Review of: Reification and representation: architecture in the political-media complex

At the risk of overgeneralizing, scholars writing in the field of housing studies do not often contribute to debates on the ways that the representations of architecture influence political outcomes. Instead, discussions usually attend to the design and use of buildings. In this fascinating study, the US-based academic, Graham Cairns, explores the connections between architecture, the media and politics. His conceptualization of architecture is broad and includes its representation and imagery. Much of the study considers how political campaigns are conducted, and how architectural images have been put to use. As he shows, the effectiveness of campaigns often rely on politicians establishing a favourable narrative to project their authority and purpose. As he writes, an architectural image is ‘not limited to built-form but is primarily, and most significantly, played out in the media via a reduction of architecture from physical form as reified object with an associative social image to, quite literally, the status of “imagery”’ (p. 52).