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New Books in Architecture

New Books in Architecture

By: Marshall Poe
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 Interviews with Scholars of Architecture about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architectureNew Books Network Art
Episodes
  • John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025)

    John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025)
    Jun 21 2025
    The 1960s continue to hold an almost mythical place in Western culture, particularly in Britain, where change was widespread and infiltrated many aspects of life. This included architecture, whose role in a modern democracy and the form it should take were hotly debated. 1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture (Lund Humphries, 2025) by John Barr discusses the architectural thinking of the time through an examination of the design of university buildings. While there were notable buildings being built in other spheres, no other field of architecture provided the opportunity to express those ideas as freely, while also reflecting innovative new thinking about education and society. Somehow, the university buildings of the 1960s seemed to represent the cutting edge of modern architecture in the UK. This book provides the first critical analysis and overview of these buildings, designed by some of the leading British architects of the period including Basil Spence, Leslie Martin, Alison and Peter Smithson, Denys Lasdun, Powell and Moya and James Stirling. By placing the buildings in a wider social, cultural and political context, it examines the combination of circumstances and attitudes that produced results that are equally admired and detested and allows us to understand how we might replicate or avoid them in the future. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Todd Reisz, "Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai" (Stanford UP, 2021)

    Todd Reisz, "Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai" (Stanford UP, 2021)
    May 18 2025
    Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai (Stanford UP, 2020) by Todd Reisz is a critical historical account of Dubai’s transformation into a global urban spectacle. Reisz examines how architecture, master planning, and international expertise contributed to the construction of Dubai’s modern image, focusing particularly on the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Rather than narrating Dubai’s development as a spontaneous miracle of oil wealth, Reisz reveals it as a meticulously crafted project, shaped by deliberate strategies to project modernity, power, and cosmopolitanism. Throughout the book, Reisz uses a wide range of archival materials, planning documents, interviews, and visual sources to trace how architecture and city-making became tools of governance and spectacle. He brings attention to the invisible labor—both technical and physical—that undergirded Dubai’s rise. Yet, the workers, planners, and advisors often remain shadowy figures behind the gleaming facades they helped erect. One of the key figures Reisz highlights is British architect John Harris, whose firm was commissioned in the 1960s to create Dubai’s first master plan. Harris’s work embodied the desire to modernize without entirely erasing local culture. Yet, as Reisz notes, the imported modernist language of architecture often clashed with, or simply overrode, traditional urban forms. Dubai's early building boom was thus a hybrid project: shaped by Western notions of progress and functionality, but executed in a Gulf context where colonial histories and local aspirations intertwined. Importantly, Showpiece City challenges narratives that paint Dubai as either a rootless fantasy or a neoliberal dystopia. Reisz treats Dubai’s history seriously, demonstrating that its urban form is the result of pragmatic decisions, diplomatic negotiations, and speculative gambles rather than mere vanity. He also critiques the romanticization of "traditional" Arab cities by showing that Gulf urbanism has long been dynamic, experimental, and globally connected. Showpiece City presents Dubai’s urbanization not as an inevitable product of oil wealth or as a superficial extravagance, but as a complex, calculated project of image-making and infrastructural ambition. Reisz’s work contributes to Middle Eastern urban studies by insisting that cities like Dubai deserve nuanced, historically grounded analysis rather than simplistic dismissals or celebrations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
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    43 mins
  • David Serlin, "Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    David Serlin, "Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
    May 13 2025
    Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture (U Chicago Press, 2025) offers a history of how encounters between architects and people with disabilities transformed modern culture. Window Shopping with Helen Keller recovers a series of influential moments when architects and designers engaged the embodied experiences of people with disabilities. David Serlin reveals how people with sensory and physical impairments navigated urban spaces and helped to shape modern culture. Through four case studies--the lives of Joseph Merrick (aka "The Elephant Man") and Helen Keller, the projects of the Works Progress Administration, and the design of the Illinois Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped--Serlin offers a new history of modernity's entanglements with disability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
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    1 hr and 18 mins
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