Equality and Theatre Architecture

There are plenty of spatial concepts that would be worthwhile discussing in relation to a “politics of space”: chaos, infinity, utopia, the multiplicity of worlds, and void, to name but a few. For centuries, a mere mention of these meant risking your neck—one need only think of Giordano Bruno. Alexandre Koyré's famous book From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, which reads almost like a narrative of progress, fails to mention that the Renaissance did no more than rediscover these ancient concepts of space. ¹ However, I do not wish to reflect on these kinds of mind spaces, be they mathematical or symbolic, but rather on concrete, architectural spaces. A careful look at the power of these spaces is all it takes to realize that every step of ours has already been planned or programmed by others, that we choose to subjugate ourselves in our daily lives and willingly submit to the rule of architecture. We obey walls, barriers, lines, and signs. We are subjects of architecture. The very fact that we can orient ourselves, or walk, drive, and fly through space points to the effectiveness of architectural power. Although we may find comfort in conjuring up a utopian architecture, free from constraint and control, concrete architectures related to utopias do in truth exist.