“Architecture (and its sister discipline town planning) is essentially political; for centuries it has been used to create the infrastructure and the institutional icons for nation states, it has been deployed as a tool to force people into certain behavioural modes and it has been instrumental in creating the visions of future cities and landscapes, that are needed to mobilize massive amounts of state and corporate power. Architecture however struggles with this responsibility.

Often it denies it, refuses to be confronted with it or has simply lost the ability to deal with it. Nowhere does this become so strongly apparent as in the debate as to whether architecture can somehow be blamed for the social unrest, the civic frustration and sometimes violent anger that we have witnessed over the past decades in cities that are going through massive urban transformation projects. Reaffirming the political dimension of architecture, and asking, demanding, that it takes responsibility for its political role is what this lecture is about.” Says Wouter Vanstiphout.