ABSTRACT
Architecture draws ideas and influences from the arts and academic disciplines that reinforce systems of architectural logic, but it is selective, and evident alliances are likely to reflect the ideological and intellectual content of individual mentalities. Papers assembled by Leach represent ideas that are fundamental to phenomenology and structuralism as positions that have some correspondence with architectural mentalities. Arguably, the value of Walter Benjamin's work lies in its sensitivity to meanings embedded in the city, and to allied shifts in the nature of capitalism and the social classes. The value of the work of Maurice Halbwachs to architectural theory follows largely from his concern for the social functions of the collective memory. For Bourdieu, the meanings attached to the physical characteristics of the 'object' are inherent in human and social mechanisms that can be defined in terms of the nature of power.
