The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci developed the theory of hegemony as a model for understanding how ideology is propagated within societies.  Hegemony is a system of control operating through a loose coalition of agencies – political, religious and cultural – which depends not on coercion (at least not exclusively), but on soliciting the conscious or unconscious consent of subordinated groups.  Clearly, architecture can function as an agent of hegemony: buildings normalise the authority of specific social groups, set out spatial boundaries, and function as emblems of social values.  However, Lefebvre insists that the agents of hegemony – whether political, religious or cultural – are fundamentally spatial.  For example, he writes that Church and State would be mere abstractions without the spaces in which to manifest themselves and exercise their power.

Significantly, Lefebvre argues that space cannot be readily comprehended as functioning in this way because capitalism splits social space into conceptual and physical components in order to obscure its social functions.  Space is rendered into an abstraction by representing it through means such as Cartesian coordinates, Euclidean geometry, cartography, and indeed the building plans that form an important resource for the current project.  According to Lefebvre, ‘Euclidean space is defined by its “isotropy” (or homogeneity), a property which guarantees its social and political utility.  The reduction of this homogenous Euclidean space, first of nature’s space, then of all social space, has conferred a redoubtable power upon it.  All the more so since that initial reduction leads easily to another – namely, the reduction of three-dimensional realities to two dimensions (for example, a “plan”, a blank sheet of paper, something drawn on paper, a map, or any kind of graphic representation or projection.’  These abstractions appear to make space transparent and intelligible, but as Lefebvre writes ‘this transparency is deceptive, and everything is concealed.’  Much of Lefebvre’s project was concerned with undermining this division between conceptual and physical space.