This PhD aims to investigate the interactions and entanglements between architecture and the political culture of labour movements in prewar Europe by focusing on the architectural phenomenon of the often spectacular social democratic Maisons du Peuple or ‘People’s Houses’ that were built around the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century in a wide range of European cities. The objective is a clear-cut transnational and interdisciplinary study which tries to unravel the ways architects dealt with the complex interdependence between ideology, self-affirmation, aesthetics and technology.