Does a house control your thought process? How does the structure of a city limit not only your movement, but the way you can think? You can’t throw a brick without finding a discussion of the way social structures restrain and contain us – the ways that gender, sex, race, wealth, government, law, language or whatever affect our ability to move through the world. There’s a physical built world around us too, and it wields equal authority over our bodies. We’re wading through a world designed to force our movement in certain ways. There’s obvious examples of this: the maze-like structures of shopping malls or casinos, twisting mirrored corridors obfuscating exits but always focusing your attention on something that needs spending on. Schools, banks, prisons and office buildings are built with an intended purpose, obviously, but how does simply walking through the front doors or even looking at one from the outside effect you, scare you, or inspire your productivity by limiting sunshiney access to a window? Why is the master bedroom upstairs, the storage in the basement, the bathroom so small? What, exactly, is the point of a closet? A Burglar’s Guide to the City explores the architectural world around us by examining the movements of those that defy those structures and the “correct” way they’re supposed to be used. If we’ve managed to move beyond the social and moral boundaries of this world, burglars have defied the more literal functions of inside, outside, floor, ceiling, or path, hall, doorway – and maybe...
