rchitecture today includes a r emarkable plurality of built
environments, distributed globally and diachronically.
Yet a much narrower usage emerged within the
expansionist programme of Western capitalism ·when the
word appeared in 15th-century Europe to distinguish elite practice
from mundane building. Buildings that deserved t he capital-A
appellation were expensive demonstrations, executed by elites
and presuming a comparatively generous budget from the outset.
Leon Battista Alberti, taking up Vitruvius's triad (in which cost
is filtered through use, durability and aesthetic address), nonetheless
also focused on architecture as a tool 'necessary ... to the acquisition
and establishment of an Empire' for which the expertise of an
ar chitect was essential.
The profession of, and discourse on, architecture in this context
ar e intimately t ied to a sizeable outlay of money in building projects.
Often dedicated to the highest intellectual ideals, such buildings
were nonetheless also intended to r ealise profit through investment,
sp eculat ion and conquest (Sven Beckert's 'war capitalism'). And yet,
theories and histories of architecture have steadfastly treated t he
economic underpinnings of building projects as epiphenomen al
to their true value. In fact, implicit associat ions between
architecture and capitalism that were present in early Modernism
gave way to a later phase that eschewed them. This phase, most local
to the 20th century, emerged ·with an equally implicit programme
of serving mass audiences and providing social betterment in the
face of 19th-century critiques of capitalist exploitation. All the
stranger, then, t hat in a p eriod in which mass democratisation
movements took shape, architects and t h eir writers exer cised
greater silence on the socioecon omic agen cy of building than earlier
Western ar chitect s who aspired to build villas and palaces.
P art of t h e difficulty rests in finding eii'ective methods to unlock
historical knowledge of architectur e as capitali m, without
r einstating notions of an implacably exploitative or malevolent
force over which individual buildings or people have little agency.
Frankfurt School critiques of the politics of cultural practices ar e
virtually unan swerable for this r eason. Yet architectural history
and theory have an untapped resource through which to connect
capitalism to buildings in a way that opens up n ew po ibilities
rather than closing them down. :Might t he connection between
money, cost and building production transform the built
environment fi·om witless tool of market for ces into crafty means
of resistance~ In other words, questions of how much things cost,
how costs ar e balanced, and where the money goes in large and
complex building projects could unlock new ways of understanding
architecture in society. Such connections, operable through time,
also might be more consciously deployed in contemporary building
(polit ics). The great economic historians of t he 20th century
(Lucien Febvre, :Marc Bloch, Ferdinand Braudel) sought this kind
of knowledge beyond the Hmits of the built environment. Their echo
in environmental histor y beckons to us today.
How would architectural history and theory change, were cost
to b ecome an analytical rubric for assessing change over time?
'Everyone knows' a luxury building costs mor e than others,
yet architectural historians have been reticent when it comes
to connecting that knowledge to its sociopolitical context. Looking
back to writing that accepted the triad (implicitly or explicit ly),
cost adds an index of analysis against which to calibrate measures
of building use, structural fitness and beauty. Architects and
historians have not limited their purview to these three for some
time, yet, as a datum that immediately introduces a quantitative idea
of value to offset the qualitative con cerns of ar chitecture cult ure,
money cost indexes other aspects of building. Of two buildings with
silnilar quality X, that of lower cost would immediately rise in value
by offering more quality (of experience, of aesthetic address, of social
engineering, of public good) for less quantity (of currency). This index
describes a fundamental mechanism of capitalism: get more out for
less put in (or, get something for nothing). I t is hardly surprising that
Images from Francisco
Mujica's 1929 History
of the Skyscraper
included the '100-Story
City in the "Neo-
American Style"'
(opposite), and the links
that Mujica, a Peruvian
architect, detected
between US skyscraper
setbacks and pre-
Columbian pyramids
of Central America
(below)I11Ill
Dal"'lUCPOii t tO" CONC::kAST Of' N"'III.,_.UIC.A"f I('..AN U t Aav c:tf n;& TC:T\MI't OOtfQuUTn·