Architecture is approached not as an aesthetic or technical discipline, but as a mode of political and cultural engagement. Urban space is seen as both the product and medium of social struggle, where design decisions shape the distribution of power, visibility, and access. Architecture, in this framework, operates as a critical language capable of articulating dissent, proposing alternatives, and enabling new forms of collective life. The focus shifts from objects to actions—from buildings to the processes, negotiations, and imaginaries that structure urban transformation. Design is treated as a situated, contingent practice embedded in larger dynamics of labor, identity, and resistance. This view rejects the myth of architectural neutrality, emphasizing instead its performative role in sustaining or challenging hegemonic orders. Urban projects are analyzed as spatialized arguments, where material configurations express ideological positions. Public space, housing, infrastructure, and monuments are not passive backdrops but active instruments in the production of subjectivity, memory, and belonging. Rather than designing from above, the emphasis lies on participation, co-creation, and spatial justice. In this political conception, architecture becomes an open-ended process—less about solving problems than about making them visible, less about control than about enabling collective reimagination.
