The Laws of Foreign Buildings: Flat Roofs and Minarets - Michael ...

16 Social & Legal Studies 000(00)
place, but to time. This also implies that outdated forms of buildings are not technological
enough. The windows are big, not for stylistic reasons, they imply, but for technological
ones: they allow seeing the landscape. The result is a relational building code that
allows good buildings of any style, as long as they conform to the surroundings. ‘Foreignness’
is relationally redefined as not fitting the environment. If a ‘foreign’ building
type becomes a majority in a given location, as happened with the flat roofs, the foreign
becomes the local.
In the case of minarets theories map in opposite ways: opponents start with a technological
theory by assuming that it is the minaret that turns a building into a mosque,
rather than mere use as mosque. The proponents, however, react with a materializing
move, claiming that buildings are mere tubes on roofs, and that they do not change the
already allowed use as mosque. For them, even though they are adamant that their building
needs a minaret – this is why they ask for a building permit in the first place – minarets
are additions to buildings for mere decorative and stylistic reasons and not related
to promoting Islam as a religion or culture. The acceptance of the initiative results in a
ban, which gives credence to the technological theory. Unlike in the example of modern
architecture, the foreignness of the building type becomes not relational but stays absolute.
A debate about what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘fitting’ minaret is not possible with the
outcome so far.
What I have shown with these two examples is that rather than just taking fights about
building codes and zoning issues as proofs for how municipalities try to ban disliked
practices from their land, these can be analyzed as instances of how legal discourse struggles
with the quasi-technicality of buildings. Seen from this viewpoint it becomes apparent
that the underlying architectural theories are neither stable nor reflected in legal
disputes.
It is the specific qualities of buildings as quasi-technologies that allow this permanent
shifting. But it is the inbuilt proceduralism of the law, and more specifically the relational
definition of buildings in building codes as neither proper technologies, nor
defined by uses or meaning that makes these shifts possible. The cases help us to get
a more nuanced view of how the law relates to buildings. As I have shown, building
codes neither regulate just objects, nor do they directly discriminate against groups.
Rather, building codes mediate between buildings and social groups by shifting between
different theories of architecture.
Notes
Many thanks to Monika Krause, Ola Söderström, Lynda Schneekloth, participants of a seminar at
the CCA Montreal, and two anonymous reviewers.
1. Not only critical scholars claim that these zoning verdicts are forms of indirect regulation. Proponents
of such regulation explicitly endorse the indirect approach, see for example the call to
use zoning against obesity (Mair et al., 2005) or the wearing of firearms and alcohol consumption
(Ashe et al., 2003).
2. The focus on ‘foreign’ buildings leads to quite different insights compared to those of Mariana
Valverde, who looks at how building codes and nuisance laws mediate ‘diversity’. In the case of
diversity, no explicit distinction is drawn between native and foreign, but a relative distance
between ‘normal’ and its aberration is under dispute (Valverde, 2008).
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