Framing Places investigates how the built forms of architecture and urban design act as mediators of social practices of power. It is an account of how our lives are 'framed' within the clusters of rooms, buildings, streets and cities we inhabit. Kim Dovey contends that the nature of architecture and urban design, their silent framings of everyday life, lend them to practices of coercion, seduction and authorization.
The book draws from a broad range of social theories and deploys three primary analyses of built form, namely the analysis of spatial structure, the interpretation of constructed meanings and the interpretation of lived experience. These approaches to programme text and place are woven together through a series of narratives on specific cities (Berlin, Beijing and Canberra and Melbourne) and building types (this corporate tower, shopping mall and domestic house).