Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire

Author: Cayer, Aaron

Edition: First Edition

Number Of Pages: 359

EAN: 9780520400870

Release Date: 03-06-2025

Package Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.0 x 0.9 inches

Languages: English

Binding: paperback

Details: 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.