A Machine that Makes the Land Pay or an Irrelevant Discourse on Values: Architecture Under Capitalism, 1915-

Abstract

This thesis seeks to establish the economy as a fundamental concern within the architectural discipline. Whether it concerns the supposedly subordinate role of the architect to the client, developer, or another force that dictates financial interests, or whether it doubts architecture’s ability to execute proposed social agendas, crises within the discipline consistently reveal the economy in some way or another to be at the core of its anxieties. Buildings are expensive and not only depend on the adequate accumulation of resources in a capitalist economy for their realization but exist as a significant form of capital in and of themselves; as an art form, architecture will forever be tied to the economy in ways that other arts, such as writing, theater, sculpture etc. will never be.