Buildings & Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types

Rating:
Summary: It's about micro & macro-power within architecture
Review: I'm 26 - a postgraduate student who's writing the thesis-design of architecture at Depart. of Postgraduate Arch. - Bandung Institute of Technlogy - Indonesia.
To tell the inside meaning of this book trully is to tell you about the concept of power of Foucault's. If you have interest in fields of philosophy, culture studies and architecture that related each other, this book can helpfully to explained how far architecture had infiltrated by the power, both power of institution or power of individuals. Like Edward T. Hall on 'The Hidden Dimension' this book explained the relation between individuals and institution within architecture more specific, it's mean how programmatic (function) and form (type or typology) had polluted by 'outsider-mission' of architecture we called power !
It can be more brighten your mind if you had the Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish - The birth of prison'. This book speak the same topic but the different are the medium. On Markus we can see how architecture polluted by 'the power' but on Foucault's we've told how 'the bodies' can be the object of power. And surprisely this Foucault's tell us how the power conquers the bodies from times to times even in Architecture of Prisons, Schools, Hospitals and Workshops ! Foucault's took the model of prison of Jeremy Bentham's PANOPTICON to explain the model of power wich implied to the bodies in every area of live and logos that he named PANOPTICISM, including within architecture !
Both Bentham's Panopticon or Foucault's Panopticism were talked about power within opposite perspective, and now we have Markus that has the same ideas to Foucault's thinking. Markus had juxtaposed the relation of power within every type of general-use building from the age of enlightenment within the text, diagram or figure that absolutely clear and enlight our knowledge and mind . It focused how programmatic being used by the power to guiding bodies to it's or his goals first by the sequences, and how the type of buildings 'bracketted' bodies in its or his (power) motive.
Finally, this books tell us how the inter-textuality within architecture that we can find power or social life's episteme inside. I use this book as main source of idea after Bentham's and Foucault's to write my design thesis on 'Architecture Without Frontier - A revisionary design to panopticism within architecture' wich still have writing/design 'till september 2002.