BUILDING CHANGE. ARCHITECTURE, POLITICS AND CULTURAL AGENCY

Building Change investigates the relationships between power, space and architecture in this time of rapid change. It discusses the dynamic between power and building and lays out the spatial strategies those in power use to manipulate and control the physical world. These include segregation, marginalization, colonialism and globalization. In the past fifty years, with the shifting of power throughout the world, the motivations behind such strategies have been vigorously challenged. Resistance has come in part through the reassertion of agency by subject peoples: through political and economic action as well as cultural production. However, the reallocation of power alone cannot erase the spatial imprint of previous attitudes. Altering the organization of space, and opening up access to those represented in it, is a long-term endeavor. Lisa Findley argues that architecture, as a primary participant in the production of space, has an important role to play in supporting these changes.