New Books in Architecture

Epizódy

• Dmytro Soloviov, "Ukrainian Modernism: Modernist Architecture of Ukraine" (Fuel, 2025) 03.07.2026 52min

  Ukraine’s modernist buildings are an extraordinary blend of function, avant-garde aesthetics and ingenious design, but despite these qualities, they remain largely unrecognized. This is a result of several factors, including the stigma of belonging to the Soviet era, corruption, neglect, as well as the ongoing threat of destruction from both unscrupulous developers and war. Photographer Dmytro Soloviov has crossed Ukraine documenting them to form the most comprehensive publication available on the subject.  With an introduction by renowned architecture critic Owen Hatherley, complete with historical images, Ukrainian Modernism: Modernist Architecture of Ukraine (Fuel, 2025) cements these buildings in a cultural and political context. Dmytro Soloviov is a photographer, tour guide, and activist, and the creator of the popular Ukrainian Modernism Instagram page. He frequently leads tours of modernist architecture in different cities in Ukraine. Megan Buskey is an independent writer and scholar focused on Ukrainian history, culture, and politics. She is the author of Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Aditi Chandra, "Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 01.07.2026 1h 3min

  Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines how Delhi's Sultanate and Mughal architecture, dating from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, became modern monuments and were assimilated and ordered into public consciousness as spaces for tourism, leisure, and intellectual contemplation during the colonial and early postcolonial eras (1828-1963). It examines the resistance that challenges this ordering, rendering monuments unruly and unassimilable despite state efforts to control their narrative. This exposes the nation's contradictory claims of inclusivity while marginalizing subaltern groups. It guides readers through picturesque landscapes, museums, imperial displays, postcards, travel experiences, Partition refugee camps, and cinema. Analyzing these forms reveals how the archive of Indo-Islamic monuments was shaped through presences and absences. Each chapter examines everyday life, untangles knowable public transcripts, illuminates strategic excisions and hidden transcripts, juxtaposes evidence that has not yet been analyzed in conjunction, reads archival material against the grain, and finds archival layers in unfamiliar places. NBN Host: Sohini Majumdar Sohini teaches history at University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Gareth Doherty, "Landscape Fieldwork: How Engaging the World Can Change Design" (U Virginia Press, 2025) 21.06.2026 1h 3min

  Landscape architecture is at a crossroads. The ability to draw upon interdisciplinary perspectives and generate insights from the combined vantage points of design, environmental studies, and the social sciences puts it in a prime position to address the most pressing issues of our time, such as climate change and social inequality. Its current reliance on digital and technological solutions, however, has increasingly caused landscape architects to lose sight of the ways in which humans actually use spaces. And while landscapes are designed all over the world, the discipline remains inordinately centered on the Global North. Dr. Gareth Doherty's Landscape Fieldwork: How Engaging the World Can Change Design (University of Virginia Press, 2025) alters that long-standing paradigm through real-life examples that provide tools for practitioners to engage more deeply with multidimensional, diverse landscapes and the communities that create, live in, and use them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Tania Sengupta and Stuart King eds., "Reclaiming Colonial Architecture" (Routledge, 2024) 09.06.2026 56min

  Reclaiming Colonial Architecture (Routledge, 2024) explores the built inheritance of colonialism and considers how architects, heritage practitioners, students, communities, and activists might narrate, care for, transform, or challenge them today. Awarded the SAHGB’s Colvin Medal in 2025, the book draws on a variety of authors to combine historical context with thematically organised case studies across urban and architectural scales. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century European architecture, focusing on artistic techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Joshua Comaroff, "Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 07.06.2026 57min

  In Singapore, the financial center of Southeast Asia, hyperurbanization and commercial development exist alongside enduring belief in the economic power of ghosts: in their ability to control the flows of money and value and to determine the outcome of investments and wagers. Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore (U Minnesota Press, 2025) explores the unlikely collusion of these two systems, demonstrating both the productive role of popular beliefs in the modern world and the surprising correlations between “late” capitalism and the workings of the spirit realm. Detailing the logic and practices of Singapore’s ghost economy—from performing exorcisms on real estate development sites to offering money and commodities to the dead as a hedge against precarious real-world transactions—Joshua Comaroff shows how speculative finance, largely governed by chance and volatility, is understood via its inherently spectral qualities. Based on detailed case studies and years of extensive fieldwork, Spectropolis argues for the power of popular belief systems to theorize contemporary socioeconomic conditions and to give form to collective affect as well as shared aspirations and anxieties, often in deeply hopeful, horizontal and empowering ways. Joshua Comaroff is the assistant professor of architecture at the National University of Singapore. He is coauthor of Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition (Minnesota, 2024). Alyssa Kee recently finished graduate studies at the University of Vienna. Her research interests lie in urban geography, multispecies ecologies, and urban food assemblages. She is currently in the field of Geographical Education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Sierra Bainbridge and James Kitchin, "Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet" (Axio, 2026) 31.05.2026 1h 3min

  Regenerative design is a way of building that heals our planet and our communities by halting biodiversity loss, reversing climate change, and improving social equity. Over the last decade, the nonprofit design practice MASS has proven that we can yield positive social, environmental, and economic results through a series of projects in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet (Axio, 2026) argues for reducing the harm our building activities wage in our environments and that we can—and must—help people and the planet thrive together. The proof? MASS's projects represent a coherent and replicable philosophy that responds to local ecologies and transforms lives. This groundbreaking new book, co-edited by Sierra Bainbridge and Alan Ricks, examines how the power of multidisciplinary collaboration, regenerative practices, and community engagement can actively contribute to a healthier, more harmonious world. The evidence of these works can be found in three case studies, focusing on The Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and The Ilima Primary School. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Charlie Qiuli Xue and Arwen Yingting Chen, "American-Designed Shopping Malls in China" (Hong Kong UP, 2026) 30.05.2026 52min

  China’s remarkable journey from poverty to becoming the world’s second-largest economic power is marked by extraordinary urban growth and consumption capacity of its urban population. Central to this development fervor are multifunctional commercial complexes and shopping malls, now key features of modern urban districts. The concept of shopping malls, originally introduced to China by American architects in the 1980s, has since flourished on an even larger scale than their American counterparts. American-Designed Shopping Malls in China (Hong Kong University Press, 2026) by Dr. Charlie Qiuli Xue and Dr. Arwen Yingting Chen delves into the origins of shopping mall development in the United States after World War II, tracing how American architects exported this building type into China’s rapidly evolving urban landscapes, particularly in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, and Guangzhou. Using primary sources, statistical analyses, and illustrated case studies, the book explores the evolution of shopping malls as a consequence of China’s profound economic, social, and cultural change over the past four decades. The book also highlights the impact of American consumerism on the everyday lives of Chinese people, altering not only consumer patterns but also local architectural practices. This tale of transformation is essential reading for anyone interested in China’s rapid urban development. 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
• Judith Hill, "Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland" (Four Courts Press, 2026) 27.05.2026 56min

  Castles speak. Especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The Act of Union of 1800, which brought Ireland into closer association with Britain, challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a few responded by building castles. In Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2026) Dr. Judith Hill explores the projects of two Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville, who commissioned Francis Johnston, then Ireland’s most important architect, to design Charleville Castle; and Lawrence Parsons, later 2nd Earl of Rosse, who reimagined seventeenth-century Parsonstown House as early nineteenth-century Birr Castle.  Architecturally the castles belong to Georgian Gothic, a style that in Britain is overshadowed by later nineteenth-century Gothic and is largely overlooked in Ireland. In this fascinating new book, Dr. Hill investigates Georgian Gothic in its own terms as both a British and Irish phenomenon, demonstrating how antiquarian understanding, associative thinking, awareness of family pedigree and historicised design ideas resulted in a uniquely Irish response to the Gothic revival. Using the ample surviving archives related to both families, she argues that these architecturally original and significant castles eloquently expressed their builders’ political and social concerns, making them artefacts of cultural unionism. 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
• Ellen Levitt, "Former Synagogues of the United States: Looking at Buildings That Once Housed Synagogues, Schools, and Other Jewish Institutions" (Resource Publications, 2026) 22.05.2026 1h

  Throughout the United States there are buildings that had been home to Jewish houses of worship, schools, and other institutions. What has happened to these buildings? What can we learn from their history? In her book, Former Synagogues of the United States: Looking at Buildings That Once Housed Synagogues, Schools, and Other Jewish Institutions (Resource Publications, 2026), Ellen Levitt uncovers the 'hidden history' of America's Jewish built environment. Interviewee: Ellen Levitt is a teacher, writer, photographer, and tour guide. Her previous books include The Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn, The Lost Synagogues of the Bronx and Queens, The Lost Synagogues of Manhattan, and Walking Manhattan. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Silvia Danielak, "Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2026) 15.05.2026 34min

  Roads, bridges, a renewable power plant, and an electricity grid: UN peacekeepers might be unusual infrastructure builders, but they’re certainly not unambitious. Since the beginning of the UN’s peacekeeping activities after the end of World War II, the Blue Helmets have cemented streets, constructed bridges, and dug wells in conflict zones. But how did the military arm of the world’s primary diplomatic forum become involved in such activities in its quest for peace, and with what consequences? Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Silvia Danielak analyzes the turn to ever-more-complex infrastructure projects, from early road building via urban community projects to the commissioning of entire renewable power plants, in the context of an evolving understanding of peace “problems” and solutions. Tracing the global travel of policies, technologies, and expertise, Dr. Danielak investigates how the shift toward risk management, legacy, and climate security was driven by, and materialized in, conflict zones, shaping the very idea of peace.The book critically engages with the UN’s ambition to insert itself in the sustainable development of the countries it seeks to assist, arguing that we need to consider peace operations’ spatial, urban, and material ways of engagement—especially in the face of mounting climate risks. Infrastructure is poised to take a more prominent position within peace operations, but a more nuanced understanding that recognizes its opportunities, as well as its potential for violence, is required. 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
• Cooking Sections, "Waves Lost at Sea" (Spector Books, 2026) 02.05.2026 38min

  Waves Lost at Sea (Spector Books, 2026) traces the evolving practice of Cooking Sections, whose work spans visual arts, architecture, and ecology. Since 2013, they have been investigating anthropogenic infrastructures, industrial food systems, and human-made climates: from artificially colored farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and Sicilian tomatoes outlawed under EU regulations. Their research-based practice exposes the legal, environmental, and metabolic struggles behind what ends up on our plates, while simultaneously working to create prospects for the future. This monograph brings together six newly commissioned essays alongside an extensive series of images with detailed captions and reflective annotations. The book traverses legal fictions, queer ecologies, disappearing landscapes, multispecies entanglements, and speculative tastes. Through these layered investigations, Waves Lost at Sea invites readers to rethink food cultures and agricultural imaginaries, decentering humans at both microscopic and planetary scales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Lukas Novotny, "Modern New York: The Illustrated Story of Architecture in the Five Boroughs from 1920 to Today" (Rizzoli, 2023) 25.04.2026 33min

  In Modern New York: The Illustrated Story of Architecture in the Five Boroughs from 1920 to Today (Rizzoli, 2023), Lukas Novotny calls attention not just to the icons-- the Empire State, Chrysler, or Seagram, but also to overlooked fine new buildings in the outer boroughs. Here too, in dozens of illustrated sidebars, we glimpse the evolution of city buses, cabs, ferry boats, tugs and airplanes. A delight for tourist or scholar! But we are also left to wonder--did the incessant demand to maximize square footage in new building result in “modern” once iconic, becoming tedious ? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Elias V. Messinas, "Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace" (Bloch Publishing, 2011) 13.04.2026 39min

  Across Greece, once-thriving Jewish communities stood for more than two thousand years. From the Romaniote Jews of Ioannina to the great Sephardic center of Salonika, Jewish life shaped the cultural and urban fabric of the eastern Mediterranean. During the Holocaust, approximately 87 percent of Greek Jewry was murdered — one of the highest destruction rates in Europe. Entire communities disappeared almost overnight. What remained were buildings — sometimes abandoned, sometimes altered, sometimes barely recognizable — silent witnesses to lives erased. For more than three decades, architect, researcher, and author Elias V. Messinas has devoted his life to documenting, restoring, and re-interpreting these synagogues and Jewish spaces. His major works include: The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace, a foundational architectural and historical survey, The Synagogue of Verona, a landmark study in restoration practice, Kahal Shalom: The Synagogue of Kos — A Chronicle of Research, Restoration, Sanctity and Ecology, and his recent reflective work, The Synagogue, which explores memory, encounter, and meaning through these spaces. Messinas is both architect and historian — but perhaps most importantly, a custodian of memory, working to preserve places whose congregations no longer exist. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator, and host of the New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here and also contributes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Tim Altenhof, "Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings" (Zone Books, 2026) 05.04.2026 1h

  Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings (Zone Books, 2026) is a compelling and wide-ranging analysis of pneumatic phenomena in modern culture. Architect and historian Dr. Tim Altenhof brilliantly explores the physiology of breathing and its reciprocal relationship to bodies and buildings, both of which share a common atmosphere. Because breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system and cannot be willfully overridden, it takes place unconsciously and involuntarily—most of the time. However, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, attitudes toward breathing changed significantly. Breathing became a widely investigated cultural and physiological phenomenon and was the basis for techniques and bodily practices that heightened pulmonary awareness. New understandings of air pollution and disease stimulated a widespread preoccupation with ventilation, impacting architecture in countless ways. Dr. Altenhof’s close readings of built structures show how the science of breathing was incorporated into architecture, whether in the design of factories, residences, or medical facilities. The lungs form a major part of the respiratory system and like no other organ tie the living body directly to its surroundings. Yet the role of lungs also poses a topological problem: engaging in atmospheric transfer, they dissolve the division between inside and outside, and despite being an internal organ, they sustain a permanent and living connection to the external world. This ambiguity and permeability constitute the spatial dimension of breathing. 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
• Erica Morawski, "Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025) 26.03.2026 44min

  Underneath picturesque views of palm trees, fruity cocktails in hotel lounges, and day trips to preserved colonial zones lies a history of tourism design that intersects with larger projects of development and national and cultural identity formation. Locating modernity and coloniality as the key framework within which tourism development takes place, Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025) by Dr. Erica Morawski focuses on hotel design and its relation to larger urban and rural landscapes to uncover the way these seemingly carefree spaces are bound to local politics and international relations. Focusing on three sites in the Hispanic Caribbean—San Juan, Ciudad Trujillo, and Havana—Dr. Morawski traces different attitudes and approaches to tourism and its material design through five hotels that serve as case studies. Through examination of wicker chairs and lobby interiors, architecture and landscaping, public works and urban planning, Development Design illustrates the integral role hotel design played in negotiated and contested histories of development in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. 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
• Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP) 12.03.2026 49min

  The notion of abolishing prisons strikes some as an impossible dream: could we could reasonably conceive of a society that responded to harm without the possibility of long-term confinement in purpose-built institutions? To others, we already have a template. Didn’t Michel Foucault long ago show us that prisons as they exist now–in all their horror, in all their commitment not just to jail people before trial but also to imprison them afterwards–come about only in the modern episteme, concomitant with capitalism and all sorts of attendant evils? Actually, nope. Prisons are as old as the Romans and very likely much older than that. In Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (California, 2025). Mark Letteney (a U Washington historian who wrote The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity)directs excavations in a legionary amphitheater) and Matthew Larsen (University of Copenhagen, author of Gospels before the Book) document an ancient and durable prison system system with five key features: Centrality, surveillance, separation depth, and punitive variability. Their RTB conversation explores key aspects of that system and its present-day legacy or parallels. Yet it ends on a note of cautious optimism from Letteney: just because we don’t find a prison-free world in ancient Rome is no reason to give up the struggle. Whatever better solution to societal safety and rehabilitation awaits us in the future, it must be something we ourselves set out to build anew. Mentioned Michel Foucault’s foundational Discipline and Punish (1975) Adam Gopknik reviews Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration in The New Yorker The Rules of Ulpian (3rd century jurist) Wengrow and Graeber’s foundational and heavily debated The Dawn of Everything (2021) Spencer Weinreich’s work on solitary confinement) Erving Goffman Stigma (1963) and Asylums (1961) Livy (eg in his History of Rome on prisons and prisoners Who  Would Believe a Prisoner? Edited by Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth Angeline Nelson Libanius (on the abuse of Prisoners) Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The House of the Dead Samuel Delany Tales of Neveryon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Lucy Lavers et al.," Adventurous Vents: A Journey through the Ventilation Shafts of Britain" (Penguin, 2025) 06.03.2026 59min

  At the heart of the modern world lie ventilation shafts. We may not notice them, but wherever there are tunnels, sewers, mines, car parks and energy stations under our feet, vents will be doing vital work keeping them cool and fume-free. Vents come in a wonderful and inventive variety of forms. Adventurous Vents: A Journey through the Ventilation Shafts of Britain (Penguin, 2025) by Lucy Lavers, Judy Ovens, Suzanna Prizeman celebrates them both in their own right as intriguing individual structures, and as an innovative way to tell the story of Britain's subterranean industrial development from the eighteenth century to the present day. Here are one hundred of the most interesting ventilation shafts, dotted around Britain, sometimes in the most surprising places. You'll find them masquerading as sculptures and small buildings, adorned with fine details or displaying their purpose with confidence. Whether you're inspired to take off in search of them, or just to admire them from your armchair, vents are fabulous objects. By putting them – perhaps for the very first time – centre-stage, Adventurous Vents celebrates a highly unusual but exciting architectural form. 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
• Catherine Boland Erkkila, "Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways, and Settlements" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025) 06.03.2026 39min

  Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways, and Settlements (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025) follows the travel routes of immigrants during a foundational period of American infrastructure—from ports of arrival to train cars and depots to settlements—showing how the built environment of the railways fostered segregation through physical isolation and reinforced hierarchies according to race, ethnicity, and class. Catherine Boland Erkkila highlights the magnitude of this forced separation: how spatial design and the experiences within it reflected prejudices of contemporary middle-class Americans who viewed immigrants as poor, diseased, and dangerous. Spaces of Immigration draws attention to the control wielded by railroad companies and government officials, who dispatched European immigrants to ethnic enclaves across the Midwest, some of which still exist. This book ultimately offers a greater understanding of the immigrant experience in America through the lens of spatial history, revealing deeply embedded conflicts still pervasive in our society today. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century European architecture, focusing on artistic techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Veronique Boone, "Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann" (Birkhaüser, 2024) 27.02.2026 31min

  Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann (Birkhaüser, 2024) is based on amateur films, shot by the architect Ernest Weissmann (1903-1985) with a Pathé Motocamera in the years 1929-1933 at, among other places, the Atelier Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. These films capture moments from Le Corbusier's life that have never been seen before. It also documents his friendships with Pierre Jeanneret, Josep Lluís Sert, Charlotte Perriand, Norman Rice, Kunio Maekawa, Sigfried Giedion and others. Across six chapters, the book shows impressive stills from these films and places them in the respective historical and personal context of Le Corbusier in introductory texts. Two introductions are devoted to the history of these pioneering amateur films and to Ernest Weissmann's life and his life-long relationship with Le Corbusier. Veronique Boone is an architect from the University of Ghent, Belgium and doctor from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (ENSAPL), France and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta at the ULB. She lectures on architectural history and theory as well as on the conservation of 20th-century architecture. Her research focuses on the history and theory, as well as the construction history, of modern architecture. She has published extensively in academic publications on Le Corbusier and the mediation of architecture by film and television, and is a correspondant for Belgian and international architectural magazines on contemporary architecture. She has worked on several exhibitions as curator and/or contributor to catalogues – among them, Lucien Hervé, l’oeil de l’architecte, CIVA, 2005; Le Corbusier and the Power of Photography, Musée des beaux-arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, 2012; L’Architecture modern à l’écran, Cinematek, 2014; In the Studio at 35, rue de Sèvres: an Amateur cameraman’s Informal View, Fondation Le Corbusier, 2017 and Atelier Jespers, 2018. She is also Vice-President of DOCOMOMO Belgium. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture
• Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025) 03.02.2026 1h 19min

  Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures. Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton UP, 2025) traces the history of the collection and distribution of African architectural fragments, documenting the brutality of the colonial regimes that looted Africa’s buildings and addressing the ethical questions surrounding the display of these objects.Dr. Itohan Osayimwese ranges across the whole of Africa, from Egypt in the north to Zimbabwe in the south, and spanning the western, central, and eastern regions of the continent. She describes how collectors employed violent means to remove elements such as columns and door panels from buildings, and how these methods differentiated architectural collecting from conventional collecting. She shows how Western collectors mischaracterized building components as ornament, erasing their architectural character and concealing the evidence of their theft. Dr. Osayimwese discusses how the very act of displacing building parts like floor tiles and woven screen walls has resulted in a loss of knowledge about their original function and argues that because of these removals, scholars have yet to fully grasp the variety and character of African architecture.Richly illustrated, Africa’s Buildings uncovers the vast scale of cultural displacement perpetrated by the West and proposes a new role for museums in this history, one in which they champion the repatriation of Africa’s architectural heritage and restitution for African communities. 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