Warriors in Search of a Public: Dispositional and Political Modalities of Presenting in Architecture

Architectural presentations provide a powerful way to witness the political dimension of design and the process of formation of urban publics. I will follow how an architectural presentation unfolds to demonstrate that the political is not any longer situated on the side of the individual architect. Instead, power is finely distributed in the objective tendency imposed by the situation of presenting. Following the specific techniques used by architects to re-enact buildings and urban concepts, I will showcase the distinctive ontological dynamics of the formation of urban publics and will illustrate how architects make urban arguments of civic importance. I will illustrate that architectural presentations play an active role in ‘doing politics’ by ‘materially refiguring’ the practices of designers and affected people, and contribute to the formation of publics through architectural means.