The Politics of Space - Jeff Kipnis

Lecture date: 1993-03-04 Dedicated to the memory of Robin Evans, 'The Politics of Space' conference was organized by Mark Cousins. Jeff Kipnis argues that architects, in the belief that ideas, theories, motives or meanings could somehow be embodied in a building, have been too preoccupied with borrowing ideas from other disciplines to legitimate their work. This issue of embodiment can be held responsible for the relegation of architecture to the status of an applied art which cannot determine political space. Kipnis explains that throughout the history of architecture there have only been two models which sought to articulate democratic space - the grid and the collage - both now bankrupt. He outlines a potentially new paradigm for imagining democratic space.