ABSTRACT
The architectural complex studied so far, the Forbidden City, may now be understood as an apparatus of the state in the Ming and Qing dynasty. Within the large, geo-political composition of the empire, it was completed as a core structure with the rest of the capital in 1420. As the centre of the capital in a centralized empire, this colossal built form, this mega-architecture, claimed a dominating centrality ‘all under heaven’. Approaching the capital, spatial and political centralities converged into one, in an architectural—urban—geographical complex. Analysing this setting carefully, layers of spatial and political realities reveal themselves as evidence of a state machine constructed with principles of a pyramid.
