BALA
CONFLICT OF AGENCY Alex Bala, M.A. Modernism sought to extend architecture’s agency towards fulfilling political and socioeconomic goals; those that were, by and large, aligned with utopian visions. It believed that architecture would be the catalyst for political and socioeconomic change. This conviction was most forcefully expressed in Le Corbusier’s rallying cry: “Architecture or Revolution.”
The choice is clear, either architecture fixes society’s ills or people will revolt. This conviction was short-lived, however, as Modernism was co-opted by neoliberal forces that continued the status quo of capitalist expansion in the twentieth century. Manfredo Tafuri points out that Modernism was used to accelerate the growth of capital, which in turn led to increased social and economic inequality. As a reaction, Postmodernism understood that any form of direct agency was misguided. It retreated into negative critical/rhetorical modes that abandoned the question of agency altogether. In our contemporary condition, architecture needs to find a middle-ground, one that resides between Modernism’s over-extension of architecture’s agency into extraneous domains and Postmodernism’s non-agency through negative practice. The challenge today is to reclaim architecture’s agency in its own right; to locate where it has existed all along; and to adapt it to meet our present and future needs.
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