Architectures of Security: Design, Control, Mobility(Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds)

Architectures of Security: Design, Control, Mobility examines the relationship between architecture, security, and technology, focusing on the way these factors mutually constitute a “ferocious” architecture-an architecture, aesthetic, or design that is violent, forcing the performances and practices of sovereign power and neoliberalism. The text provides examples from urban spaces in both the global north and south, which discipline the mobility and movement of populations, as well as reinforce socioeconomic cleavages. From borders and borderlands, to airports, museums, and public buildings, the authors portray often inhumane examples of sovereign power.

Table of Contents:
1. Benjamin Muller and Can E. Mutlu, Introduction: Architecture and Security Part I: Design, and Security 2. Natalie Rowe, View as Narrative: The Built Environment as a Social Model for Individuals with Dementia 3. Can E. Mutlu, Aesthetics of Security: (Re)designing the Sandy Hook School Building 4. Mahdi Tourage, Curated Memory: Notes on Toronto's Agha Khan Museum Part II: Control and Security 5. Adam Nowek, An Architecture of Control: Spatial and Digital Methods of Social Sorting in the Dutch Built Environment 6. Miguel de Larrinaga, The Spaces of Teargas and Contentious Politics 7. Leopold Lambert, The Politics of the Bulldozer 8. Thomas N. Cooke, Security, Circulation and Noise in Pearson International Airport Part III: Border Security and Mobility 9. Jennifer Mustapha, Border security legislation and the construction of uncertain spaces: the case of Bill C-23 10. Benjamin Muller, iBorders: Beautiful and Ferocious Architecture at the Canada/US Border 11. Daniela Johannes, Transborder Immigrant Tool: Re-structuring U.S.-Mexico Border Assemblages 12. Afterword by Ronald Rael or Eyal Weizman - TBC Contributors Notes Glossary of terms

About the Author :
Benjamin J. Muller is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, King's University College. Can E. Mutlu is Associate Professor at Acadia University.

Review :
Pushing the boundaries of critical geopolitics, architecture, design, and international politics, Muller and Mutlu's inventive and diverse collection brings a sharp and necessary focus on the border between aesthetics and control to understand how spaces, structures, and systems make the strange dangerous and the familiar seem safe. Architectures of Security is an important contribution to a series debates in critical international relations, critical security studies, human and cultural geography about infrastructure, affect, and control. Architectures of Security is a much-needed examination of how violence unfolds through seemingly banal formations - in buildings, machines, atmospheres, and databases. It does the very difficult - but very necessary - work of exposing how the material world often enables exclusion, dispossession, and brutality. What really makes Architectures of Security stand out is the scope of its analysis: it traces the pernicious reach of materialised security in explicit sites such as airports and borders, but also shows its less obvious manifestations in places like schools, dementia wards, and museums. This book is an important articulation of these connections and starts a number of significant conversations about the unexpected fusions between architecture and security. Security. Violence. Exclusion. Oppression. Trauma. Death. How are these phenomena designed into the architecture of every aspect of our lives today? Architectures of Security answers this question through an exceptional boundary-pushing multidisciplinary foray into how security is materially, aesthetically, and technically built-in to the world. In doing so, it not only guides us to a profound novel understanding of the status quo of security politics, but equally opens crucial new avenues for understanding the future of that politics.