“We have a building that is more than a building”: spatial imaginaries of the Scottish Parliament

This article provides an analytical framework for exploring spatial imaginaries in organizational contexts. Using the concept of spatial imaginaries, and undertaking a topological inquiry, it examines a significant national organization, the Scottish Parliament, and its material home, the parliament building in Edinburgh. It theorizes spatial imaginaries as politically charged, collectively developed, and yet unruly flows of meaning that both shape and destabilize organizational spaces. The study explores the performative power of spatial imaginaries and argues that the trajectories they set for organizational action are beguiling and confounding. Illuminating the performativity of spatial imaginaries enhances the theorizing of the processual nature of spatial phenomena and the excessive qualities of organizational space. It concludes that spatial imaginaries are constitutive of organizational spaces and of organizing, and are folded into politics, power, and the possibilities for organizational change.