Architectural design and managerial control: Lefebvre, Latour and the process of enrolment

Jenn McArthur, Stephen Dunne, Sarah Birrell Ivory

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Organizational scholarship on architecture often applies Henri Lefebvre’s conceived, perceived, and lived framework. Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell, most notably, have illustrated how architectural design exploits each of these, exerting managerial control through processes of enchantment, emplacement, and enactment. Although this “3E framework” has been productively applied to buildings from the modern and postmodern periods, its weaknesses become apparent in the current occupant-centric design period. Drawing on Actor Network Theory’s account of translation, we propose enrollment—a 4th “E”—which enables us to better capture the nature of spatial control in the occupant-centric design period. Our 4E expanded spatial control framework recognizes the tensions that Lefebvre originally observed, tensions concealed by Dale and Burrell’s otherwise rightly influential work. This expanded framework also augments our understanding of modern and postmodern periods: the dominant Building Movements of the past Century, we claim, have each engaged in a recursive enrollment of socio-political ideals.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-25
Number of pages25
JournalOrganization
Early online date16 Apr 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 16 Apr 2024

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • actor-network theory
  • building movements
  • Lefebvre's spatial triad
  • organizational space
  • spatial control

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