My first born—a book about the history of architecture firms and the profession, published by
@uc_press —will enter the world on June 3. And it’s now available for preorder! If you order through the UC Press website, you can use the code UCPSAVE30 for a sizable discount. (The link is in my bio).
More than ten years in the making, challenges with archives, attorneys, stories of violence, death, and spiderweb capitalism often made the book feel impossible to write. It may not be “perfect” or offer a “complete” history of everything everywhere all at once, but I hope that the stories I share within it resonate with architects, students, and historians alike as they reimagine the profession and built worlds on which their work depends.
For extended book content, I’ll be sharing unbuilt projects, unpublished images, and data about the profession at this page over the next few months if you’d like to follow along:
@incorporating_architects .
For the book’s first reviews, swipe left.
Book blurb:
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, legal codes, and financial mechanisms on which those systems came to depend. However, despite the extraordinary power of these architects, their histories remain shrouded in myth and concealed—by design.
This forensic analysis traces a history of architects at one such firm, AECOM, as they assembled their own multinational corporation and embedded themselves in the operations of American empire after World War II, shielding themselves from the instabilities of a postwar political economy. Incorporating Architects reveals how architects, through their businesses more than their drawings or buildings, modulated the political economy, gripped the reins of their profession, and produced the global injustices that define our neoliberal present.
