Ideas about value and about what constitutes something “good” arguably lie at the core of the planning and development of cities. Starting from the overarching question “What is a good building?” this dissertation explores the relation between valuation practices and architectural development of the city of Zug in Switzerland, during the final decades of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. In this period, public planning withdrew as the main motor for urban development, giving room to a range of new professions and private enterprises in its place. Different systems of valuation lie at the core of these political and economic transitions, and the conflicts between them can be read in the urban form of the city today.

The project explores how buildings are economized, in the sense of being brought into the economy as cultural objects, functional entities, material composites, commodities, assets, or simply as addresses for shell companies. Through the lens of an empirical economy, the attention is shifted from value to valuation, in order to explore how actors actively engage in defining and assessing value. In analysing these processes, and the actors, tools, discourses and built form that they encompass, this thesis combines theoretical and methodological resources from the fields of Science and Technology Studies, Sociology of Valuation and Architectural Ethnography. 

Empirically, the aim is to contribute to an expanded understanding of architectural history of the recent past, and of the economic forces conditioning contemporary architectural production. Theoretically, it participates in ongoing debates about how architecture is valued and economized, by whom, and with which social and environmental consequences. 

Kim Pløhn graduated as an architect from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design and the Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris‑Malaquais. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Copenhagen. He has work experience from architectural offices and municipal planning departments in Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.