“Everything is absurd, but nothing is shocking, because everyone is accustomed to everything” – Rousseau about the modern city, 1761.
Architecture has an ambivalent power. We think of architecture as a mean to build buildings that succeed in their design to provide what the building is intended for. Nevertheless, sometimes buildings are intended for an agenda. It is supposed to be for the people who inhabit it; to be efficient and pleasing for them. However, more often, imposing works of architecture glorify the person who financed the project or sometimes the architect himself (a prominent example is the buildings designed by Frank Gehry).
If architecture has the power to impress and intimidate, who else than political leaders would want to use it for their own goals. A very relevant example of this phenomenon is the Hands of Victory in Baghdad, Iraq. The double arch was commissioned by former president Saddam Hussein and designed by Adil Kamil and Mohammed Ghani (inspired by a sketch made by Hussein himself!). The arch was to represent the military power of Iraq over Iran. During the American invasion of Iraq, it was one of the first monument to be looted and up for destruction. However, the disablement was postponed because of the strong negative symbolic impact it would have on the Iraqi population.
Thus, architecture has also a symbolic power carried by many aspects of the project: who built it, what for, what is it used for, who designed it etc… a building can carry a message and this message can be shaped by the person who has the power to make make the building. Too often, this power is in the hands of the commissioner, as to say the entity with the money.
Even so, the Edifice Complex argues that “architectural forms need not in themselves be the embodiment of a dictatorship”. This exemplifies modernity: an atomization of responsibility and involvement. The architect designs, the politician deals with power, the population deals with ideology and symbolism. Moreover, conceiving modernity for the people is a paradox. Making a pure object to be used by a society with a lifestyle in flux and constantly changing is impossible. The result is a city for the sake of a city and not for its inhabitant, a city that is not organic but conceptual, a city like Brasilia.