For purposes here, architectural designs are to be appreciated not for mere aesthetics or structural integrity. Your local Barnes and Noble branch probably contains at least a dozen dozen books documenting such achievements. Rather, we seek to understand variance among architectural styles as physical expressions of the capitalist/non-capitalist tendencies of the society in which they exist and or existed. (To clarify, the idea of capitalist is expanded here to signify wealth, power over others, production cost efficiencies, and extensive centralized bureaucratic patterns.)

  The basic premise is simple enough; capital oriented societal sectors (like the majority of the States, Western Europe and the business districts of third world mega-cities) are likely to produce stack-like buildings (skyscrapers being the obvious example). Or to incorporate a recurrent theme; stacks produce stacks. On the opposing end of the scale, non-capitalist locations (like Native

American tribes and foreign slums) are likely to construct pile resemblant structures. At least this might be the case.

  Yet such an over-simplification should not be misconstrued as a scientific hypothesis. Our criteria, for building shapes and capitalist tendencies alike, is both ultra-dimensional and subjective. This is not an if X then Y situation. The selections that follow are to be utilized not for the establishment of definitiveness, but rather an exploration of maybes, a taste of possibilities, and a pile of rhetorical questions concerning correlations between structural and societal types . Therefore, the image above is to serve more as a chapter overview than a conclusion.