The wall as a political instrument Part 2 Dissertation 2005 David Gormley University of Dundee | UK David's dissertation springs from an interest not so much in what walls are built of or what they look like, but in what they are used to do. Once one thinks about it one realises that walls are one of the most powerful tacit controlling devices human beings have at their disposal, and yet we take them for granted and accept the ways they set the matrix of our lives almost without question. The places where walls are questioned is at sites of conflict: the wall Israel is building around the West Bank; the wall around Gleneagles for the G8 summit; and of course the walls in the cities of Northern Ireland. David decided to study the last of these, partly because of historical family associations, but mainly to try to understand, as an architect (and perpetrator of walls), the immense power attaching to walls as political instruments.