ABSTRACT: Dilution of Power in built forms through Modernistic discourse

The metaphoric dimension is inseparable from any built form. The ability of architecture to
reflect culture, identity, social structure enables it to possess this metaphoric dimension and it
turn act as a tool for exhibition of power for the state. “Power is not lodged inertly in built form.
Force, coercion, domination, manipulation, seduction and authority are forms of everyday
practice which are inevitably mediated by built form.”(Kim Dovey 1999). These various forms of
power can mediated in spatial planning through various contradicting dimension such as
Orientation/Disorientation, Publicity/Privacy, Segregation/Access, Nature/history,
Stability/Change etc. Traditional all these dimension form the basic aspiration of design in the
era previous to modernism. We can see that there were movements with tenant to revive and
romanticize such forms of architectural expression. The segregation of class in society through
segregation, access was very evident in this era. A key social function of ‘taste’ is to establish
this social distance; aesthetic judgments which appear to mark distinctions between things turn
out to mark distinctions between people (Featherstone 1991:18). Modernism was able to
completely detach itself from the social context which radically changed the spatial planning and
built form. The semiotic nature and relationship of signifier and signified was abstracted in the
modern discourse. The rationality in design of structure and space, the consideration human as
the basic scale marked the stark difference in how the dimension of power manifested itself. The
state and tyrants disdain for modernism because its guise as means of liberation is very evident in
lot of examples. The abstraction of modern architecture removed the some of the dimension of
power. Though there will be aporia in matter of semiotics we shall compare some examples to
make a case for how modern discourse diluted the expression of power due to lack of social
context. The abstraction of modern architecture removed the some of the dimension of power.