2024-09-14_Book search+use rag

### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 1617, distance: 0.742) > What can the architecture and urban design of capitol complexes accomplish? Which of these accomplishments can the designer hope to control? These are two very different questions. The problem of national identity, while it may be addressed by the siting and symbolism of a capitol complex, is not, in the end, something an architect or urban designer can firmly mold. Architects and urban designers must recognize that, even when a building exemplifies certain of its properties more than others, all symbolism depends on interpretation. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 134, distance: 0.754) > Three Kinds of Modern Capital What follows, then, is an overview of examples of three types of modern capital cities, emphasizing two things: the reasons the capital was founded and the spatial relation between the capitol and the capital. The first two varieties, evolved capitals and evolved capitals renewed, are discussed in this chapter, while the third, designed capitals, is introduced here but becomes the subject of Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Cities in all three categories feature periods of large-scale urban design intervention in governmental sectors; no urban evolution proceeds at a uniformly even pace. To differentiate among the categories is therefore to identify a continuum and to recognize that each city is being observed from the perspective of its present-day development. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 23, distance: 0.763) > Although this is a book principally focused on the urban design and architecture of capital cities, it is not intended as a broad overview of capital city planning. Since 1992, several other books, including Planning Europe’s Capital Cities, Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities, Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities, Representing the State: Capital City Planning in the Early Twentieth Century, and Capital Cities—Les Capitales have each provided some large-scale comparative perspective. These have been accompanied by numerous singlecity monographs on capital cities, ranging from London to Abuja. My task here, as in the first edition, remains quite different from these other quests. Rather than describe the overall evolution of particular cities, my challenge is to explicate how the designs of particular parts of these places—the places of national government—help to clarify the structure of power in that society. Design, in this view, is not some value-neutral aesthetic applied to efforts at urban development but is, instead, an integral part of the motives driving that development. Though many urban designers and architects often seem to regard good design as somehow independent from social and political factors affecting its production and use, design efforts are influenced by politics in at least two important ways. First, architectural and urban design proposals may be subject to challenge by a variety of groups during the planning process. Second, political values, whether tacit or explicit, are encoded in the resultant designs. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 352, distance: 0.768) > Washington, D.C., Canberra, New Delhi, Ankara, Chandigarh, Brasília, Abuja, and Dodoma, together with more-brief mention of several others, do raise a broad spectrum of issues about power and identity and serve as a useful prelude to the more in-depth discussion of four designed capitol complexes in Part Through an examination of the plans of these cities and the forces that helped produce them, I emphasize the reasons each was founded and analyze the urban and architectural presence of its capitol complex. By assessing decisions made with regard to architecture and planning, I want to elucidate the larger aims and biases that underlie these momentous partnerships among government leaders, local people, and designers. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 96, distance: 0.774) > Several examples of new capital cities are discussed in the first part of this book, while the latter category—capitol complexes—constitutes the major focus of the second. In this latter group, the construction of a new capital has, in effect, been distilled to its programmatic and symbolic essence. The capitol complex, by which I mean not only the capitol building itself but also the relation of that building to the assemblage of structures around it, is designed to house the means of government and to communicate this government visually to the governed. Not all capitol complexes contain exactly the same set of institutional elements or arrange them in the same hierarchy. Some juxtapose the parliamentary function with judicial and executive functions; some relate the legislature to the presence of other nearby national institutions such as museums and libraries; others isolate the capitol from everything else. Ironically, many of the more imposing capitol complexes deliberately exclude the strongest government powers. As architecture and as urban design, these places are necessarily infused with symbolism and are revealing cultural products. Examination of these parliamentary complexes offers an opportunity to assess certain architectural and urban design devices that seem markedly prominent in central areas of capital cities. This is not to suggest that any city (even ones established by executive decree) is solely formed by the actions of the state building for itself. It is merely an acknowledgment that a book that seeks to be both comparative and brief cannot hope to address the full range of pressing issues affecting contemporary urbanization. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 300, distance: 0.785) > When one reflects upon the design of a new capital city or the architecture of a national assembly building within it, it seems appropriate to consider exactly what is being assembled. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 348, distance: 0.795) > Rulers in every capital city express power and promote national identity through the design and construction of government buildings and capitol districts. Many cities that have maintained their status as capitals over the course of many centuries, I have argued, have assimilated such buildings into diverse quarters of their urban fabrics. Where democracy has been long established, there is less need to symbolize it in a single prominent place. Instead, over time, the institutions of democratic government and the buildings housing aspects of national culture become dispersed across the city. Newly designed capitals are pressed to accelerate the display of national institutions, since this is precisely the function any respectable capital is expected to serve. If a new capital is designed for a new state, the pressures on capital symbolism are tripled. Not only must the leadership push for rapid proliferation of national cultural institutions, it must also cope with the problem of defining what the national culture can be, while seeking assurance that this definition will serve those in power. In designed capitals created under conditions of colonialism, the architectural and urban practices of the core metropolis are transplanted to the dependent periphery; even in capitals created after independence, some of these old patterns of power relations tend to persist. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 27, distance: 0.796) > This book investigates the nature of the relations between built form and political purposes through close examination of a global array of design commissions in capital cities (especially government districts and major buildings within them). These avowedly "national" structures have been clearly motivated by political pressures. At some level, those buildings express the political balance of power in the society that produces them. In this sense, the architecture and urban design of government districts can become a diagnostic tool for understanding political relationships. Architecture helps to reveal who matters in a complex and plural society. It is the setting through which we express ideals like democracy, or freedom, or other kinds of national values, and this colors the way the citizen sees and perceives the government. For better or worse, our buildings serve as standins for those that govern us. Most of us even in small places do not have the luxury of direct interaction with those who rule the places where we live. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 919, distance: 0.799) > Though I have mentioned several capitol complexes, discussion of them has thus far been directed more to their urban design than to their architecture. In the first part of this book, I have wanted to demonstrate the development of patterns in the relationship between capital and capitol. I have emphasized the placement of government buildings in relation to the plan of their city, while saying relatively little about the design of the buildings themselves. Where a whole new capital city has been designed, it is these macrosymbolic design issues that seem most important. In such places, buildings are inseparable from the vistas that frame them. The capitol complex, as the major focal point of a large and complex design, often has the visual support structure of an entire city to undergird its spatial importance. In cases in which a government commissions a new capitol without also commissioning a new capital to frame it, however, the situation differs substantially. ### architecture-power-and-national-identity.txt (line: 264, distance: 0.824) > Though much of capital city design may involve residential areas that seem to have little connection to government functions, the social and spatial hierarchies of the city must be seen as a totality. Privileged sectors for work and privileged places for residence are often intimately and complexly intertwined. Capital city design involves not only a new center of government, but also a new container in which to locate this center. The spatial resolution of this capitol-capital relationship can be immensely revealing of the political relationship between the governors and the governed.