Architecture, Power and National Identity

Lawrence J Vale

Amazon price - Rs. 2782

The first edition of Architecture, Power, and National Identity, published in 1992, has
become a classic, winning the prestigious Spiro Kostof award for the best book in
architecture and urbanism. Lawrence Vale fully has fully updated the book, which
focuses on the relationship between the design of national capitals across the world and
the formation of national identity in modernity. Tied to this, it explains the role that
architecture and planning play in the forceful assertion of state power. The book is truly
international in scope, looking at capital cities in the United States, India, Brazil, Sri
Lanka, Kuwait, Bangladesh, and Papua New Guinea.

Contents

Preface to the second edition vii

Preface to the first edition xi

Part 1 The locus of political power 1

1 Capital and capitol: an introduction 3

2 National identity and the capitol complex 48

3 Early designed capitals: for union, for imperialism, for

independence 63

4 Designed capitals after World War Two: Chandigarh and Brasilia 121

5 Designed capitals since 1960 146

Part 2 Four postcolonial capitol complexes in search of

national identity 195

6 Papua New Guinea’s concrete haus tambaran 197

7 Sri Lanka’s island parliament 226

8 Precast Arabism for Kuwait 248

9 The acropolis of Bangladesh 279

10 Designing power and identity 321

Notes 347

Illustration credits 377

Index 379

The City as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity

Alexander C. Diener, Joshua Hagen
Amazon price - Rs. 3210
This interdisciplinary book considers national identity through the lens of urban spaces.
By bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, The City as Power provides
broad comparative perspectives about the critical importance of urban landscapes as
forums for creating, maintaining, and contesting identity and belonging. Rather than
serving as passive backdrops, urban spaces and places are active mediums for defining
categories of inclusion—and exclusion. With an international scope and ready appeal to
visual learners, the book offers a compelling survey of historical and contemporary
efforts to enact state ideals, express counter-narratives, and negotiate global trends in
cities. The contributors show how successive regimes reshape cityscapes to mirror their
respective socio-political agendas, perspectives on history, and assumptions of power.
Yet they must do so within the legal, ethnic, religious, social, economic, and cultural
geographies inherited from previous regimes. Exploring the rich diversity of urban
space, place, and national identity, the book compares core elements of identity projects
in a range of political, cultural, and socioeconomic settings. By focusing on the built form
and urban settings for social movements, protest, and even organized violence, this
timely book demonstrates that cities are not simply lived in but also lived through.