SV: seeking refs on how artifacts (buildings/power) mediate power

The Gothic cathedrals was built to serve not only pious but also (perhaps
even more) political and commercial interests.
The classic work I think is Gimpel. Svanberg is giving an excellent account
on the process and motives around these mega projects. (Few building
projects today can rival the ambitions of the cathedrals; for instance how
many modern arenas can house the entire city's population?)
(This would be in your first strand.)

Gimpel, J. (1983). The cathedral builders. London: Cresset Library, 1988.
Svanberg, J. (1983). Master masons. Sweden: Carmina.

For the third strain I would suggest looking for studies in re-habitation of
old industrial buildings and areas, for instance the Isle of dogs in London.
Even if I don't have any good references, these developments should offer
fertile ground for research on the significance of certain buildings and how
these develop over time: from top-modern to backwater industry, to squatting
and on to top-modern up-market dwelling.

/Lars


**************************************
Lars Albinsson
lars.albinsson@...
+ 46 (0) 70 592 70 45

Affiliations:
Maestro Management AB www.maestro.se
Calistoga Springs Research Institute www.calistoga.se 
School of Business and Informatics
University of Borås www.hb.se
Linköping University www.liu.se
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Skickat: den 29 juni 2009 09:46
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Ämne: seeking refs on how artifacts (buildings/power) mediate power

Hello All,

I’m looking for references on the topic of how artifacts (buildings,
products) mediate power. It seems that across both buildings and products
there are perhaps three strands in the literature.  The first strand
concerns how those in power use artifacts to mediate power (for example the
Winner, “Do artifacts have politics” debate, Dovey, and Leach). A second
strand, perhaps emerging from the usability/accessibility/participatory
side, concerns how objects or buildings “empower” or enable users. For
products, this strand materializes in “usability” discourse (eg Donald
Norman’s work) and in recent “behavior steering design” research that aims
to increase energy and environmental efficiency in product use (for example
Bhamra et. al. and Lockton et. al.).

On the architecture side I’m less familiar with a literature on empowerment
through architecture. Empowerment is in the margins of many discussions and
projects, but I’d like to get a few references that deal with
“power/empowerment” issues head-on with some connection to underlying
theory. I imagine this strand of literature is tied to participatory design
(eg design/build?), universal design (for disability, age) but may also be
tied to operability (eg openable windows) and flexibility in building
program and user adaptation (along the lines of Brand’s “How Buildings
Learn”).

Across both buildings and products I think there is a third strand in which
users adapt (“hack” or “transgress” if you like) artifacts to protest
existing power relations. Here Otto von Busch’s “self passages”
(http://www.selfpassage.org/) comes to mind and I welcome references that
look at this issue more explicitly and perhaps theoretically.

I welcome other thoughts on references in any of the above areas. Here are a
few longer cites for mentions above:

Bhamra, T. A., D. Lilley, and T. Tang. 2008. Sustainable Use: Changing
consumer behavior through product desgin. In Changing the Change. Turin,
Italy: Umberto Allemandi & Co.
Lockton, Dan, David Harrison, and Neville Stanton. 2008. Making the user
more efficient: Design for sustainable behavior. International Journal of
Sustainable Engineering preprint April 2008.
Dovey, Kim. 1999. Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form. Edited by
T. A. Markus and A. D. King, The Architext Series. London: Routledge.
Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do Artefacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109:121-136.
[also various rebuttals]
Brand, Stewart.  1994. How Buildings Learn. New York: Viking.
Norman, Donald. 2002. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
Leach, Neil. 1999. "Architecture or Revolution" in Architecture and
Revolution, edited by Neil Leach. London, Routledge.

Regards,
Ann


Ann Thorpe
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dept of Design, Development, Environment & Materials
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom

Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB, United Kingdom

ann@...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
book: The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability (www.designers-atlas.net)
& blog: http://designactivism.net
discussion list: SUSDESIGNTEACH

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