Architecture’s extreme dependency on clients forces its utopian impulses into pure form

Evidence

No other aesthetic practice has such immediate social impact, and — logically enough — none has therefore generated so many ambitious projects of social engineering. But since at the same time the cost and consequences of a major building complex are greater than those of any other medium, the actual exercise of free choice — of structures or sites — by the architect is typically smaller than anywhere else: overwhelmingly, clients corporate or bureaucratic call the shots. … If a certain substantive impotence were the common base-line, then fantasies of omnipotence could only find outlet in forms. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 263

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Jameson’s own architectural writing and Koolhaas’s S,M,L,XL, positioning architecture’s peculiar impotence against other arts.