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

<p dir="ltr">Organizational scholarship on architecture often applies Henri Lefebvre’s <i>conceived, perceived</i>, and <i>lived</i> framework. Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell, most notably, have illustrated how architectural design exploits each of these, exerting managerial control through processes of <i>enchantment, emplacement</i>, and <i>enactment</i>. 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 <i>translation</i>, we propose <i>enrollment</i>—a 4th “E”—which enables us to better capture the nature of spatial control in the occupant-centric design period. Our <i>4E expanded spatial control framework</i> 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 <i>enrollment</i> of socio-political ideals.<br></p>