Architectural Strategies of Dis- and Re-Enchantment: Building for the European Union Is Not a Master Narrative

This contribution looks at the different architectures for the institutions of the European Union in Brussels. Based on the ideas of the sociologist Max Weber, and later the theologian Harvey Cox, of an increasingly secularized, disenchanted urban society, the author first analyzes the earlier buildings for the European Community as an expression of a rationalist, even ‘disenchanted’ architectural strategy. This contrasts with the efforts of the European Union in the 21st century, which attempts to strengthen identification with the European Union by various means. One of these strategies—as the author points out—is to increasingly charge architecture with auratic meaning, in other words, to re-enchant it. Nevertheless, both architectural solutions do not offer a nation-like master narrative but are intended—each in its own manner—to represent a network of many individual parts.