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The architecture of neoliberalism: how contemporary architecture became an

instrument of control and compliance

Article  in  Planning Perspectives · October 2017

DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2018.1385755

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ISSN: 0266-5433 (Print) 1466-4518 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rppe20

The architecture of neoliberalism: how

contemporary architecture became an instrument
of control and compliance

Leslie Sklair

To cite this article: Leslie Sklair (2017): The architecture of neoliberalism: how contemporary
architecture became an instrument of control and compliance, Planning Perspectives

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 PLANNING PERSPECTIVES, 2017

BOOK REVIEW

The architecture of neoliberalism: how contemporary architecture became an instrument

of control and compliance, by Douglas Spencer, London, Bloomsbury, 2016, 213 pp., £20
(paperback)

In his preface, Douglas Spencer lists the main characters in this dense critique of contemporary political
and cultural theory as applied to architects and architecture. These include those he mobilizes in building
up his approach to neoliberalism in general and contemporary architecture in particular – Deleuze and
Guattari, Philip Mirowski, Michel Foucault, Theodor Adorno, Friedrich Hayek, Jean Baudrillard, and
Fredric Jameson – and those who he argues put neoliberal ideas into practice in their buildings (Foreign
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Office Architects – FOA, Zaha Hadid, and Rem Koolhaas). He says:

I also understand particular architects and theorists, in the arguments promoted and publicized in their
writings, as instrumental to a neoliberal agenda, whether by design or in effect. … The extensive analysis
of some of their writings … should be understood, in this spirit, as a critique of arguments and positions,
rather than as a criticism of the individuals who have signed their names to them. (xiii)
This is a strange statement, implying that perhaps these individuals do not fully understand what they are
writing (or, in the case of architects, what they are building). FOA is mainly represented in the writings of
Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Farshid Moussavi (and the critic Jeffrey Kipnis), the late Zaha Hadid through
the writings of her partner in her office Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), Patrik Schumacher, and Koolhaas
by himself and his firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).
The argument rests on two main pillars. The first is that neoliberalism is a totally different kind of
beast from ‘Marxian’ capitalism, and that to try to understand and explain it as an outcome of the
logic of capital is wrong (Spencer cites David Harvey’s well-known text as an example of this supposed
error). This idea is heavily influenced by Foucault’s concepts of governability and the self, turned by
Philip Mirowski and others into a theory of the ‘neoliberal thought collective’, or a neoliberal ‘way of
the world’. Spencer suggests that Marx and generations of Marxists have ignored such questions and
while there is some truth in this claim, Spencer himself ignores Marxist theorists most attuned to these
issues, notably Antonio Gramsci. While in no way denigrating the theorists Spencer prefers, it is an
on-going debate as to the extent to which Foucault et al. are imaginatively renaming (rebranding
would be a little too cynical) ideas which have been around for centuries. However, and more funda-
mental, Spencer fails to engage with key concepts in Marxist theory – notably socially necessary labour
time, and the dual character of the labour contained in commodities (abstract versus concrete labour).
These concepts strip bare the realities of all versions of capitalism, including neoliberalism (Spencer
does devote a whole chapter to ‘Labour Theory’, focused on intra-Marxist debates around the idea
of ‘immaterial labour’.)
The second pillar of the argument is more solidly constructed than the first. Spencer’s attempts to
demonstrate that contemporary architecture is influenced by the values that neoliberal-inclined capital-
ists embrace is amply illustrated by his painstaking analysis of the writings that have emanated from FOA,
ZHA, OMA, and others. He argues that while this architecture accounts for only a small fraction of the
built environment, it exerts a broad influence on architectural practice (doubtful), pedagogy (in some
architecture schools), and theory (doubtful). It is difficult to find solid evidence for or against these claims
of influence but, for example, in the 753-page Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory1 though the 28-
page index has dozens of items on capital and capitalism there are only 2 items on ‘neoliberal world’
 2 BOOK REVIEW

(none on neoliberalism per se), 6 on Foucault, 4 on ZHA, 6 on FAO, 6 on OMA, 2 on Zaera-Polo, none on
Schumacher or Kipnis – hardly ‘broad influence’ on theory (elite institutions, however magnificent like
the AA in London, are not representative). Spencer introduces so many nuances (each with its own novel
label) that his central argument often seems submerged. Helpfully, in his concluding brief chapter
(entitled ‘The necessity of Critique’), he provides a list of all the issues that neoliberal ideology and its
version of rationality impose on the world in general and architecture in particular. These include cyber-
netics, critique of planning, affirmations of participation, sensory experience, connectivity and inter-
action, denunciations of separation, distance, interpretation and critical reflection, championing of the
enterprising and creative individual ‘liberated from all constraints and at one with the environment [pro-
ducing its own model of subjectivity] … performative, creative, entrepreneurial’. Neoliberalism claims
that the market liberates us and creates optimistic, uncritical hybrid figures – cultural consumers, citi-
zen-consumers, student-entrepreneurs. Corporate websites inform us that FOA were responsible for
the London 2012 Olympic Park Master Plan; ZHA were responsible for Master Plans in Bilbao, Beijing,
Belgrade, Bratislava, and Istanbul; and OMA were responsible for dozens of Master Plans all over the
world. Of course, what Spencer means is that when neoliberals critique planning, what they don’t like
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is planning (especially by the state) that restricts the invisible hand of the market but in this neoliberals
are no different to any other capitalists, ready to accept massive subsidies from the state to enhance prof-
its. Spencer engages with this issue in a brief section on ‘Architecture and the Market’ which does not
mention profit at all. This may be the central weakness in the book – the failure to acknowledge ade-
quately the truism that architecture firms, like all businesses in capitalist society, are in business to
make profits, to supply the needs of clients (add to this a multiplicity of other motives – in the case of
architecture to create pleasing, ideally beautiful buildings).
Spencer critiques a mixture of well-known and relatively obscure buildings (for example, BMW
Leipzig by ZHA, CCTV in Beijing by Koolhaas/OMA, the Pompidou Centre in Paris by Renzo
Piano and Richard Rogers, a shopping mall in Istanbul and a college in London by FAO, the New
Academic Building for Cooper Union in New York by Morphosis, Selfridges in Birmingham by Future
Systems). He mobilizes the ‘high theory’ of folds and patterning in attempts to establish that all of
these buildings express neoliberal values and, no doubt, anyone in thrall to the theorists will see
these values (particularly the rhetoric of the abolition of hierarchies and collaborative creative
work) inscribed in the buildings. However, the following question comes to mind: could similar build-
ing be designed by architects with socialist values, who had clients who believed genuinely in the abol-
ition of hierarchies and the social value of collaborative work? Is it possible that the neoliberal rhetoric
of the architects themselves drives Spencer’s critique as much as (if not more than) what the buildings
actually look like?
This is not to dispute Spencer’s often scintillating deconstruction of the ways in which certain forms of
architecture express ideologies and truth games in capitalist society. However, the ‘high theory’ of folds
and patterning and ontologies of neoliberalism have a tendency to over-egg an already over-rich pudding.
Compared with ‘middle-range’ theories of architectural iconicity and starchitecture – a large and rapidly
expanding literature and totally ignored2 – Spencer’s book has a metaphysical air about it. While he does
acknowledge that most architecture exists within capitalist consumer society, he seems unable to appreci-
ate fully that architecture has always been an instrument of control and compliance. Capitalist globaliza-
tion (especially in its neoliberal form), through the institutions and ideologies of consumerism much
expanded in our digitalized world, is the latest phase in a phenomenon that predates capitalism and
will last as long as capitalism itself.

1
Crysler, Cairns, and Heynen, The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory.
2
Surveyed, for example, in Ponzini and Nastasi, Starchitecture; Sklair, The Icon Project.
 PLANNING PERSPECTIVES 3

Bibliography
Crysler, Greig, Stephen Cairns, and Hilde Heynen, The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory. Los Angeles: Sage, 2012.
Ponzini, Davide and Michele Nastasi, Starchitecture: Scenes, actors, and spectacles in contemporary cities. New York:
Monacelli, 2016
Sklair, Leslie, The Icon Project: Architecture, cities, and capitalist globalization. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017

Leslie Sklair
London School of Economics and Political Science
l.sklair@lse.ac.uk
© 2017 Leslie Sklair
https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2018.1385755
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