ancient cities

36 Architecture
Geist, Johann Friedrich. 1983. Arcades: The History of a
Building Type. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hemyng, Bracebridge. 1967. “The Prostitution Class
Generally.” In London Labour and the London Poor,
London Morning Chronicle 1861–2, Vol. 4, edited by
H. Mayhew and B. Hemyng. London: Frank Cass.
MacKeith, Margaret. 1985. Shopping Arcades: A
Gazetteer of British Arcades 1817–1939. London:
Mansell.
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Westminster, Part 2, North of Piccadilly.” The Survey
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Night Scenes of the Frauds, Frolics, Manners and
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Commemoration of the Great Exhibition. London:
J. Tallis.
Ware, Samuel. “A Proposal to Build Burlington Arcade”
(16 March 1808) and “Schematic Plans for the
Burlington Arcade and Burlington House” (1815,
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Academy of Arts Drawing Collection, London.
Ar c H i t e c t u r e
Architecture refers both to those parts of the built
environment that are designed by architects and
the collective designation of the profession. This
basic definition is complicated by a number of factors,
not least of which is the fact that the types of
buildings that can “properly” be considered architecture
is of significant controversy and struggle,
as is the right of designers to be recognized as
architects. These significant questions are assessed
in this entry against the backdrop of architecture’s
complex and contingent social production. Indeed,
it is architecture’s social foundation—rather than
its existence either an object or as a formal practice—that
leads social scientists to seek to reveal
the many “external” social constraints that
impinge on architectural production. Arguably
urban studies scholars are uniquely well placed in
this regard, as the frameworks that underpin
urban studies research encourage those scholars to
situate architecture relative to the broader urban
process and to recognize the contested nature of
the political economies of cities, of which architecture
is an important component.
The Study of Architecture as Practice
One of the distinctive elements of architecture as a profession
is the reliance on clients for the resources—
including land and other capital—necessary for its
practice. At one level this client dependency can be
explained by the inherently expensive endeavor of
the design and realization of buildings, but this
connection must also be understood in light of the
desire of the powerful to materialize their status in
urban space. Studies of the architectural profession
have frequently sought to develop this theme
through revealing the extent to which architects’
reliance on commissions from dominant political
and economic actors conditions—and is subsequently
legitimated through—their practice. This
has been a particularly major concern in the urban
studies tradition, where research on the political
economy of architectural practice is among the
most successful of social science contributions on
the subject, not least because such studies can be
situated in established “sociology of the professions”
frameworks. By and large such research
suggests that, in spite of the aforementioned
dependence on capitalists and states for commissions
and other resources, architects frequently
reveal a highly ambiguous relationship with such
social forces. In interviews and discussions of their
practice, architects tend toward emphasis of their
role in the production of socially meaningful buildings
that connect to place, identities, and broader
social values at the expense of a foregrounding of
the interconnections between architecture and the
states and capitalist enterprises that commission it.
Commenting on this tension, the architectural
theorist Diane Ghirardo suggests that positioning
architecture within an aesthetic frame serves to
divert attention away from the politics of architecture,
including its symbiotic relationship with economic
and political elites and their projects.
Research that situates architectural practice
within particular urban contexts, political regimes,
and capitalist models problematizes architecture’s
claims to autonomy from these processes; the profession’s
position somewhere between an art, primarily
concerned with aesthetics and the creation
of socially meaningful forms and spaces, and as a
primarily functional response to material issues,
such as shelter, is an important consideration in
this regard. American sociologist Robert Gutman’s