The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History

by Duanfang Lu (Editor)

Overview

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History offers a comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge report on recent developments in architectural production and research. Divided into three parts – Practices, Interrogations, and Innovations – this book charts diversity, criticality, and creativity in architectural interventions to meet challenges and enact changes in different parts of the world through featured exemplars and fresh theoretical orientations.

The collection features 29 chapters written by leading architectural scholars and highlights the reciprocity between the historical and the contemporary, research and practice, and disciplinary and professional knowledge. Providing an essential map for navigating the complex currents of contemporary architecture, the Companion will interest students, academics, and practitioners who wish to bolster their understanding of built environments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367760427
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/30/2025
Pages:	508
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Duanfang Lu is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and Associate Dean (Research Education) in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. She is ranked as the world’s 16th most influential researcher in Architecture in 1996–2018 by PLOS. Her widely read books Remaking Chinese Urban Form (2006, 2011) and Third World Modernism (2011) were also published by Routledge.

Table of Contents

1. Architecture in the Age of Playfulness: Mapping a Framework for Global Historiography I. Practices: Histories 2. What is Modern Architecture? 3. Architecture and Image 4. Cold War Modernism 5. Deconstructivist Architecture 6. Postmodern Utopianism 7. Metabolism and Beyond 8. Professional Agency and Architectural Discourse in Postcolonial India 9. Architectural Production in Dubai 10. The Afterlives of Modernist Housing 11. Social-Interest Architecture in Brazil: The Seed of Something New II. Interrogations: Introduction 12. Autonomy, Criticality, and the Avant-Garde 13. Crafting Architectural Criticism 14. Domesticity, Gender, and Architecture 15. Architecture and Preemptive Spectacles 16. Architecture and Phenomenology 17. Critical Regionalism: From Critical Theory to Postcolonial and Local Awareness 18. Vernacular Architecture 19. Heritage Conservation: The Rise and Fall of a "Grand Narrative" 20. Power, Empire, and Nation 21. Architecture and Globalization III. Innovations: Introduction 22. Architectural and Medical Innovation in Hospital Design 23. Electric City Land: Architecture and Media 24. Divergent Matter: The Problematic Search for Material Suitability in Architecture 25. Building Mass Customized Housing through Innovation in the Production System: Lessons from Japan 26. The Programmable Architect 27. Biomimicry for Sustainable and Regenerative Architecture 28. Design for Ageing Buildings: An Applied Research of Poikilohydric Living Walls 29. Nature, Infrastructure, and Cities