Rethinking Global Modernism

"Taking seriously the challenge to think critically and deeply about what ‘global modernism’ and a reconsideration of postcoloniality might entail, this landmark volume brings together the foremost experts in the field to open up new directions for the study of ‘modern’ architecture and the built environment. Each essay conjures exciting potential avenues through the migrant, out-of-sync, and fragmented histories and futures of modern architecture, steadfastly refusing the call for a satisfying whole to instead embrace the much more interesting (and indeed accurate) dispersals of the global modern."

Rebecca M. Brown, Professor and Chair of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, USA

"Long after ‘metanarratives’ have been considered as obsolete by Jean-François Lyotard, collective endeavors such as Vikramaditya Prakash’s, Maristella Casciato’s, and Daniel Coslett’s assemblage of essays take stock of the stunning metamorphosis of the historical interpretation of twentieth-century architecture. The essays contained in their dense, diverse tome not only widen our field of vision, including overlooked projects and buildings, but they also question without mercy the critical production which has been since the 1920s the doppelgänger of modernist practice. Without any doubt, Rethinking Global Modernism will inspire a new generation of investigations which will further reshape the worldwide history of architecture and urban form."

Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts/New York University, USA

"With its thematic approach, Rethinking Global Modernism: Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial is a well-organized, astute and thought-provoking analysis of the history of modern architecture. We needed this compendium with some of the best scholars of the field of global history."

Caroline Maniaque, Professor of Architectural History and Cultures, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Normandie, France

"A serendipitously timed and kaleidoscopic examination of modernism globally—its discontents, adaptations, evolutions, contestations, transformative effects and often impending erasure. The collective resonance of these essays challenge us to expand and nuance more critically the histories of modernism in the planetary context."

Rahul Mehrotra, RMA Architects and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, USA

"If the pandemic has been a moment of recalibrating methods and priorities towards a better understanding of architecture and its role in the interactive processes of modernization that shape the global environment, this book promises to be an extraordinarily productive response to that challenge. Edited by some of the most experienced scholars of the history of modern architecture in Asia and Latin America, it offers a wide array of topical issues in architectural theory and criticism regarding what used to be called the ‘Third World,’ thereby systematically updating the methods and the vocabulary in ways that will be indispensable for scholars working in the field."

Stanislaus von Moos, Professor Emeritus of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of Zurich, Switzerland

"Instead of reading global modernism as subordination or resistance to modernist forms projected outward from western metropoles, this ambitious collection reconstructs as well as deconstructs modern architecture’s foundations, its historiographical processes. Here modernism’s past and future are decolonized and globalized, multidirectional and multinucleated in their narratives, theories, agencies, and materialities."

Mary N. Woods, Professor Emerita of the History of Architecture and Urbanism, Cornell University, USA