




Power | Issue no.03
location - Caliper Journal
about - Caliper Journal is an independent, youth-led architecture journal from Melbourne (Naarm)
type - publication
year - 2018
status - Complete, dispatched
editors - Nicola Cortese, Lauren Crocket, Stephanie Pahnis and Senesios Frangos
guest editor - Amy Evans
Architecture, since its historical foundations, has been used as a tool for expressing, implementing and symbolising power in societies. Architects have shaped our buildings and cities, yet it has always been at the bidding of regimes of power; emperors, governments, churches, companies and wealthy individuals.
Even the very first recorded words of architectural theory are a glowing dedication, written by Vitruvius, to the emperor Augustus – the most powerful man on Earth. Architecture was used as a means of homogenising the Roman Empire through its continuous deployment of the classical language. The language of corporate architecture plays a similar role today.
Is it the case then, that architecture is fundamentally bound to those with power?
And, what is its relationship to those without it?