Book Review: The Architecture of Neoliberalism by Douglas Spencer
Neoliberalism is a multiform project [1] that exercises a widespread influence over current politics, economy, and society. For this reason, the implications of this form of laissez-faire capitalism and its market-oriented ideology have become a significant concern for scholars during the last 20 years. However, if compared to social sciences and urban studies, architectural scholarship seems still relatively detached from this debate. As a result, many of the unique traits of neoliberalism expressed through architecture – a practice that quintessentially manifests power and socio-economic conditions in the realm of space – remain insufficiently discussed.
Published
in 2016, The Architecture of
Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control
and Compliance by Douglas Spencer, contributes to fill this gap. The book is composed of
six chapters. Chapter one set out definitions and, by following
Foucault’s idea of ‘governmentality’ [2], individuates
the primary concern of neoliberalism.
Chapter two and three explore, respectively, how neoliberal agenda came to
intersect with the ideas about society and space produced by the counterculture
of the 1960s, and how it slowly got its way into architecture. Chapter four to six further detail the relationship
between neoliberalism and architecture. By theorizing and shaping new spaces for labor, culture, or education, the projects and the architectural
theories discussed in the book are revealed
as active and complacent agents of the neoliberal project.
‘Theory has been worked over until it can be put to work for and within neoliberalism. The ‘smooth’ and the ‘folded’ have been instrumentalized in the affirmation of flexibility and compliance, ‘complexity’ employed to dissimulate neoliberal imperatives as the laws of nature. The way of the market comes to appear as the way of the world, and vice versa. Through theory, architecture had fashioned itself as a service provider for the ‘real’ of the market, a resource for the spatial articulation of neoliberal modes of managerialism.’ (p.72)
To govern and reprogram the subjects’
‘ In the atrial spaces of the public interior – a shopping mall by Thomas Heatherwick, a library by UNStudio, a port terminal by Reiser + Umemoto – vision is rendered confluent with the circuits marked by the exposed walkways, the strips of lighting, the panels and grilles ribboned around its interior surfaces. The eye is trained in conformity with a condition of elegantly modelled and perpetual mobility. There is no goal or destination for it to fix on. Vanishing points are difficult to discern amid the succession of torqued forms and overlapping arcs. The neoliberal eye does not apprehend, calculate or gauge; it is enjoined to project itself into the play of movement presented to it, to surf the field of vision, revelling in the sensuous freedoms offered up to it.’ (p.158)
If Spencer’s main argument is convincing, it is also characterized by a few noticeable limitations. By focusing only on a selection of influential architects, the author seems to limit too arbitrarily the field of inquiry. Certainly, the impact of these thinkers and designers on architectural practice cannot be denied. However, it feels like this claim could have been better articulated and used to narrow down the scope of the book. Similarly, apart from theory and culture, only a few mentions are made to the broader context in which these buildings are produced. In order to grasp more of the many and elusive faces of neoliberal architecture, as well as the policies and the corporate activities that concur to their realization, it would have been useful to open a more inclusive discussion.
Overall, The Architecture of Neoliberalism is a commendable effort. Notably because one of its most significant merits is to bring forth a topic that is still neglected. The complex relationship between neoliberalism, architectural theory and practice deserves more attention from scholars, critics, and practitioners, and Douglas Spencer offers a valuable contribution in this direction. His claim for critique is equally praiseworthy. Criticism allows uncovering the concealed agenda of neoliberal architecture. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it offers an empowering perspective to students and architects involved with a profession that, too often, seems to have lost much of its purpose in the frantic run towards the market.
Notes
[1] David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005).
[2] Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population : Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78, ed. Michel Senellart, François Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana, trans. Graham Burchell (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).