Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics: Social and Cultural Tectonics in the 21st Century

Reflections on Architecture, Society and Politics brings together a series of thirteen interview-articles by Graham Cairns in collaboration with some of the most prominent polemic thinkers and critical practitioners from the fields of architecture and the social sciences, including Noam Chomsky, Peggy Deamer, Robert A.M. Stern, Daniel Libeskind and Kenneth Frampton. Each chapter explores the relationship between architecture and socio-political issues through discussion of architectural theories and projects, citing specific issues and themes that have led to, and will shape, the various aspects of the current and future built environment. Ranging from Chomsky's examination of the US-Mexico border as the architecture of oppression to Robert A.M. Stern's defence of projects for the Disney corporation and George W. Bush, this book places politics at the center of issues within contemporary architecture.

Graham Cairns is an internationally recognized academic and author. Based at Columbia University, New York, while writing this book, he is now Senior Honorary Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. He is Director of the international research organization AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society) and Executive Editor of its scholarly journal, Architecture_MPS. The author and editor of eight books on architecture as visual culture and as a socio-political construct, he has delivered keynote talks internationally and has published multiple articles in interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journals.