Accounts of the relationship between architectural languages and political regimes focus in particular on the temporal divisions applied to architecture, onto which have been plated those that correspond to major ruptures in the order of politics, rather than those that correspond to thresholds in the transformations of discourses and forms.
These divisions have been replaced by a new interpretive framework, leading to an alternative cartography of the intersections between the political sphere and that of modern and contemporary architecture. This is established through the study of the parallel trajectories of architects engaged in the design of important projects for political leaders or entrepreneurs, enabling a new appreciation of the pressures exerted from above, as it were, on experts, as well as their ability to resist or subvert them, and their effectiveness in gaining the support of these forces for their projects.
Many professionals of quality and/or renown used their relationship with power to achieve their own cultural and aesthetic goals, especially when their careers were long. This was true of both conservatives - hostile to modernity, but not to modernization - and moderns of various persuasions, from the most traditional to the most radical. In so doing, they all aspired to increase their material and symbolic capital, if we can transpose Pierre Bourdieu's concept to the architectural sphere. Architects manipulated and influenced clients belonging to changing political regimes, ultimately succeeding in shaping works that transcended the very limits of politics.
