A Landscape of Conflict: Speculators and Books in Early Modern London

Abstract

This article examines the speculative building world of late seventeenth-century London, a context often associated with the birth of modern real estate culture. It examines existing literature on the subject, and identifies the economic and social conditions that converged in producing new paradigms of speculative construction, as well as the actors and instruments involved in its codification. Rather than through the design and authorial practices usually associated with architects, building was realized based on a constellation of conflicting and largely still unsystematized negotiations between the stakeholders, such as builders, landowners, investors, and lessees. This article discusses these paradigms, particularly in relation to a fundamental and overlooked genre of the operational publications produced to organize and codify professional roles and relationships in the business world. I ultimately argue that in order to make sense of our capitalist building culture, we should reconsider the contentious circumstances that produced it, as well as the knowledge base generated to normalize these circumstances.