Chapter 1

Capital and Capitol: an

introduction
Political power takes many form;

Many political regimes make especially powerful symbolic use of the physical environment

Government building are an attempt to build government and to support specific regimes

This book carries the argument a step further by exploring the complicated questions
about power and identity embedded in the design of national parliament buildings and
the districts that surround them in various capital cities around the world

Based upon a simple premise:

Grand symbolic state building need to be understood in terms of the political and
cultural contexts that helped to bring them into being

The postcolonial parliamentary complex provides an excellent vehicle for exploring issues
 How Do Government Buildings Mean?
In essay “How Buildings Mean” Nelson Goodman;
We must consider the question of how a particular work of architecture conveys
meaning before we are able to address the issue of what the buidling may mean

Aims to identify the categories of meaning that the built environment may convey as well
as to elucidate the mechanism by which these meanings are transmitted;

This sort of analysis is crucial for understanding the nature of the relationship between
the design of a parliamentary complex and its political history

“A building may mean in ways unrelated to being an architectural work may become
through association a symbol for sanctuary, reign of terror, or for graft
Goodman identifies four such ways;

Denotation
Meanings of the Lincoln
Memorial: Lincoln’s words
speak directly
Exemplification
Meanings of the Lincoln
Memorial: exemplifying some Metaphorical expression
architectonic properties more Meaning of the Lincoln Memorial:
than others temple as metaphor
Mediated reference
Meaning of the Lincoln Memorial:
mediated refernces carry forward
broad conceptual associations, from
Civil War to civil right
The Locus of Postcolonial Power