Abstract
In the course of the reconstruction of the London Houses of Parliament, after a fire destroyed it in 1834, two men, Charles Barry and David Boswell Reid, quarrelled; the far-reaching discoursive and spatial implications of this quarrel, which in retrospect reached a paradigmatic scale, are explored. What unfolds between them is nothing less than a struggle about the principles of a representative and a subservient architecture, between the visible front side and the concealed reverse side of building construction. The history of modern era architecture recognises this building as an iconic centre of power, but it may also be labelled with some justification as an architectural centre of servitude.
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