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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
  • 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
  • Noise and Information in the Office

    Noise and Information in the Office
    May 12 2025
    Ever wonder who’s to blame for the noise and distraction of the open office? Our guest has answers. Joseph L. Clarke is a historian of art and architecture and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His 2021 book Echo’s Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space won a 2022 CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title. It’s a fascinating history of how architects have conceived of and manipulated the relationship between sound and space. His most recent publication is “Too Much Information: Noise and Communication in an Open Office.” In this episode we’ll talk about media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his architecturally inspired theory of acoustic space, which went on to have its own influence in the field of architecture. We’ll also dive deep into the history of the open plan office, the theories of acoustic communication that inspired it, the sonic disaster it became, and the new media technologies that were invented in response. If you’ve ever been driven to distraction by noise in a cubicle farm or open office and wondered how such a space came to be, this episode’s got answers! 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 13 mins
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