Emancipatory Horizons: Architecture, Capitalism, and Radical Politics - Seminar Presentation -...

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Emancipatory Horizons: Architecture, Capitalism, and Radical PoliticsPatricio De StefaniAbstractArchitecture has always been immanently tied to social change, but also to social reproduction. Is an emancipatory practice of architecture still possible? This question cannot be answered without examine the relations between architecture and capitalism throughout the twentieth century. What prevents architecture from engaging in radical social and spatial transformation? To find out if architecture can still have a progressive function in our current conditions we have to unravel the elemental relation between architecture and capital. The aim is to determine the role of architecture in the reproduction of this social system. Concepts like value, commodity fetishism, landed property, and ground rent are crucial to understand the spatial logic of capitalist accumulation. This research will explore these theoretical issues through concrete historical examples that changed the course of architecture from a revolutionary perspective. First, it will look at the architecture of the great liberal-bourgeois revolution of the eighteenth century; Secondly, soviet architecture and its role in the Russian revolution; and thirdly, the radical techno-utopias of the sixties and their aftermath. Architecture needs to acknowledge its autonomy from the cities that capitalism has produced, but also its dependence on social relations of production, if it wishes to address radical change.Keywords: Emancipation, Late Capitalism, Production of Architecture, Radical Politics, Revolution, Utopia

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