Best Refashioning Podcasts (2025)

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Emily Gee, "Hostel, House and Chambers: Accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian Working Woman" (Liverpool UP, 2025) 49:06

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10d ago49:06

49:06

Hostel, House and Chambers: Accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian Working Woman (Liverpool University Press, 2025) by Emily Gee is the first comprehensive study of the campaigns to house a new generation of working women, the specialised design of the buildings and the women whose lives were changed by this architectural movement. After 1900, t…

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Carlotta Daro, "The Architecture of the Wire: Infrastructures of Telecommunication" (MIT Press, 2025) 37:23

21d ago37:23

37:23

The Architecture of the Wire explores the development of telecommunications infrastructure and its impact on the architectural and urban culture of the modern age—from poles, wires, and cables, to “micro-architectures,” such as the théâtrophone and the telephone booth. Starting with the intrepid worldwide infrastructures of the late nineteenth cent…

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Aaron Cayer, "Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire" (U California Press, 2025) 34:35

30d ago34:35

34:35

By the end of the twentieth century, US architecture and engineering firms held more capital than entire countries, employed more people than were housed in most cities, and rented offices in more nations than comprised the UN. Within them, architects were designing not single buildings but urban systems, including the multinational infrastructures…

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Olga Touloumi, "Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior" (U Minnesota Press, 2024) 58:05

2M ago58:05

58:05

For almost seven years after World War II, a small group of architects took on an exciting task: to imagine the spaces of global governance for a new political organization called the United Nations (UN). To create the iconic headquarters of the UN in New York City, these architects experimented with room layouts, media technologies, and design in …

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Harald Bodenschatz et al., "Urban Planning in Nazi Germany: Attack, Triumph, Terror in the European Context, 1933–1945" (DOM, 2025) 56:00

2M ago56:00

56:00

Urban Planning in Nazi Germany: Attack, Triumph, Terror in the European Context, 1933–1945 (DOM, 2025) is edited by Uwe Altrock, Harald Bodenschatz, Victoria Grau, Jannik Noeske, Christiane Post, and Max Welch Guerra. The book includes contributions from Christian von Oppen, Piero Sassi, and Jannik Noeske. Two co-editors, Victoria Grau and Max Welc…

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Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025) 48:18

2M ago48:18

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“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods…

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Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:03:08

2M ago1:03:08

1:03:08

The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century: the automobile, which brought gas stations, highways, commercial strips, and sprawl; and the single-family suburban home, the repository of many families’ long…

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Nezar AlSayyad and Heba Safey Eldeen, "Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real" (American U in Cairo Press, 2022) 1:08:10

3M ago1:08:10

1:08:10

The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that many people will have of cities they may never visit. Films influence the way we construct images of the world, and accordingly, in many instances, how we operate within it. Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urb…

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Ünver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:12:03

3M ago1:12:03

1:12:03

In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice that the city’s landscape would be dramatically altered without the mosques of the city. In Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanb…

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Allan Doig, "A History of the Church through its Buildings" (Oxford UP, 2021) 37:15

3M ago37:15

37:15

A History of the Church through its Buildings (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Allan Doig takes the reader to meet people who lived through momentous religious changes in the very spaces where the story of the Church took shape. Buildings are about people, the people who conceived, designed, financed, and used them. Their stories become embedded …

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Jake Kaner and Clive Edwards, "Conservation of Twentieth-Century Furniture" (Routledge, 2024) 46:06

3M ago46:06

46:06

Conservation of Twentieth-Century Furniture (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive and accessible coverage of the materials and techniques that are encountered in furniture of this century. After putting the design, manufacture and conservation of twentieth-century furniture into context, the volume then offers an A-Z of materials organised into …

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Ignacio G. Galán, "Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 54:53

4M ago54:53

54:53

Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design and furnishing practices. While the regime’s politics were overtly manifest in monumental government architecture, Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy (University of Minnesota Pre…

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Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, "Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 50:05

4M ago50:05

50:05

Albeit inspired by a progressive vision of a working environment without walls or hierarchies, the open plan office has come to be associated with some of the most dehumanizing and alienating aspects of the modern office. Jennifer Kaufman-Buhler's fascinating new book Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office (Bloomsbury, 2021) examines th…

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John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025) 57:39

4M ago57:39

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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 (Lun…

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Todd Reisz, "Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai" (Stanford UP, 2021) 40:31

5M ago40:31

40:31

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…

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David Serlin, "Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 1:14:47

6M ago1:14:47

1:14:47

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 experien…

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Noise and Information in the Office 1:12:33

6M ago1:12:33

1:12:33

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…

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Tupur Chatterjee, "Projecting Desire: Media Architectures and Moviegoing in Urban India" (NYU Press, 2025) 40:36

6M ago40:36

40:36

Since the late 1990s, the multiplex in India has emerged as a dominant site of media exhibition, almost always embedded within the shopping mall. This spatial pairing has transformed the experience of moviegoing, making it impossible to inhabit one space without also passing through the other. The rise of the mall-multiplex signals a broader shift …

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Brutalism 18:32

6M ago18:32

18:32

In this episode of High Theory Nasser Mufti talks with us about Brutalism. A twentieth century architectural style featuring imposing structures made of a lot of concrete, brutalist structures tend to provoke strong reactions. People either love it or they hate it – you never get a middling conversation about brutalism. Often used for government bu…

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Roland Mayer, "The Ruins of Rome: A Cultural History" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:13:30

7M ago1:13:30

1:13:30

The beguiling ruins of Rome have a long history of allure. They first engaged the attention of later mediaeval tourists, just as they do today. The interest of travellers was captured in the Renaissance by artists, architects, topographers, antiquarians, archaeologists and writers. Once the ruins were seen to appeal to visitors, and to matter for t…

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Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy, "Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:02:44

7M ago1:02:44

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In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily. Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Mary Anne Hunting and Dr. Kevin D. Murphy tells the stories of the resilient and resourceful women who su…

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Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024) 58:19

8M ago58:19

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The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall …

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Miles Glendinning, "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 1:17:50

8M ago1:17:50

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Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism's most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide 'homes for the people'. Vast programs of mass housing – high-rise, low-rise, state-funde…

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Philip Howell, "Pub" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 38:59

9M ago38:59

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The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In Pub (Bloomsbury, 2025) a new addition to the Object Lessons series, Dr. Philip Howell takes the public house as an object, or rather as a series of objects: he takes the pub apart and examines its constituent elements, from pub signs to the bar staff to t…

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Chandigarh 19:47

9M ago19:47

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Chandigarh is the shared capital city of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, built under the leadership of modernist and brutalist architect Le Corbusier, as an emblem of the postcolonial Indian nation state as visualized by the first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It was a repudiation of the imperialist architectural style, and for L…

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In Conversation: Islamic Architecture and Europe 41:12

9M ago41:12

41:12

In this episode, Ismail Patel speaks with Diana Darke about her new book, “Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture shaped Europe”. 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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Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, "Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement" (Duke UP, 2023) 1:06:26

9M ago1:06:26

1:06:26

Environments associated with migration are often seen as provisional, lacking both history and architecture. As Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi demonstrates in Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Duke UP, 2023), a refugee camp’s aesthetic and material landscapes—even if born out of emergency—reveal histories, fut…

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Byron Ellsworth Hamann, "The Invention of the Colonial Americas: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies, 1781–1844" (Getty, 2022) 50:27

9M ago50:27

50:27

The Invention of the Colonial Americas: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies, 1781–1844 (Getty, 2022) is an architectural history and media-archaeological study of changing theories and practices of government archives in Enlightenment Spain. It centers on an archive created in Seville for storing Spain's pre-1760 documents about the N…

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James Michael Buckley, "City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry" (U Texas Press, 2024) 43:57

9M ago43:57

43:57

California’s 1849 gold rush triggered creation of the “instant city” of San Francisco as a to base exploit the rich natural resources of the American West. City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry (University of Texas Press, 2024) examines how capitalists and workers logged the state’s vast redwood forests to …

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Caitlín Eilís Barrett, "Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens" (Oxford UP, 2019) 1:42:22

10M ago1:42:22

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Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlín Eilís Barrett, Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University, draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between repr…

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Aurelia Campbell, "What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming" (U Washington Press, 2020) 1:00:11

10M ago1:00:11

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One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden City, directing ambitious naval expeditions, and creating the world’s largest encyclopedia. What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming (U Washington Press, 2020) is the first book-le…

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Patrick T. Reardon, "The Loop: The 'L' Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago" (Southern Illinois UP, 2020) 43:29

10M ago43:29

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Every day Chicagoans rely on the loop of elevated train tracks to get to their jobs, classrooms, or homes in the city’s downtown. But how much do they know about the single most important structure in the history of the Windy City? In engagingly brisk prose, Patrick T. Reardon unfolds the fascinating story about how Chicago’s elevated Loop was buil…

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Shannon Mattern, "A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences" (Princeton UP, 2021) 45:35

10M ago45:35

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Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know about a city. A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton UP, 2021) reveals how cities encompass myriad…

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Ben Highmore, "Playgrounds: The Experimental Years" (Reaktion, 2024) 45:06

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After World War II, a new kind of playground emerged in Northern Europe and North America. Rather than slides, swings, and roundabouts, these new playgrounds encouraged children to build shacks and invent their own entertainment. Playgrounds: The Experimental Years (Reaktion, 2024) tells the story of how waste grounds and bombsites were transformed…

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Theresa Flanigan, "The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence" (Brepols, 2024) 46:43

10M ago46:43

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Famous today for the shops lining its sloped street, the Ponte Vecchio is the last premodern bridge spanning the Arno River at Florence and one of the few remaining examples of the once more prevalent urbanized bridge type. Drawing from early Florentine chronicles and previously unpublished archival documents, The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Polit…

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Adrian Tinniswood, "The Power and the Glory: Life in the English Country House Before the Great War" (Basic Books, 2024) 54:19

11M ago54:19

54:19

In the decades before the First World War, the owners of the nation’s stately homes revelled in a golden age of glory and glamour. Nothing lay beyond their reach in a world where privilege and hedonism went hand-in-hand with duty and honour. This was a time when the ancestral seats of ancient nobility stood side-by-side with the fabulous palaces of…

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James T. White and John Punter, "Condoland: The Planning, Design, and Development of Toronto's CityPlace" (UBC Press, 2023) 1:20:56

11M ago1:20:56

1:20:56

Casting an eye toward the frantic vertical urbanization of Toronto, Condoland: The Planning, Design, and Development of Toronto’s CityPlace (UBC, 2023) traces the forty-year history of the city’s largest residential megaproject. James T. White and John Punter summarize the tools used to shape Toronto’s built environment and critically explore the u…

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Brian Donahue, "Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests" (Yale UP, 2024) 50:11

11M ago50:11

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In Slow Wood: Greener Building from Local Forests (Yale UP, 2024), environmental historian Brian Donahue advances a radical proposal for healing the relationship between humans and forests through responsible, sustainable use of local and regional wood in home building. American homes are typically made of lumber and plywood delivered by a global s…

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Fiona Smyth, "Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century" (Manchester UP, 2024) 33:03

11M ago33:03

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On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scientific demonstration of new techniques in acoustic measurement. It aimed to address a surprising question: could a building be a musical instrument? Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architectur…

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Christopher Bell, "Walking East Harlem: A Neighborhood Experience" (Rutgers UP, 2024) 35:48

11M ago35:48

35:48

They call it Spanish Harlem or sometimes just El Barrio. But for over a century, East Harlem has been a melting pot of many ethnic groups, including Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and Mexican immigrants, as well as Italian, Jewish, and African American communities. Though gentrification is rapidly changing the face of this section of upper Manhatt…

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Vishaan Chakrabarti, "The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:14:40

11M ago1:14:40

1:14:40

From one of today's most inspired architects and urban advocates, a manifesto for architecture as a force for addressing our biggest social challenges. The world is facing unprecedented challenges, from climate change and population growth, to political division and technological dislocation, to declining mental health and fraying cultural fabric. …

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Subhashini Kaligotla, "Shiva's Waterfront Temples: Architects and Their Audiences in Medieval India" (Yale UP, 2022) 30:55

12M ago30:55

30:55

The vibrant red sandstone temples of India's Deccan Plateau, such as the Pattadakal temple cluster, have attracted visitors since the eighth century or earlier. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the coronation place of the Chalukya dynasty, Pattadakal and its neighboring sites are of major historical importance. In Shiva's Waterfront Temples: Archit…

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Paris, Cuba, and David from Any Direction with Lucy Benjamin 33:05

12M ago33:05

33:05

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Lucy Benjamin. Dr Lucy Benjamin is a researcher in architectural theory and creative practice. Her work focuses on the intersection of environmental theory, architecture, and philosophy, especially the emergence of repair as a design principle and the conditions for human rights in the age of eco-crisis. They disc…

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René Boer, "Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives" (Valiz, 2023) 1:08:12

1y ago1:08:12

1:08:12

In cities across the world, a new urban condition is spreading rapidly: an ever-increasing push toward efficiency, sanitization, surveillance and the active eradication of any aberration, friction or alternative. From Dubai, Hong Kong and London to Amsterdam and Cairo, the smooth city, with its gated communities and theme-park zones, insidiously tr…

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Amanda Shoaf Vincent, "Constructing Gardens, Cultivating the City: Paris's New Parks, 1977-1995" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) 1:13:49

1y ago1:13:49

1:13:49

In the space of about two decades, five major parks were proposed, designed, and created in Paris. Some emerged from competitions between professional landscape architects, others were imagined by planners working for the city, all represented a shift in what Amanda Shoaf Vincent calls “post-modern” understandings of the role of parks and garden in…

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Anat Geva, "The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s-1960s" (Texas A&M UP, 2023) 51:52

1y ago51:52

51:52

Today I talked to Anat Geva about The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s-1960s (Texas A&M UP, 2023). There is no one mandate on how to build the exterior of a synagogue - something that I don't think I ever thought about, yet it was something that Professor Anat Geva focused on. Famous architects of different backgrounds built the sy…

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Lynne B. Sagalyn, "Times Square Remade: The Dynamics of Urban Change" (MIT Press, 2023) 59:07

1y ago59:07

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What is it about Times Square that has inspired such attention for well over a century? And how is it that, despite its many changes of character, the place has maintained a unique hold on our collective imagination? In Times Square Remade: The Dynamics of Urban Change (MIT Press, 2023), which comes twenty years after her widely acclaimed Times Squ…

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Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020) 40:37

1y ago40:37

40:37

Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels looked to influence the human psyche through form, or elicit desired behaviors with environmental incentives, implementing what Joy Knoblauch calls “psychological functio…

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Farshid Emami, "Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran" (Penn State UP, 2024) 51:12

1y ago51:12

51:12

A vibrant urban settlement from mediaeval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024) reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. F…

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Arif Hasan, "The Search for Shelter: Writings on Land and Housing" (Oxford UP, 2022) 50:33

1y ago50:33

50:33

The Search for Shelter: Writings on Land and Housing (Oxford UP, 2022) sheds light on the global population living in slums, which has increased from 1 billion in 2014 to 1.6 billion in 2018. The book also looks at the impact of neoliberalism on urban planning, the manner of organization and the struggles of the communities affected by these proces…