New Books in Architecture

In Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks (Beacon Press, 2026), historian Dr. Vaneesa Cook examines the history of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty in order to consider, more broadly, the United States' relationship with liberty and empire. Empire and liberty have been part of the American story since the founding, but they are often at odds, sometimes irreconcilably so. Cook examines their changing relationship and meaning using these two iconic buildings as anchors. She also examines the symbolism and importance of the landmarks themselves. She considers how individuals and groups who have had more
limited access to liberty have tried to shape the meaning of the symbols and their own rights at the same time. In telling this sweeping history, Cook touches in themes of American identity and ideals.
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Aviationland: Heathrow and the Making of an Airport Landscape (Paul Mellon Centre, 2026) by Professor Mark Crinson is the first critical study to examine how a major international airport takes shape on the ground, and what that means for the landscape around it. Focused on Heathrow airport, it traces how the area has been formed and reformed by overlapping systems of architecture, infrastructure and enclosure, from the common land of Hounslow Heath in the eighteenth century to the global transport hub of the present day. 

The book explores the different forces that have shaped the airport’s environment: the remaking of landforms, the design of terminal buildings, and the surrounding sprawl of hotels, schools, factories, and business parks. At the same time, it shows how the Heathrow area has been moulded by wider shifts in energy, mobility, and the economy, and how the airport has in turn left a lasting mark on its surroundings, both materially and ecologically.

Drawing on previously unpublished material, Aviationland includes close studies of key sites, as well as figures who shaped how we see the airport today, including Richard Rogers, Patrick Abercrombie, and J. G. Ballard. Bringing together architectural, landscape, and infrastructural histories that are seldom read in tandem, this volume makes the case for Heathrow as a distinctively modern landscape. The result is a nuanced account of how local places become entangled within global systems, and what happens when they do.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ukraine’s modernist buildings are an extraordinary blend of function,
avant-garde aesthetics and ingenious design, but despite these
qualities, they remain largely unrecognized.
This is a result of several factors, including the stigma of belonging
to the Soviet era, corruption, neglect, as well as the ongoing threat of
destruction from both unscrupulous developers and war. Photographer
Dmytro Soloviov has crossed Ukraine documenting them to form the most
comprehensive publication available on the subject. 

With an introduction by renowned architecture critic Owen Hatherley, complete with historical images, Ukrainian Modernism: Modernist Architecture of Ukraine (Fuel, 2025) cements these buildings in a cultural and political context.

Dmytro Soloviov is a photographer, tour guide, and activist, and the creator of the popular Ukrainian Modernism Instagram page. He frequently leads tours of modernist architecture in different cities in Ukraine.

Megan Buskey is an independent writer and scholar focused on Ukrainian history, culture, and politics. She is the author of Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023).
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Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines
how Delhi's Sultanate and Mughal architecture, dating from the twelfth
to the seventeenth centuries, became modern monuments and were
assimilated and ordered into public consciousness as spaces for tourism,
leisure, and intellectual contemplation during the colonial and early
postcolonial eras (1828-1963). It examines the resistance that
challenges this ordering, rendering monuments unruly and unassimilable
despite state efforts to control their narrative. This exposes the
nation's contradictory claims of inclusivity while marginalizing
subaltern groups. It guides readers through picturesque landscapes,
museums, imperial displays, postcards, travel experiences, Partition
refugee camps, and cinema. Analyzing these forms reveals how the archive
of Indo-Islamic monuments was shaped through presences and absences.
Each chapter examines everyday life, untangles knowable public
transcripts, illuminates strategic excisions and hidden transcripts,
juxtaposes evidence that has not yet been analyzed in conjunction, reads
archival material against the grain, and finds archival layers in
unfamiliar places.

NBN Host: Sohini Majumdar

Sohini teaches history at University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University.
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Landscape architecture is at a crossroads. The ability to draw upon
interdisciplinary perspectives and generate insights from the combined
vantage points of design, environmental studies, and the social sciences
puts it in a prime position to address the most pressing issues of our
time, such as climate change and social inequality. Its current reliance
on digital and technological solutions, however, has increasingly
caused landscape architects to lose sight of the ways in which humans
actually use spaces. And while landscapes are designed all over the
world, the discipline remains inordinately centered on the Global North.
Dr. Gareth Doherty's Landscape Fieldwork: How Engaging the World Can Change Design (University of Virginia Press, 2025) alters
that long-standing paradigm through real-life examples that provide
tools for practitioners to engage more deeply with multidimensional,
diverse landscapes and the communities that create, live in, and use
them.
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