Agency and architecture: How to be critical?

Agency in Architecture: Reframing Criticality in Theory and Practice, Spring 2009, pp. 7-19 04 Agency is a notion that brings together, in undoubtedly ambiguous ways, a variety of concerns that currently echo in diverse segments of the architectural debate. Amongst such concerns is that of the role of the architect to effect social or political change, a preoccupation with the performative power of the architectural object, and perhaps essentially, the hope and despair about the efficacy of theory in the world at large. We set out to elicit a conversation addressing the multifarious notion of agency in the broadest possible way, while at the same time locating novel points of intersection between concerns too often perceived as disconnected.