Architecture isn’t neutral. It’s been shaping political power for millennia |
Among his other ongoing projects, US President Donald Trump has spent much of his second term on a renovation. The Oval Office has been converted into a miniature palace festooned with gold bling, the rose garden has been paved over, a triumphal arch is planned and the new ballroom will be larger than the White House.
Why bother turning Washington into a royal “court”? Well, architecture makes a big difference to the ways power is practised and courted.
While it’s easy to see buildings and public spaces as somewhat neutral or superficial, it’s not. Like the frame of a painting, it frames the spaces in which politics takes place, both literally and symbolically.
The spaces and symbols of power work together to choreograph the action and shape the narrative. We can see this throughout architectural history. Here are some global examples.
The Forbidden City in Beijing is a nested set of walled and gated precincts with multiple courtyards, within which the Emperor was largely hidden from public view.
Here, power was sustained by being invisible.
When the five-year-old Tongzhi was crowned in 1861, his mother, the Empress Dowager Cixi, placed him on a throne in front of a thin curtain and governed from behind it.
Everyone knew what was going on, but the legitimating imagery was........