Listening to “Don’t Believe the Hype” some years on, the lyrics are a reminder of how the mainstream media in the USA often portrayed African Americans during the 1980s. The political backdrop to a building’s procurement and development, however, is less accessible. Despite what we read and study about a building’s recent or long-term history, as architects we rarely stop to consider the economic or political contexts that have created the buildings as we experience them. Nor do we ponder the processes through which they are procured: we experience only the artefact or, increasingly, an image of the artefact, and we are left to our own devices to dissect the makings of the edifice without the aid of a back beat.