Contemporary culture is fascinated by surveillance systems. From the culture industries’ appropriation of surveillant narratives to the internal world of personal experience, surveillance captures our imagination and impinges on our collective psyche in a myriad of ways. Our lived environment, too, is implicated in the iterations of surveillance and control which have come to be associated with modern life. The buildings in which we exist not only serve material functions but also embody society, culture, and the social dynamics with which we organise our lives. The built environment speaks to us in ways which are often subliminal, buttressing notions of power, control, and organisation which underscore our communal existence. Buildings may be part of a shared heritage, vital repositories of history, monuments to past societies, or to the current zeitgeist. Architecture is thus a player in the social landscape, in rituals, collective beliefs, and practices. Through a range of diverse academic approaches, this collection seeks to unpack some of the ambiguities of and connections between architecture and discourses of power and control.

Extending the dialogues contained in our previous collections—Spaces of Surveillance: States and Selves (2017) and Surveillance, Race, Culture (2018)—this collection of chapters engages with a wide range of disciplines including architecture, geography, urban planning, performance, film, art, photography, and literature in order to examine the surveilling multiplicities present not only in our cultural psyche but also in the literalspace housing our bodies. The analysis contained in Surveillance, Architecture and Control therefore seeks to articulate the manner in which both culture and cultural spaces have been implicit in watching, viewing, and knowing our identity, ultimately examining the ways in which space is increasingly complicit in the definition of “watched” and “watcher”. As this collection makes clear, surveillance is not only found in the lens of the camera and within a technological artefact but can also emerge from within the very spaces housing bodies—from urban, to suburban, domestic to institutional—spaces actively enforce the watchful gaze of surveillance.

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In 2016, HBO launched Westworld—a show written and created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy which explored the inherent desires of the human race through the vehicle of a theme park “hosted” by androids. Nolan, in collaboration with his brother Christopher Nolan, had previously written the screenplays for Memento (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), and Interstellar (2014), marking his most recent venture as one with anticipated twists, turns, and fragmented chronology. Whilst scholars and fan theorists have been quick to assert their philosophical and sociological readings of the show in academia (Philosophy and Westworld (2018)) and online, few have considered the role of surveillance in shaping both android and human narratives. As Troy Patterson’s article in The New Yorker (2018) makes clear, Westworld is not simply a space where visitors are entertained, but also a space which entertains multiple levels of surveillance. Consider the duty of Robert Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins) who controls his androids and their respective “roles” via the vast network system at Westworld’s headquarters. It is this network which divides the “real” bodies from the “unreal” (humans and android) and further enables a division between the hyperreal space of Westworld’s theme park and the real world of human technological invention. The headquarters of Westworld, housed in Delos’ ever expansive structure is further a space where Ford, described by Patterson as “the architect of the theme park”, can control his game. Lest we forget, this is a built structure—albeit one which is entirely man-made—a structure whose sole purpose is to observe and collect information on those it watches in the hope of “developing [android] consciousness [which] would evolve into a race representing an improvement on humanity”. When read according to surveillance studies, Westworld is less concerned with the creation of androids and the entertainment of its human guests, and far more interested in watching and collecting data on both “races”.

Another example can be found in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2016), which similarly features a surveilling frame within which bodies are watched. For Offred (Elisabeth Moss), Gilead plays a fundamental role in the controlling of her body (quite literally) and that of the many other handmaids forced into subservience. Through Gilead’s network of spies and informers, the allocation of female identity (as handmaid, Martha, Econowife, Aunt, Wife) is determined not only by attire but also by their position in the domestic environment. The role of Martha, for instance, is attached to an apron, domestic duties and living quarters within (but not part of) the grand houses of the commanders and their wives. Aunts are identified not only by their brown uniform and cattle prod but also by their residence at the Rachel and Leah Centre (or the Red Centre). Offred’s own position, as a handmaid, determines her domestic position in the attic belonging to Commander Fred and Serena Joy, thereby marking her body not only as one which is watched but also fundamentally oppressed by spatial location. Reading The Handmaid’s Tale as a narrative on the malignant effects of surveillance, renders not only “the eyes” as Gilead’s overseers but also the built space of Gilead itself. As a surveillant system, Gilead enforces control by threatening to see all in spite of our bodily markings, offering a physical space (not lens, nor single embodied overseer) as all-powerful; or in Megan Garber’s words, “here is the panopticon, distributed across a constructed nation” (The Atlantic2017).

Both of the examples provided above feature architecturalframes and the division of spatial boundaries which play a fundamental role in the controlling and domination of individuals within Westworld and Gilead. It is this spatial framing which demonstrates the power of architecturalspace in maintaining prescribed roles for those inhabiting them, and the manner in which these frames (Westworld’s landscape and the territory of Gilead) can create surveilled boundaries for bodies which cannot be transgressed. In these narratives of topographical futures, architecture’s capacity as a vehicle for surveillance appears to be both inherent and silent in its power exertion, and for architecturalframes it can be both large and yet hidden, both unremarkable and active. These are spaces which observe and are not observed. With the advancement of technology, Bentham’s panopticon no longer requires the centralisation of localised sight, but rather can be omnipresent throughout a system of spaces for all “visibility is a trap” (Foucault 1975). Flows of people and of culture between interior and exterior spaces are central to many contemporary narratives. To use McLuhan’s (1964) term, “the medium is the message”—structures and spaces play an integral part in fictions of control.

Laura Poitras’ 2016 Project X similarly attests to the power of architecturalsurveillance. Charlie Lyne’s article in The Guardian describes the subject of Poitras’ project as a seemingly unremarkable “single building in lower Manhattan” (2016) which is revealed by the film to be an NSA spy. As Lyne writes:

Despite the building’s immense size and prominent location, its windowless façade and proximity to other New York skyscrapers render it inconspicuous in daylight. Under nocturnal observation in Poitras’ film however, the faceless brutalist tower transforms into a real-life Death Star, a vast nothingness blotting out the twinkling start and city lights. Visible only by interference, it’s a fitting metaphor for our uneasy relationship with the web. (The Guardian2016)

Poitras’ film unearths society’s blinkered view of the role of architecturalsurveillance—both “faceless” and a “nothingness” to otherwise be ignored. The supposed innocuous and inoffensive nature of the building is much like our belief in the ever-relentless advancement of technology, prompting a recent tongue-in-cheek article from The Guardian entitled “Beware the Smart Toaster” (March, 2018). In such articles, we are encouraged to “say hi to the NSA guy spying on you via your webcam”, and to “not let your smart toaster take down the internet” (2018). Whilst the tone of Hern’s and Mahdawi’s article is whimsical, James Bridle’s recent article posits a more cautionary piece of advice, observing:

Something strange has happened to our way of thinking – and as a result, even stranger things are happening to the world. We have come to believe that everything is computable and can be resolved by the new application of new technologies. But these technologies are not neutral facilitators: they embody our politics and biases, they extend beyond the boundaries of nations and legal jurisdictions and increasingly exceed the understanding of even their creators. As a result, we understand less and less about the world as these powerful technologies assume more control over our everyday lives. (The Guardian2018)

Such power over us is clear to see not only in our cultural productions (such as in films and television programming) but also in our unseeing investment in surveillance as a means by which to feel secure—the result, in Bridle’s words “can be seen all around us”. And this omnipotent aspect of surveillance is something which this collection attests has been shored up not only in our prolific purchasing and consumption of the camera lens but also in the structures that house us. As Laura Poitras’ film demonstrates, architecturalframes perpetuate the division between visible and invisible, being themselves part of the matrix of observer and observed. In a world of ever-increasing methods of social control, traditional design specialisms have broken down. Architecture, service design, and public art are all affected by and affectsurveillance practices with profound consequences for the division between private and public space. The ambition of modern architecture to blur the division between inside and outside is surely realised, yet the omnipresence of glass and of “being seen” is no longer about transparency, it is about surveillance. The window is a technology of control.

The unique contribution of Surveillance, Architecture and Control is its approach to reading manifestations of surveillance through varying types of space. Whilst recent work in the field of surveillance studies has demonstrated the potential for the gaze to transgress the lens of technology, few have considered the possibility of the surveillant eye which resides within spatial and architectural systems relating to art, literature, film, and the body. The chapters contained in this collection therefore seek to expand the interdisciplinary nature of concerns over the surveillance of the individual into that of architecture, exploring instances of surveillance within and around specific architectural entities, both real and created, in works of fiction, film, photography, performance, and art. Drawing both on Bentham’s and Foucault’s theoretical frameworks as the initial starting point, this collection examines the role of surveillance from within the humanities, social sciences, technological studies, design, and environmental disciplines. Surveillance, Architecture and Control provides a cultural studies approach to depictions of surveillance shored up in physical space and seeks to engender new debates about canonical and new narratives, examining how cultural, geographical, and built space produces power relations via surveillant networks, and thereby illustrating the ongoing fascination with contemporary notions of control and surveillance.

Seeing Architecture from the Outside

Whilst the chapters contained in this collection inevitably stem from the theories of Foucault’s work on the panopticon (Discipline and Punish), in all the chapters included here, there is a push away from this established reading of architecture. Rather than seeing surveillance as shored up in a panoptic design or centralised point, the chapters of this collection demonstrate the possibility for allspaces—whether they be urban in design, domestic homes, or even 4Dcinemas—to act as surveillant territories.

Much like Elizabeth Grosz’s own research in Architecture from the Outside (2001), this collection approaches space and built space, from the outside. As scholars broadly based in cultural studies and the humanities, there is a sense in which we begin this investigation by looking from the outside in, in order to find “the third space in which to interact without hierarchy, a space or position outside both, a space that doesn’t yet exist” (Grosz, xv). Indeed, the analysis of physical space and geographical space and its corresponding relationship with surveillance is something scholars have not yet turned their attention to. Given, according to Grosz, that bodies and architecturalspace are interlinked and immersed in the production of signification for one another, it seems surprising that little research into spatial surveillance of this kind has been conducted. If we take cities for instance, Grosz ascertains “cities have always represented and projected images and fantasies of bodies… in this sense, the city can be seen as a body prosthesis or boundary that enframes, protects, and houses while at the same time taking its own forms and functions from the bodies it constitutes” (Grosz, 49). If a relationship of this sort exists between urban space and bodies, it stands to reason that the surveilling qualities of architecture impact the body not only as object but also as subject. Many of the chapters here investigate such notions—from the way in which urban environments can watch, contain, and maintain behaviour of its citizens, to the psychological impact of metropolitan landscapes.

Homes also feature quite heavily in this collection; only unlike the city, the chapters on the home are characterised by their shared investigation into horror and the uncanny. According to Anthony Vidler, it is the architecture of the home which results in readings of the uncanny, where “[the home] acts, historically, or culturally as representations of estrangement” (1992, 12) and results in “the perpetual interchange between the homely and the unhomely” (57). The home as a site of surveillance then is one which elides notions of interior and exterior, offering itself up as a vehicle for others to pass in and out of its boundaries where “it is impossible to leave the house without being seen by those over whom control is being exerted. Object and subject exchange places. Whether there is actually a person behind the gaze is irrelevant” (Colomina 1992, 82). The home then offers itself as a space which can be read as permanently watching, and far from requiring a centralised overseer; the chapters contained in this collection suggest it is precisely the domesticarchitecture itself which acts as the perpetrator of the surveilling gaze.

Implicit in these readings is also the relationship between gender and space, as many of these chapters involve some aspect of identity and the body. Some of the architecturalspaces discussed in this collection have huge significance as places where discourses of power were enacted. Architecture thus serves as social control and creates its own discourse of “appropriate” behaviour. As Louise Durning and Richard Wrigley attest in Gender and Architecture (2000), “architecture structures and defines many of the social spaces in which different gendered identities are rehearsed, performed and made visible as a form of shared private and public spectacle. Architecture and the spaces it creates are continuous; thus, architecturalspace is not the container of identities, but a constitutive element in them” (2000, 1). If we accept then that architecture is a “constitutive element” in shaping identity, it seems it is timely to question and evaluate the role it plays in marking our bodies as watched. The contemporary moment, rather than requiring the panopticon, clearly already has surveilling structures which surround us at all times, wherever we may be located.

Whilst other academics have addressed the issue of architecturalsurveillance, such as Joseph Piro’s article in The Journal of American Educational Studies on “Foucault and the Architecture of Surveillance” (2008) and Richard Jones’ “The Architecture of Surveillance” in Criminal Justice Matters (2007), the issue of reliance upon Foucault as the key methodological frame persists. Surveillance, Architecture and Control is unique precisely because it offers a reading of allspaces as forms of surveillance, and not simply those which can be read according to Foucault. Rather, the chapters included in this collection consider such varied examples as homes, cinemas, cities, and public art as complicit in the surveillance of bodies, in ways which negate the need for the panoptic built structure. Furthermore, previous scholars have failed to provide a volume of essays which bridges the cultural effects of such surveillant systems. Rather than attesting to the possibility of being watched by our spatial environment, Surveillance, Architecture and Control demonstrates the very real issues already at work within our physical space and cultural products, drawing together instances of architecturalframes and the contemporary cultural moment as seen through multiple disciplinary lenses, which recognise the importance and relevance of surveillance as a means to watch, observe, and control peoples. The authors herein have sought to move beyond a traditional Foucauldian reading of architecturalspaces to provide a nuanced look at the enactment of power and control through buildings.

Scope of the Collection

The chapters of this collection are collated under four parts: “Urban Landscapes and Spatial Surveillance”; “Domestic Architecture and Houses of Horror”; “International Spaces, Performativity and Identity”; and “Technological Cultures of Surveillance”. The content of each part has been grouped according to the types of space analysed, from topographical spaces to spaces created through iterations of the body’s movement. In each case, these chapters broadly reject the traditional understanding of the panopticon as a methodological framework for understanding surveillance systems shored up in architecture, but all acknowledge the influence of Bentham and Foucault’s work in this area. The departure from such established modes of thought offers extensive and voluminous interpretations of the watching and watched paradigm, developing a vision of Lyon and Bauman’s “liquid surveillance” which is capable of dripping into each area of modern life—into art, literature, film, lived spaces, and psychic worlds. What the analyses contained here make clear is that no one place of surveillance exists—rather, surveillance is not and cannot be localised, existing instead in the very physicality of our buildings, territories, and the spaces in which we reside, both physical and psychological.

Alan Reeve’s chapter “Exercising Control at the Urban Scale: Towards a Theory of Spatial Organisation and Surveillance” (Chap. 2) investigates how urban spaces are implicated in the control and surveillance of users in a culture saturated by the notion of the self as a consuming body or entity. Reeve’s chapter not only utilises Lefebvrian thought to reconsider the production of space but also draws on the works of Baudrillard as a model for analysing the three dimensions of social spatialisation. “Exercising Control” contends that contemporary public spaces—specifically those used for leisure (such as shopping malls and high streets)—offer spaces of moral, aesthetic, and cognitive dimensions—both as product and as consumed. With reference to the manner in which control is exercised over the individual, Reeve’s chapter considers the individual’s sense of identity may be constructed through spatial material. The chapter further discusses the dialogue that exists between constructed technologies of surveillance—CCTV, architectural elements such as windows and their placing in relation to the street, and internalised expectations and the self-censorship of identity and behaviour of consumers induced in a culture of highly aestheticised and depoliticised consumption. In doing so, Reeve’s chapter demonstrates the implications of contemporary approaches to designing commodities and privatised public spaces in relation to notions of the “public” and “private”.

Continuing in this vein, Kwasu D. Tembo’s chapter “Staying Awake in the Psychetecture of the City: Surveillance, Architecture, and Control in Miracleman and Mister X” (Chap. 3) investigates the city spaces of science fiction. Drawing on the concept of society as “petri-dish” in which space is imbibed with heterotopic qualities, Tembo analyses non-human bodies in line with the advancement of technology and virtual reality. Investigating Neil Gaiman’s Miracleman and Dean Motter’s Mister X, this chapter considers the tense relationships between architecture and psychogeographical effects of the city on hierarchies of power. Taking De Certeau’s discussion of space in The Practice of Everyday Life, Tembo’s chapter expands on the previous chapter’s urban investigation and explores the mediation between subject and architectural arrangement within which they exist and are reproduced.

Lucy Thornet’s chapter “Surveillance and Spatial Performativity in the Scenography of Tower” (Chap. 4) similarly positions its investigation within urban diegesis, only unlike the previous chapters, does so with a discussion of a practice-based performance staged in Elephant and Castle. Building on the work of Dorita Hannah and her contention that scenography can critique architecture’spower structures (2015), Thornet argues that the scenography in Tower exploits the notion of surveillance to go beyond the city as panopticon, rather, intervening into the spatiality of the site to underscore other power dynamics inherent in architecture. It is Thornet’s contention that the window is a tool of surveillance, effectively blurring the lines between public and private space in the city so that performativity of public selves can also be seemingly in private spaces.

Within the second part of the collection, Jaclyn Meloche investigates Montreal-based artist Isabelle Hayeur’s works in Model Homes (2004–2007) in her chapter “Houses, Homes, and the Horrors of a Suburban Identity Politic” (Chap. 5). Hayeur’s photographs of new housing developments investigate the manner in which the notion of “home” is understood. Meloche utilises this photographic series to investigate how the architecture of the house informs a person’s identity as well as that of the community. With use of Chandra Mohanty’s work in Feminism Without Borders, Meloche attests to the home’s ability to be a space of place, and a space of belonging which can inflect a sense of Othering and performativity onto the body. Engaging with postcolonial feminist discourses, this chapter argues that one’s locational identity is rooted with one’s cultural belonging, and in doing so, suggests a suburbanspace which can surveil its inhabitants—through the lens of Hayeur’s model homes, the “home” becomes a postmodern portrait capable of constructing the suburban body.

In keeping with Meloche’s investigation into the home as a site of spectatorship, Subarna Mondal’s chapter “One Grey Wall and One Grey Tower: The Bates World in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho” (Chap. 6) engages with the significance of the architectural arrangement present in the Bates House and the Bates Motel in Hitchcock’s infamous film. Referencing the position of occupants as both surveyors and those to be surveyed, this chapter considers the house as a space which is hermetically sealed, forbidding intrusion from the outside, only to reveal mysteries within its walls. For Mondal, this is a dual space where the hotel and the house are strategically positioned for surveying each other (and the bodies within them), so that one menacingly watches whilst the other hesitantly pries. With particular attention granted to Mrs Bates seated at the window of the house, this chapter argues that Hitchcock presents Bates as helplessly inhabiting her own space from which she can be watched.

Antonia Mackay’s chapter also takes the horror genre as its motivation, utilising the theories of feminist corporeality (Elizabeth Grosz, Beatriz Colomina) in an investigation into American Horror’s Story’s “Murder House”. Mackay’s chapter “Architecture and American Horror Story: Reading ‘Murder House’ on Murderous Bodies” (Chap. 7) contends that the effect of season one’s haunted house is the creation of identity for those who reside within its frame. Rather than attest to the maintenance of heteronormative roles (as espoused by previous studies), this chapter argues for the home’s ability to eradicate the Harmon’s old identities and instil new ones by transforming them into ghosts destined to remain within its walls. Identifying the architecture (the literal space of the home) as one which is embodied, the analysis contained here argues for architectural gazing which in turn transforms bodies into maimed, morphed, and manipulated selves.

The final chapter to investigate the site of the home is Luke Reid’s “Surveillance, Sousveillance, and the Uncanny Domestic Architecture of Black Mirror” (Chap. 8). Reid’s chapter addresses the extent to which contemporary screen culture has been increasingly enmeshed with surveillance technologies, and turns his attention to Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror where data-mining and “sousveillance” processes are marked by architectural constructions. This chapter argues for the use of such technologies in creating virtual realities by means of “smart” gadgetry, resulting, as Reid argues, in the collapse of public and private spaces. Citing the episode “The Entire History of You”, the analysis considers the appearance of modern houses as screens upon which the subject’s memories are recorded and projected. Such surveillance of domestic life offers itself up to scrutiny and potential self-destruction. With the use of Deleuzian theory, Reid makes clear that architecture’s collision with technology creates an extimate self—or foreign body—one where our virtual selves have lives of their own which can unsettle the conventional.

The third part examines various international “public” spaces, opening with Joel Hawkes’ chapter “The Birds: Public Art and a Narrative of Surveillance” (Chap. 9) discusses the public art in Vancouver, investigating the Olympic Village of 2010. Now offered as residential properties, Hawkes points to this neutral and now empty design being one of rampant surveillance, where private and public cameras can capture movement precisely because “empty” space encourages easeful movement. Pointing to the invitation to gaze at the Square at its heart, Hawkes analyses The Birds structure which resides in a “steel rib”, illuminated by LEDs. The chapter makes clear that public art such as this is capable of disrupting empty space, enabling discovery of a sort. However, such discovery is borne out of a narrative of surveillance—one which is threatening. With reference to Sennett, Foucault, and Deleuze, this chapter articulates the pernicious nature of surveillance from within empty and public spaces, where The Birds can alert the viewer to the reality of a carefully controlled and monitored space.

Following Hawkes’ investigation of public space, Jennifer O’Mahoney, Lorraine Bowman-Grieve, and Alison Torn’s chapter “Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Psychological Architecture of Surveillance” (Chap. 10) considers how the physical architecture of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries contributed to the experience of being monitored. Investigating the Magdalene laundry situated in Waterford, Ireland, this chapter reflects on this institutional space as a location of psychological architecture. Recognising these sites as spaces of architectural containment which functioned to remove those who were “troublesome” and surplus to the economy from society, the analysis in this chapter points to a continuous state of surveillance enacted on those contained within its perimeter. Taking a predominately psychological approach, O’Mahoney, Bowman-Grieve, and Torn’s chapter frames the Magdalene Laundry as a particular cultural and social phenomenon, and considers how the performativity of gender is framed and manipulated by the constant surveillance of the Religious Orders.

The final chapter within the third part is Alexandra Macht’s “Performing the Repentant Lover in the Courtroom: An Analysis of Oscar Pistorius’ Recreation of Hegemonic Masculinity” (Chap. 11). Drawing on Jonathan Heaney’s work (2013), she considers the omnipresence of power with reference to its deeply social connections and emotions. Her argument focused on the emotion of love utilises a sociological framework by which to question the connection love has to power, and the close proximity of such notions which give way to a plurality of identity formation. Interpreting the trial of Oscar Pistorius, Macht’s chapter analyses the courtroom scene on two levels—through Pistorius’ interactions with members of the defence and through the eyes of the viewer, witnessing the trial. Recognising the role of the gaze in both instances, Macht considers the reversal of the gendered gaze and othering of the male self, identifying the court room as a space for the portrayal of a power-suffused masculine ideal.

The fourth and final part of this collection considers the role of technology in creating architecturalspaces of surveillance. Nathaniel Zetter’s chapter entitled “In the Drone-Space: Surveillance, Spatial Processing, and the Videogame as Architectural Problem” (Chap. 12) addresses military surveillancedrones as both a topic and technological apparatus within videogames. Zetter’s argument focuses on their representation of “military strategy” in the game genre, and that in doing so, renders spatial processing as visible—in a manner not unlike the surveillance drone. Arguing for an observation of the specific mode of processing space through surveillance technologies, his chapter first considers the conversance between major theoretical accounts in surveillance studies and the formal properties of gaming, before employing Agre’s “surveillance model” in analysing the role of drones in the construction of spatiality in military strategy games. In addressing this dynamic as a problem of decentralised architecture, he draws on Peter Galison’s account of aerial bombing surveys in order to situate this mode both historically and theoretically.

Stacy Jameson’s chapter “Sensurround: 4D Theatre Space and the Pliable Body” (Chap. 13) similarly engages with technological forms of spatial surveillance, considering the internalisation of surveillance through public theatre spaces. Focusing on 4D theatres, Jameson highlights the role of the material space of the theatre and the physical presence of the body as intensified by the kinesis of such framedspace. Contrary to tradition of alienation which theorises active spectator via distance between spectator and film, this chapter contends that 4Dcinema positions the viewer’s body outside the film, whilst generating a docile visceral body which can respond automatically to subtle choreography. Surveillance of this sort, according to Jameson, is not an apparatus of the gaze, but rather a state of immersion with no distinction between inside and outside.

In a further nod to the collapse of divides, Brian Jarvis’ chapter “Surveillance and Spectacle inside The Circle” (Chap. 14) explores the effects of Foucault’s claim that “we are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptical machine” (1975, 217) on the twenty-first-century body. With the use of Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle (2013) and consideration of James Ponsoldt’s film adaptation (2017), he investigates the machine of The Circle’s headquarters in California. Offering a biopolitical reading of the intricate mechanisms of panoptic control at the interface between spaces of work and leisure, public and private spheres, bodies and machines, Jarvis considers the manner in which Foucault’s “panoptical machine” can be transformed into architecturalspectacle, where consciousness and communication might be merged into one.

The final chapter of this collection is Graydon Wetzler’s “Wayfinding re/dicto” (Chap. 15) which investigates Alvan Lucier’s score I am sitting in a room (1969) to consider the ongoing laboratory projects which utilise off the shelf hardware in order to reengineer the poetic imaginaries of surveillance, control, spatial practice, and speculative design. With analysis of Doppler’s “vibrometer”, Wetzler argues for the exploitation of sensorium which taps into invisible spaces, where “interactive infrastructures” may be constructed. It is this chapter’s contention that social interaction between place and people, as well as people and things, is found within the neural architecture which supports episodic memory and spatial navigation. Wetzler concludes that a challenge to Foucault’s theories lies in the counter-conduct strategy of neuromorphic architecture.

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The collection of essays which makes up this volume and represents our third collection on the theme of the culture of surveillance aims to articulate the manner in which the built environment and architecture have been complicit in watching and overseeing bodies, unveiling a multitude of “silent” surveilling systems at work within our spatial environment. Bridging interdisciplinary gaps between urban planning, geography, film, television, literature, and cultural studies, this collection demonstrates an interconnectedness within the spatial reading of surveillance, where all areas of academic endeavour are touched by a matrix of watched and watching.

Surveillance, Architecture and Control seeks to engender discussion to expose the problematic nature of surveillance culture which is inscribed in architecturalframes and through the built environment. Employing a wide range of approaches, the aim of this volume is to foster and expand investigation into surveillance culture within the current climate of increased urban renovation and gentrification in the West, as well as to point to the global implications of such research. Put simply, we hope to imbue our readers with an awareness of our persistent position as viewed/viewee, in ways which might make us reconsider our (autonomous) humanity.