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In a living state organism, people are always trying to reinterpret political symbolism. Wolfgang Braunfels, Urban Design in Western Europe: Regime and Architecture, 900–1900 (1988), 321. Introduction It has been argued in previous chapters that states’ strategies to foster belonging among their citizens have led to the built environment being mobilized in a variety of ways in differing political contexts. The focus of this chapter is on two distinct but related developments in contemporary Europe: first, the European Union's attempts to embed their political project in cultural forms from architecture and the built environment (discussed with reference to the Brussels Capital of Europe project), and second, coexistent projects in member nation states to reposition and ‘Europeanize’ existing national architectural symbols (illustrated with reference to Norman Foster's reconstruction of the Reichstag in Berlin). An overarching concern of the chapter is to develop an understanding of the role of architects in the cultural construction of what can broadly be understood as ‘transnational’ European political projects. As such, the focal point is not so much the emergence or otherwise of a distinctly European style of architecture, but rather the extent to which the ongoing work of high-profile architects to embed the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) of Europe into socially meaningful forms reveals something about the wider politics of architecture in the contemporary European context. After a brief contextualization of EU cultural politics, the first substantive discussion in the chapter addresses the EU's Brussels, Capital of Europe project, which drew together a number of high-profile European cultural commentators – including the leading architects Rem Koolhaas and Jean Nouvel – to suggest a range of interventions both in Brussels’ built environment and in the EU's ‘branding’ more generally in order better to reflect the institution's ‘European’ values. The spatial and architectural projects that emerged from the project meetings and the subsequently published report (European Commission 2001) are explicit engagements with the cultural form that political Europeanization, a highly contested project in search of democratic legitimacy and popular support, should take. As a result, the Brussels Capital of Europe project reveals a number of the tensions associated with both the political mobilization of architects and, more broadly, the ambiguous relationship between architectural form and social meaning.

Put me on the map, give my industrial city a second chance, make me the centrefold of the Sunday supplements, the cover of in-flight magazines, the backdrop for fashion shoots, give me an iconic landmark, give me – architectural – shock and awe. Charles Jencks, Iconic Buildings: The Power of Enigma (2004), 18. Introduction Political agencies' recent embrace of what has come to be known as ‘iconic’ architecture can be understood as a continuation of longstanding attempts to mobilize major building projects, first, to materialize wider discourses of major social change, and second, to generate surplus value from urban space. The desire to commission sufficiently persuasive and socially resonant architectural forms with which to attract various forms of mobile capital – especially from the private sector and tourism – while at the same time symbolizing an upward trajectory for a place, has seen iconic architecture incorporated enthusiastically into UK cultural policy strategies. The ‘visually consumable’ (Urry 2002) nature of such attention- grabbing buildings, allied to a hope that iconic forms will help create instantly recognizable ‘brand images’ for places, has led Charles Jencks to claim a renewed function for statement architecture. He has observed that in ‘the last ten years a new type of architecture has emerged. Driven by social forces, the demand for instant fame and economic growth, the expressive landmark has challenged the previous tradition of the architectural monument’ (2004: 7).