New Books in Architecture
Episodes
Janice Rieger, "Design, Disability and Embodiment: Spatial Justice and Perspectives of Power" (Routledge, 2023)
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Janice Rieger's book Design, Disability and Embodiment: Spatial Justice and Perspectives of Power (Routledge, 2023) explores the spatial and social ...
Antony Kalashnikov, "Monuments for Posterity: Self-Commemoration and the Stalinist Culture of Time" (Cornell UP, 2023)
23 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Antony Kalashnikov's Monuments for Posterity: Self-Commemoration and the Stalinist Culture of Time (Cornell UP, 2023) analyzes Stalinist monument-bu...
Moisés Kopper, "Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil's Public Housing" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Moisés Kopper's Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil's Public Housing (U Michigan Press, 2022) examines...
A Better Way to Buy Books
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...
Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek, "After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time" (Verso, 2023)
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you're confronted by a p...
Shira Gill, "Organized Living: Solutions and Inspiration for Your Home" (Ten Speed Press, 2023)
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Organized Living: Solutions and Inspiration for Your Home (Ten Speed Press, 2023), Gill takes us on a global tour of home organizers learning org...
Stephanie Barczewski, "How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023)
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Stephanie Barczewski is an exploration of the evolution of the quintessentially English ...
Christian Parreno, "Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Boredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is both cause and effect of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundi...
Flora Samuel, "Housing for Hope and Wellbeing" (Routledge, 2022)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Housing and neighborhoods have an important contribution to make to our wellbeing and our sense of our place in the world. Housing for Hope and Wellb...
Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The world is filling with ever more kinds of media, in ever more contexts and formats. Glowing rectangles have become part of the scene; screens, larg...
Finola O'Kane, "Landscape Design and Revolution in Ireland and the United States, 1688-1815" (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023)
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Landscape Design and Revolution in Ireland and the United States, 1688-1815 (Yale University Press, 2023) by Dr. Finola O’Kane explores how revolut...
Simone Ferracina, "Ecologies of Inception: Design Potentials on a Warming Planet" (Routledge, 2022)
08 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Responding to increasing levels of planetary pollution, waste generation, carbon dioxide emission and environmental collapse, Simone Ferracina's book ...
Bleak Houses: Disappointment and Failure in Architecture
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The usual history of architecture is a grand narrative of soaring monuments and heroic makers. But it is also a false narrative in many ways, rarely a...
Constant’s “New Babylon": An Interview with Jérémie McGowan
21 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“New Babylon” is an architectural and urban planning project designed by the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys between 1959 and 1974 in response t...
The History of the American Shopping Mall and Its Cultures
19 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Writer and design critic Alexandra Lange talks about her book, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Shopping Mall (Bloombury, 2023), w...
Gabriel Schwake, "Dwelling on the Green Line" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
17 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Gabriel Schwake about his book Dwelling on the Green Line (Cambridge UP, 2022). Concealed within the walls of settlements along th...
Michael T. Friedman, "Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption" (Cornell UP, 2023)
07 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Mallparks: Baseball Stadiums and the Culture of Consumption (Cornell UP, 2023), Michael T. Friedman observes that as cathedrals represented power...
Celia Fisher, "The Story of Follies: Architectures of Eccentricity" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
04 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The Story of Follies: Architectures of Eccentricity (Reaktion, 2023), Celia Fisher presents an amusing, informative guide to a fanciful and charm...
Publishing in Art, Architecture and Visual Culture
26 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features discussions with Thomas Weaver (Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture) and Victoria Hindley (Acquisitions Editor i...
Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure
20 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Truscello, author of Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure, discusses the ways in which infrastructure deter...
Garrett L. Washington, "Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Garrett Washington’s Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (Hawai’i 2022) brings a fresh perspective to the question of Protestant Christ...
Barbara Penner et al., "Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects" (Reaktion Books, 2021)
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simpl...
The Garage: A History
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the MIT Press podcast, Olivia Erlanger and Luis Ortega Govela discuss their book, Garage. Frank Lloyd Wright invented the garage w...
Howard Gillette, Jr., "The Paradox of Urban Revitalization: Progress and Poverty in America's Postindustrial Era" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
09 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the twenty-first century, cities in the United States that had suffered most the shift to a postindustrial era entered a period widely proclaimed a...
Thresholds 46: SCATTER!
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Graziano and Eliyahu Keller, editors of Thresholds 46: SCATTER!, talk about the mission of the journal; the making of the SCATTER! issue; the r...
Eva Hagberg, "When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect" (Princeton UP, 2022)
01 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Aline B. Louchheim (1914-1972) was an art critic on assignment for the New York Times in 1953 when she first met the Finnish-American architect Eero...
Wake Smith, "Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
28 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Reaching net zero emissions will not be the end of the climate struggle, but only the end of the beginning. For centuries thereafter, temperatures wil...
Larisa Grollemond and Bryan C. Keene, "The Fantasy of the Middle Ages: An Epic Journey through Imaginary Medieval Worlds" (Getty, 2022)
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This abundantly illustrated book is an illuminating exploration of the impact of medieval imagery on three hundred years of visual culture. From the s...
Kristin Hass, "Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices" (Beacon Press, 2022)
26 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field g...
Reinhold Martin, "Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University" (Columbia UP, 2021)
25 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What do the technical practices, procedures, and systems that have shaped institutions of higher learning in the United States, from the Ivy League an...
Jake Rudin and Erin Pellegrino, "Out of Architecture: The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice" (Routledge, 2022)
25 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jake Rudin and Erin Pellegrino's book Out of Architecture: The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice (Routledge, 2022) is both a call to r...
Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson, "Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions" (Routledge, 2020)
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson's book Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions (Routledge, 2020) brings together...
Ali Mozaffari and Nigel Westbrook, "Development, Architecture, and the Formation of Heritage in Late Twentieth-Century Iran" (Manchester UP, 2020)
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Development, Architecture, and the Formation of Heritage in Late Twentieth-Century Iran (Manchester UP, 2020) analyses the use of the past and the pr...
Dave Colangelo, "The Building as Screen: A History, Theory, and Practice of Massive Media" (Amsterdam UP, 2019)
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Building as Screen: A History, Theory, and Practice of Massive Media (Amsterdam UP, 2019) describes, historicizes, theorizes, and creatively depl...
John Vinci, "Reconstructing the Garrick: Adler and Sullivan's Lost Masterpiece" (Alphawood Exhibitions, 2021)
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For six months in 1961, Richard Nickel, John Vinci, and David Norris salvaged the interior and exterior ornamentation of the Garrick Theater, Adler & ...
Why Should Cultural Heritage Be Protected?
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Where people are killed and abused in warfare and violent conflict, artifacts of cultural heritage are often destroyed and mistreated as well. Indeed,...
Fabio Duarte and Ricardo Alvarez, "Urban Play: Make-Believe, Technology, and Space" (MIT Press, 2021)
18 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers. I...
Jack Ahern, "Design with Nature on Cape Cod and the Islands" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are special places known for their distinctive flora, including pine-oak forests, sandpl...
Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione, "Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities" (MIT Press, 2022)
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A new model of urban governance, mapping the route to a more equitable management of a city’s infrastructure and services. The majority of the world...
Robin Bartram, "Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
29 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The buil...
Padma Kaimal, "Opening Kailasanatha: The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space" (U Washington Press, 2020)
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Opening Kailasanatha: The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space (U Washington Press, 2020), Padma Kaimal deciphers the intentions of t...
Namita Vijay Dharia, "The Industrial Ephemeral: Labor and Love in Indian Architecture and Construction" (U California Press, 2022)
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What transformative effects does a multimillion-dollar industry have on those who work within it? The Industrial Ephemeral presents the untold stories...
Jennifer Forestal, "Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments" (Oxford UP, 2021)
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist Jennifer Forestal’s new book is a fascinating exploration of contemporary democracy and how it operates in different spaces. Fore...
Oana Serban, "After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions" (de Gruyter, 2022)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions revolutionized the way philosophers and historians of science thought about science, scienti...
Pamela Karimi, "Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice" (Stanford UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the ...
Yahia Shawkat, "Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space" (American U in Cairo Press, 2020)
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Along with football and religion, housing is a fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian life: it can make or break marriage proposals, invigorate or slow d...
Stephanie Azzarone, "Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park" (Fordham UP, 2022)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On the west side of Manhattan, Riverside Park winds between the banks of the Hudson River and the elegant housing of Riverside Drive. In her new book ...
Paul Watt, "Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London" (Policy Press, 2021)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is widely accepted that London is in the midst of a serious housing crisis, manifested most obviously in city's soaring rents. While the causes of ...
Graham Harman, "Architecture and Objects" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Object-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural theorists and practitioners in recent years. Architecture and Objects (...
Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago, "Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Characterized by shared, self-managed access to food, housing, and basic conditions for a creative life, the commons are essential for communities to ...
Ian Wray, "No Little Plans: How Government Built America’s Wealth and Infrastructure" (Routledge, 2019)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is planning for America anathema to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? Is it true, as thinkers such as Friedrich Von Hayek, Milton Friedman, ...
Alex Nathanson, "A History of Solar Power Art and Design" (Routledge, 2021)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Nathanson's book A History of Solar Power Art and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) ...
Mrill Ingram, "Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth" (Temple UP, 2022)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How we relate to orphaned space matters. Voids, marginalia, empty spaces—from abandoned gas stations to polluted waterways—are created and maintai...
Jennifer L. Allen, "Sustainable Utopias: The Art and Politics of Hope in Germany" (Harvard UP, 2022)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of...
Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that co...
Christina E. Crawford, "Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union" (Cornell UP, 2022)
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union (Cornell UP, 2022) is the first comparative parallel study of Soviet architec...
Julia Walker, "Berlin Contemporary: Architecture and Politics After 1990" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For years following reunification, Berlin was the largest construction site in Europe, with striking new architecture proliferating throughout the cit...
Katherine L. Carroll, "Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the late nineteenth century, medical educators intent on transforming American physicians into scientifically trained, elite professionals recogniz...
John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle A...
Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis, "A Backyard Prairie: The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and Wildflowers" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021)
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over...
Cole Roskam, "Designing Reform: Architecture in the People's Republic of China, 1970-1992" (Yale UP, 2021)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
China’s urban landscapes are full of radically different architectural styles which memorialise different eras in the country’s political past, fr...
Ann Marie Borys, "American Unitarian Churches: Architecture of a Democratic Religion" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Unitarian religious tradition was a product of the same eighteenth-century democratic ideals that fueled the American Revolution and informed the ...
Andrew Witt, "Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture" (MIT Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2022), Andrew Witt examines the visual, methodological, and cultural intersections b...
On the Roman Catacombs: A Discussion with William Gruen
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wonder about the Roman catacombs? Look no further. Today I talked to William "Chip" Gruen of Muhlenberg College about his article "Roman Cata...
Fleur Watson, "The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design" (Routledge, 2021)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the challenges inherent in exhibiting design ideas. Traditionally, ex...
Stephen M. Wheeler and Christina D. Rosan, "Reimagining Sustainable Cities: Strategies for Designing Greener, Healthier, More Equitable Communities" (U California Press, 2021)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What would it take to make urban places greener, more affordable, more equitable, and healthier for everyone? In recent years, cities have stepped up ...
John DeFerrari and Douglas Peter Sefton, "Sixteenth Street NW: Washington, DC's Avenue of Ambitions" (Georgetown UP, 2022)
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, DC, has been called the Avenue of the Presidents, Executive Avenue, and the Avenue of Churches. From the front door...
Lisa Reilly, "The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition (Cambridge UP, 2020), Lisa Reilly establishes a new interpretive par...
Hilton Judin, "Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital" (Routledge, 2021)
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hilton Judin's book Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital (Routledge, 2021) is the first comprehensive in...
Laura J. Martin, "Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration" (Harvard UP, 2022)
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental restoration is a global pursuit and a major political concern. Governments, nonprofits, private corporations, and other institutions spe...
Richard K. Rein, "American Urbanist: How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life" (Island Press, 2022)
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On an otherwise normal weekday in the 1980s, commuters on busy Route 1 in central New Jersey noticed an alarming sight: a man in a suit and tie dashin...
Lucy Donkin, "Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages" (Cornell UP, 2022)
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Lucy Donkin’s Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2022) illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in...
Nadir Lahiji, "Architecture, Philosophy, and the Pedagogy of Cinema: From Benjamin to Badiou" (Routledge, 2021)
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophers on the art of cinema mainly remain silent about architecture. Discussing cinema as ‘mass art’, they tend to forget that architecture,...
Architecture, Climatic Privilege, and Migrant Labour in Singapore
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Migration and architecture have emerged as a new topic of research at a global level. Migrant worker dormitories in Singapore, for example, are sites ...
Michael Merrill, "Louis Kahn: The Importance of Drawing" (Lars Muller Publishers, 2021)
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“The importance of a drawing is immense, because it’s the architect’s language,” said the architect Louis Kahn to his masterclass in 1967. Whi...
Kerry Dean Carso, "Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture" (Cornell UP, 2021)
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture (Cornell UP, 2021) examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the...
Kristina Wilson, "Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design" (Princeton UP, 2021)
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the world of interior design, mid-century Modernism has left an indelible mark still seen and felt today in countless open-concept floor plans and ...
Kian Goh, "Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice" (MIT Press, 2021)
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these p...
Keller Easterling, "Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World" (Verso, 2021)
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do we formulate alternative approaches to the world’s unresponsive or intractable dilemmas, from climate change, to inequality, to concentration...
Randall Whitehead and Clifton S. Lemon, "Beautiful Light: An Insider’s Guide to LED Lighting in Homes and Gardens" (Routledge, 2021)
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Beautiful Light: An Insider’s Guide to LED Lighting in Homes and Gardens (Routledge, 2021) by internationally acclaimed lighting designer Randall W...
Carla Yanni, "The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States" (U Minnesota Press, 2007)
28 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight ...
Aleksandra Prica, "Decay and Afterlife: Form, Time, and the Textuality of Ruins, 1100 to 1900" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
21 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Western ruins have long been understood as objects riddled with temporal contradictions, whether they appear in baroque poetry and drama, Romanticism’...
Ginger Nolan, "Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Attempting to derive aesthetic systems from natural structures of human cognition, designers looked toward the “savage mind”—a way of thinking t...
James Tait, "The Architecture Concept Book" (Thames and Hudson, 2018)
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by the complexity and heterogeneity of the world around us, and by the rise of new technologies and their associated behavior, The Architect...
David Karmon, "Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
07 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience (Cambridge UP, 2021) is the first study of Renaissa...
Malika Maskarinec, "The Forces of Form in German Modernism" (Northwestern UP, 2018)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe were times of intense technological, social and political change and transformation, and so it’s ...
D. Fairchild Ruggles, "Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar Al-Durr" (Oxford UP, 2020)
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Shajar al-Durr--known as "Tree of Pearls"--began her remarkable career as a child slave, given as property to Sultan Salih of Egypt. She became his co...
Anna Bokov, "Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920-1930" (Park Publishing, 2020)
29 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920-1930 (Park Publishing, 2020), Anna Bokov examines the history of the Higher Art ...
Paul Kidder, "Minoru Yamasaki and the Fragility of Architecture" (Routledge, 2021)
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few figures in the American arts have stories richer in irony than does architect Minoru Yamasaki. While his twin towers of New York’s World Trade C...
Anna McSweeney, "From Granada to Berlin: The Alhambra Cupola" (Kettler Verlag, 2020)
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Part of the series CAHIM Connecting Art Histories in the Museum, Anna McSweeney's book From Granada to Berlin: The Alhambra Cupola (Kettler Verlag, ...
Aurelia Campbell, "What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming" (U Washington Press, 2020)
20 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden C...
Michael S. Dodson, "Bureaucracy, Belonging, and the City in North India: 1870-1930" (Routledge, 2020)
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michael S. Dodson's Bureaucracy, Belonging, and the City in North India: 1870-1930 (Routledge, 2020) is a re-evaluation of modern urbanism and arch...
Andrew Demshuk, "Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) compares how three prewar German cities shar...
Winka Dubbeldam, "Strange Objects, New Solids and Massive Forms" (Actar, 2022)
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The object as solid, having three dimensions, is not just a different formal trend, but a paradigm shift; a reconceiving of how the architectural obje...
Jisha Menon, "Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in the Indian City" (Northwestern UP, 2021)
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in the Indian City (Northwestern UP, 2021) follows a postcolonial city as it transforms into a bustling glob...
Barbara White Bryson, "Creating a Culture of Predictable Outcomes: How Leadership, Collaboration, and Decision-Making Drive Architecture and Construction" (Routledge, 2020)
26 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Creating a Culture of Predictable Outcomes: How Leadership, Collaboration, and Decision-Making Drive Architecture and Construction (Routledge, 2020) ...
Kenneth O'Reilly, "Asphalt: A History" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Asphalt: A History (U Nebraska Press, 2021), Kenneth O’Reilly provides a history of this everyday substance. By tracing the history of asphalt—...
Carolyn L. White, "The Archaeology of Burning Man: The Rise and Fall of Black Rock City" (U New Mexico Press, 2020)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do you do archaeological research on a place that exists for only one week per year, in the middle of the Nevada desert, and is based on the ethos...
Conchita Anorve-Tschirgi and Ehsan Abushadi, "The Architecture of Ramses Wissa Wassef" (AU of Cairo Press, 2019)
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The pioneering Egyptian architect and teacher Ramses Wissa Wassef (1911–74) is best known for his founding in 1951 of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Ce...
Simon O'Meara, "The Ka'ba Orientations: Readings in Islam's Ancient House" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Kaʿba is the famous cuboid structure at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca. In his book The Kaʿba Orientations: Readings in Islam's Ancien...