“Architecture has always been serving power and authority society. It has always been serving wealth and the wealthy and is certainly going on to play this role further, because it is suitable for monumentalizing, mythologizing and confirming the people who are already powerful and so to convince the not rich that the interests of the rich are as well theirs.” [1]

The production and control of space is crucial to any execution of power, representing its potency, reproducing social order. As Lebbeus Woods emphasizes in his quote above, architects are and have always been committed to supporting the existing structure of authority and its political system. Quite often in the past, architects have become perfect strategists in the organization of war and the machinery behind it. Especially during war, architecture becomes an instrument for controlling space and has always been an apparatus for establishing boundaries, physically and mentally. In many territorial conflicts and war situations, the systematic instrumentalization of architecture and urban planning transforms architecture itself into a weapon (destruction through design): Lines are often used as territorial demarcations and contribute to these politics of lines, therefore the articulation and the spatial development of the line/boundary becomes an important means for codifying space.

Architecture is the organization of space and the employment of architectural knowledge is therefore ideological and territorial, formed by a specific understanding of boundaries and the means of separation. The role of spatial borders in the future will change, as the line between states is blurring and the frontline will be shifted into the cities. Spatial design or the design of borders as we know them from tradition have expired and need a new condition, a new form. Architecture has to redefine itself and its political functions. What are innovative methods of spatial enclosure?

All this has to be considered in coherence to the technological changes, both in architecture and warfare. My thesis is that the use of computational devices, both in warfare and spatial design processes, have an enormous impact on the production of boundaries/space and the responsibility for action during the design process, triggering serious consequences.

Experimental design strategies and their spatial articulation of boundaries break open antiquated views and establish three- and four-dimensional space and furthermore enable critical interaction and discourse where it is being produced within its context. Boundaries should be understood in an ambivalent and critical state and create blurring transitions rather than rigid definitions. Aesthetic practice is a process that appears in design, appropriation and the formation of space. Is there a chance to develop spatial models that are anti-hegemonic because they do not exclude different interpretations and allow for speculations? During experimental design processes, conditions need to be re-evaluated, value structures and systems need constant critical analysis. Then, also the role of architecture as an instrument for bordering space and as means of warfare will shift towards being an instrument of critical engagement in society and the field of politics.