Contained openness: how politics and architecture intersect
Politics October 8, 2025, Comments OffArchitecture and politics are two professions that may seem completely different. However, when asked about the connection between politics and architecture, several Drury professors explained that it may be easier to speak about how the fields are not connected rather than the multitude of connections themselves.
Dr. Saundra Weddle, Professor of Architecture, explained that politics and architecture “are so connected that many people outside the fields don’t even realize. They don’t think about [how] our social relationships are expressed in the built environment, [originating] from political activities.”
Joshua Nason, Professor and Dean of Architecture, recalled that he had a professor who once told him that, “architecture is a political act.” The history of architectural commission is heavily structured around wealth, social class, and political power. The idea of designing architecture for the public is a relatively new concept in world history.
Dr. David Derossett, Professor of Sociology, highlighted the power hierarchy that spans even into architecture. “There’s a question about who has the power to determine what the outcomes of design or urban planning…will be,” Dr. Derossett explained.
Within this past century, architecture has followed a social trend to specifically design spaces for public gatherings. Interestingly, this idea of having designated places isn’t an entirely new concept.
Dr. Weddle mentioned Ancient Greek architecture and the concept of the agora. “We were talking about the agora just last week in my class, and I was thinking about this idea of the open space as a public forum for discourse and exchange of ideas.”
Dr. VanDenBerg, Professor of Political Science, also addressed public space. “The design of a lot of university campuses, especially in the 1960s and 70s… was to channel public spaces into explicit areas that could be contained and limited.”
Public spaces can have two distinct effects on people: feeling heard or feeling silenced. Architects can even design in a way that gives a false sense of representation. In fact, architects commonly design certain spaces to intentionally manipulate the user to move in a specific way or feel a specific emotion. Dr. VanDenBerg refers to these false open public spaces as a “contained openness.”
These spaces of “contained openness,” can become the primary landscapes for practicing public discourse. Especially in the United States, free speech is an important value we hold, and these examinations beg the question: how much freedom do we truly have when so many of our public spaces can be so easily contained?
If they’re not easily contained, they may be easily susceptible to acts of violence. “I’m not sure that people any longer understand how to operate in the public realm in a productive way,” Dr. Weddle said. This seems to be especially relevant with the recent increase in violent acts targeting political figures.
Considering how our built environment is politically influenced, it can make one wonder about the designer’s intentions beyond just aesthetics. Dr. Derossett said, “We have a long history of distrust in government and prioritizing profit in the U.S.”
He continued by explaining the challenges that urban planners may face. “We’ve tied [their] hands and placed private developers and real-estate speculators in the driver’s seat. This tells us a lot about whose interests are reflected and served in our built environments.”
The question now is whether or not this can be changed, for which the short answer is yes. The built environment has responded to the changes in our society and government before, therefore, it certainly can occur again.
Still, Dr. Weddle emphasized a critical point concerning the relationship between architecture and progress. “I don’t know if architecture leads society,” Weddle said. “I think it responds to society. And so, I think a lot of things have to happen in our society in order for architects to have a fighting chance of making a proposal for a new public realm.”
Altogether, to change our environment into an open space that encourages representation, we have to start the change ourselves. Then, our environment can eventually follow.
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