Putting Architecture in its Social Space: the Fields and Skills of Planning Maastricht

Architectural projects often attract diverging political expectations and evolve into relatively structured areas of dispute or political arenas. This chapter investigates the role of architecture within such arenas in the town of Maastricht, the Netherlands. I use theoretical frameworks from A Theory of Fields (Fligstein and McAdam 2012) and the Science and Technology Studies in order to gain a nuanced view on both the locality and materiality of architectural disputes.
Based on two contrasting case studies, I claim a bidirectional influence of buildings and dispute because architecture, when being discussed, alters the pathways of interacting that are viable within a political arena. Architecture even shapes the skills that actors employ in order to gain political influence.