The Architecture of State Bureaucracy: reassessing the built prodicution of (colonial) governments

The subsequent cultural, material and spatial turns in political historiography have brought about a cross-fertilization between political and architectural history in the last two decades. The spaces in which politics take place and the political implications of architecture have become a focus of interest both for political and architectural historians. However, this encounter has strengthened the tendency to view politics primarily as a representational activity, rather than an act of governance. Hence, historians have privileged the study of what Walter Bagehot, when writing on the English constitution in 1873, called the “dignified parts” of the State: Houses of Parliament, State Museums, but also Embassies, National World’s Fair Pavilions, etc. Buildings which house the “efficient parts” of the State – the ministries, the public administrations, etc. – have hitherto remained largely neglected in academic research. In this session, we are interested in investigating this second, more mundane built production of the State, aligning us with the argument of Henry Russell-Hitchcock’s 1947 article that the “architecture of bureaucracy” is worthy of (scholarly) attention as much as is the “architecture of genius”. More in particular, we want to address the norms and forms that inform such governmental buildings as well as the actors involved in their design and construction. We invite papers that tackle questions via a case study based discussion, such as: How was the organization of the State (centralized vs. decentralized) reflected in its built apparatus? How does the siting, the architectural language as well as the interior spatial distribution of State buildings illustrate the ways in which the State mediated its position vis-à-vis the citizen? To what extent did the government develop particular building types, and what do these tell us about the desire of the State to improve its efficiency? Was their design underscored with notions of Taylorism for instance? What constituted the technocratic building apparatus of the State and what were the networks of power and know-how implied in official bodies like Public Work Departments that constitute what Peter Scriver for the British colonial context has referred to as the “Scaffolding of Empire”? Papers should be interpretative rather than descriptive in nature, and can present case studies within the time frame 1918-1970. We do not set limitations in terms of geographical scope but request that when the focus is on the Architecture of State Bureaucracy in colonial territories, the authors also situate it in comparison to the situation “at home”.