Towards A Critical Geography of Architecture: The Case of an Ersatz Colosseum

This paper argues that an architectural geography should be about more than just representation. For both as a practice and a product architecture is performative in the sense that it involves ongoing social practices through which space is continually shaped and inhabited. I examine previous geographies of architecture from the Berkeley School to political semiotics, and argue that geographers have had relatively little to say about the practical and affective or ‘nonrepresentational’ import of architecture. I use the controversy over Vancouver’s new Public Library building as a springboard for considering how we might conceive of a more critical and politically progressive geography of architecture. The library’s Colosseum design recalls the origins of western civilization, and is seen by some Vancouverites to be an insensitive representation of a multicultural city of the Pacific. I seek to push geographers beyond this contemplative framing of architectural form towards a more active and embodied engagement with the lived building.