Power and architecture are fundamental to the question of how contemporary society and archi- tecture work together. Since power lacks a comprehensive logic, coherence, and instrumentalization capability, the question refers both to the autonomous powers of the architectural forms and toa set of external powers represented through architecture. The presented series of projects based on current and extreme syntheses of comprehensive and complex world-views enables mappinga network of powers that align, intersect, in ect, and diverge from each other: collective power, ordaining power, economic power, technological power, ritual power, cultural power, media power, and domestic power. The issue of counter power is then discussed against this background.Through eight essays by contributors, along with images, drawings, and documents, the book renders visible a set of entities, informal conventions, stakeholders, and means involved in the creation of architecture; that is, the dynamics of the collective that ceaselessly tests the architectural composition of the common world.

Of the around 20 biennials and triennials worldwide devoted to architecture, the Venice Architecture Biennale is the most prominent, considered as the world's leading biannual architecture festival. The participating architects selected every second year come from around the world to engage in the most important information exchange in the world of architecture. Aires Mateus Architects is the architectural practice operated by two brothers, Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus. They have been invited five times to participate in Venice. This publication will introduce the five architectural installations they contributed to the biennales in the last decade. The publication consists of five individual parts, each of them a separate book, and held together by a French-fold-dustjacket. Each book is dedicated to one exhibition in Venice. The beautiful projects presented in this volume set an outstanding example of architectural installations reflecting space in a sensitive, poetic and mathematical way. Over the last three decades, Aires Mateus have gained international recognition for their contemporary reinterpretation of architectural traditions in Portugal. Their work is poetic in nature, and much of it is based on constant exploration and experimentation. Their abstract architectural installations are the artistic manifestation of this work. Every installation will be introduced with a short essay, especially written for this publication by philosophers, architects, and an art critic. With contributions by Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus, Ricardo Carvalho, Nuno Crespo, Sofia Pinto Basto, Paulo Pires do Vale, and Delfim Sardo.