In the early nineties there was a renewed and widespread discussion in philosophy about the end of history (posthistoire), a condition where western liberal democracy is seen as a final form of government. Events still occur at the end of history but governance remains the same. If modernist architecture always understood itself as in opposition with history – inventing new universal forms for a new man and a new world – then postmodern architecture could be said to be a reaction to such a break with history. Are we as the posthistorians claim, disconnected with history, living in a hyperreal state of constant everything goes - a bleak future devoid of meaning and struggle? Or could we find ideological and experimental sources within our times and come up with a critical response to questions posed to architecture today?

1. Discipline and control
Tor Lindstrand

2. Society of Discipline
Michel Foucault
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)
Social control in modern, disciplinary societies rests on
an extended array of enclosed, disciplinary spaces: clin-
ics, prisons, schools, factories, workhouses, barracks,
family
Panopticon as design principle
The power of visibility and gaze
Society of public institutions: pre-school, library, civic
centre, museum, student housing, mental asylum
In society of discipline, public space is a mechanism of
executing control over the individual by referring to the
needs of the greater population.
Society of Control
Gilles Deleuze
Postscript on Societies of Control (1988)
Shift away from physical, panoptic design to embedded
technological sensors spread through society
Continues, interconnecting, automated surveillance
operating on many scales. Body and globe. Public rela-
tions, marketing, consumer behaviour.
In the disciplinary societies one was always starting
again, in the societies of control one is never finished
withanything.
The corporation, the educational system, the family be-
ing metastable states coexisting like a universal system
of deformation.
In society of control, public space is up for grabs or
rather undergoing the same transformation as the fam-
ily, the school, the barrack and the factory.

3. “Protect the new generation, do not let them grow
up into emptiness and nothingness, to the avoidance
of good hard work, to introspection and analyzation
without deeds, or to mechanical actions without
thought and consideration. Guide the young away
from the harmful chase after outer things and the
damaging passion for distraction.”

15. “The most important issue is to meet the need of the business
world for skilled labour and improved communications. Another
priority task is to promote and develop Stockholm as a good city
with a high quality of life, so that the workers of the future will
want to live and work here. In an increasingly internationalised
world, a people-friendly urban environment, a rich variety of
housing and workplaces, well-developed services and a broad
range of culture and entertainment are becoming ever more
important in gaining a competitive advantage. Through this, the
attractive metropolis of Stockholm could become an even stronger
brand.”
from the Comprehensive Plan for Stockholm, 2010

19. “…the neoliberal ideology do not want to seize the treasures of
the existing world, but rather those of a possible world. They
conquer neither political nor social spaces, but rather a
dimension, specifically that of social and political creativity and of
the subject of this creativity, the dimension of critique…Utopia did
not simply collapse in 1989 with Real Socialism, nor did it vanish
into thin air. We are not living, as it is often said, in a post-utopian
world, but rather in a world, in which utopia now only occurs in
its neoliberal translation.”
Boris Buden 2007

20. ”If the goal of society was that we would all work as much as
possible, we would be insane. The goal is to liberate man to be as
creative as possible. Dance. Paint. Sing. Cook. Yes whatever you
want. Freedom.”
Ernst Wigforss (S), Minister for Finance 1925-1949

21. “We first begin to understand and fight neoliberal hegemony with
the certainty that a clear and normatively unambiguous
distinction between the public and the private is no longer
possible, or with the certainty that the real power of this
hegemony lies specifically in the epochal blurring of a clear
boundary between the public and the private and their normative
attributes.”
Boris Buden 2007

23. “To speak of utopia is always to speak of the present intolerable
arrangements.”
Pietr Kropotkin – the anarchist formerly known as Prince