In this book talk presented by the Skyscraper Museum, Claire Zimmerman charts a history of second-wave industrialization associated with the growth and development of the US auto industry and its global footprint from her new book Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961. Her case study of the architecture firm most closely associated with the major auto companies in Detroit explores how industrial capitalism fueled campuses of the auto industry and helped catalyze the militarization of industry. While the book theorizes how capitalism drives the development of built environments (industrial or other), it also focuses specifically on three stages of architectural production: the design, construction, and occupation of buildings. The product of a decade of research, Albert Kahn Inc. combines analysis of architecture after industrialization with 140 illustrations drawn chiefly from Detroit-area archives, in a new study of modern architecture.

Claire Zimmerman is Professor of Architecture at the University of Toronto, where she directs the PhD program in Architecture, Landscape, and Design. She is the author of Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century (Minnesota, 2014) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Taschen, 2006) and coeditor of Architecture against Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International (Minnesota 2024) and Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization (MIT Press, 2023), among other books and articles.

In-person attendance is limited to 50 people, but the program will be available live on YouTube at 6pm.

Tuesday September 16, 6:00pm ET
In person, the Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Pl, NY; or live on YouTube
Register