Over the past six decades, experiments with participatory design have increasingly become a tool for political engagement in architecture. Most histories of architectural modernism explore the intersection of architecture and politics as the aesthetic expression of ideology, of radical critique, or as a spatial tool for biopolitical control. More than aesthetic expression or spatial logic, through participation it is the design process that has been consistently challenged and reinvented in efforts to include public engagement, citizen voices, and redistribute decision-making power. In this process, architecture operated in different capacities as a tool of mediation between citizens and systems of authority. While seen primarily as the adoption of democratic values in design, participation in architecture has assumed many forms during several decades and engendered different rapports with the institutions of power. This seminar revisits the recent history of architecture and politics with a focus on projects, design theories, and political concepts that fostered participatory processes since the 1960s. Conceived to look closely and critically at these participatory practices and political stances in design, this seminar proceeds thematically and concentrates on two interwoven, discursive threads: 1. The architectural theories and projects that promoted participation in the design of housing, public spaces and services, or land tenure; 2. The political and social theories that framed each participatory approach in architecture.