Rorty (1992.

2) Power is the ability to define & control circumstances & events so that one can
influence things to go in the direction of ones interests.
Empowerment (is) the capacity to imagine, construct and inhabit a better built environment.
Dimensions & Dialectics of Power

Orientation/Disorientation
Built form can orient, disorient, & reorient its subjects through spatial framings of
everyday life
Publicity/Privacy
Built form segments space in a manner that places certain kinds of people & action
under conditions of surveillance while privileging other kinds of people & action as
private.
Segregation/Access
Boundaries & pathways can segregate places by status, gender, race, culture, class 7 age,
creating privileged enclaves of access, amenity, & community
Nature & History
Built form inevitably uses metaphor & constructs mythology through policies &
representation. Historically constructed meanings can be naturalized to legitimate
authority.
Stability/Change
Built forms produce illusions of permanence, of a stable social order, of the impossibility
of change. Likewise, images of dynamism & innovation can produce an illusion of
progress.
Authentic/Fakes
We inhabit a world full of simulacra & representation. The quest for authenticity is a
quest for authority, enmeshed in issues of power.
Identity/Difference
Places symbolize socially constructed identities & differences - of persons, cultures,
institutions, and nations. The politics of identity & difference is mediated in an arena of
special representation & the inertia of buildings can fix identity over time.
Dominance/Docile
A dominant building mass or volume signifies the control over resources necessary to its
production. Relative scale volume cannot be divorced from discourses of domination &
intimidation.
Place/Ideology
The experience of place has the capacity to move us deeply, to ground our being to
open the question of spirit. Yet the very potency of place experience renders it
particularly vulnerable to the ideological appropriation of power.