ARCHITECTURE
·
CONSTRUCTION
·
EMPIRE

“Power is, through and through, a method of instrumentalism and of construction. It needs grout, concrete, cement, mortar, beams, gravel, lead, steel. . . .”
(Mbembe 2020: 12).

Considering ‘the material’ as irreducible to ‘culture’ can open up new perspectives about the ways in which these two seemingly separate categories are intertwined. Accordingly, not studying matter and how it shapes our world is out of the question.

Every building - houses, workplaces, state institutions, trainstations, shopping malls - was once a construction site. Construction is constitutive of daily life, yet often overlooked. Whether a building is formally drawn by an architect or its form and structure are improvised, what is involved in its construction merits attention.

Empires - historical or contemporary - are mostly understood through their political institutions and diplomacy. But watching construction practices closely can tell us something about their on-the-ground realities. Construction industries are tied up with international interests, supply chains and softpower through strategic funding. But informal buildings are as much markers of shifting political realities: changing aesthetics, building techniques and material choices are tied up with migration and precarious labour conditions.

Critical architecture theory asks how historical formations and political stuctures shape the built environment. In my work, I inverse the question: how do construction practices shape our political realities, and what can they tell us about the lives of the people and materials involved in these practices?

About

Lies T. Defever watches buildings. Her eye is drawn to construction sites and whatever comes together in these places: materials, moneyflows, people, building techniques, aesthetic and functional inspirations or schools, engineering, improvisation.

Her work sits at the intersection of political and material anthropology on the one hand and critical architecture theory and history on the other.

As a political and material anthropologist, she researches what architecture and construction projects tell us about changing power relations, and writes about how we can undestand imperia and their histories through their material connections.

She studied at the University of Amsterdam, SciencePo Paris, Paris 8 and the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Paris-La Villette.

Her work experience as a researcher at the University of Amsterdam and within the architecture firm CHARTIER+CORBASSON Architectes allowed her to gain an intimate understanding of both the academic and the architectural professional world.

Published in the Routlegde Handbook of Anthropology and Architecture in 2025.

Teaching the course Materialities of Empire at CILAS, Cairo, in 2026.

Digital Editorial Fellow 2026-2027 at the Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online

Based in Tunis.

work

Research

Political lives of construction materials
Understand geopolitical developments anew through foregrounding construction practices

Guided architecture tours (Tunis)

Read the history of the city through its architecture
Understand shifting empires through architectural elements
Project these onto contemporary construction practices

Photography

Ubiquity of construction in the everyday
Assemblages on the construction site

Writing

Essays on imperial and colonial histories from Congo to Palestine
Exhibition reviews
....