Flexibility nowadays constitutes the canon. From street advertisements and the provision of services to mobile contracts and employment relations, it permeates everything around us. The term’s omnipresence in contemporary life and culture resonates with the same intensity across the entire architectural profession and industry. Design briefs, competition proposals, built structures and architectural texts are only a fraction of the areas within the discipline that have adopted the word, which repeatedly emerges as the principle used to describe and define almost every architectural project at any stage. Its qualities aim to present a solution to our contemporary precarious lifestyle and condition of flux. Thus, in order to make users feel empowered and to produce living spaces able to accommodate different needs, flexibility has become a positive notion for architects at every stage of their careers.At the same time, the term is employed as an argumentative tool capable of convincing clients and developers to initiate or further develop a project. It stresses the capacity for change while conveying reassurance, becoming the ‘magic wand’ that architects adopt both spatially and rhetorically to celebrate and ultimately realise their projects. However, no matter how frequently the term is used in architecture, it has never been thoroughly addressed.This thesis investigates flexibility through a critical reading that moves beyond its association with form, arguing that the only way to make final sense of the term in architecture is through its link to the economy. Rather than concentrating only on its contemporary adoption, the thesis constructs an archaeology of the concept through four paradigmatic case studies: the West India Docks, the Crystal Palace, the Fun Palace and MPK20.

Georgios Eftaxiopoulos is an architect trained at the Architectural Association. He completed his PhD in Architectural Design at the AA while teaching at both the AA and the Royal College of Art. He has practised in Belgium, Switzerland and the UK, and has also taught at the Berlage and the University of Navarra. His work brings together design practice, research and teaching across a range of international contexts.