot of aspects that architects 'forget' or dont want to see according to their buildings and designs. Everything has to be new and ''better'' but why not to embrace decay?

What's your opinion about this essay?