ARCHITECTURE AS AN APPARATUS OF GOVERNANCE: From the welfare state to the state of workfare.

Director of Studies: Dr. Marina Lathouri Supervisor: Dr. Thanos Zartaloudis

As architecture carries characteristics, material and immaterial ones, it can structure the possibilities of our actions and ultimately affect the conditions in which power can be exercised. The thesis examines how architecture, functioning through its spatial technologies can manage our activities and become an agent of polity. More specifically, it investigates the architectural properties, design mechanisms, technologies and norms involved in this process by analyzing specific case studies in their biopolitical context. It focuses on the relation between the institutional architecture produced in the late Golden Years and the constitution of the modern social welfare state both in the U.K. and the U.S.S.R. Covering the historical period from the appearance of the first welfare state in the mid1960s until the beginning of its disintegration with the introduction of a state of workfare in the West and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the mid1980s; the thesis follows the transition from the concept of a social subject to the idea of a self-actualizing individual.

Eleni Axioti holds a Diploma (MEng.) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master (M.A.) in History and Theory of Architecture from the Architectural Association School of Architecture. She has practiced both in U.K. and Greece since 2007. Her current research concentrates on the relationship between architectural history and political theory.