The Arab City book launch

A reception celebrating the launch of The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, a new publication by Amale Andraos, Dean of Columbia GSAPP and a founding partner of WORKac, and Nora Akawi, Director of Columbia GSAPP’s Studio-X Amman.

Moving beyond reductive notions of identity, myths of authenticity, the fetishizing of tradition, or the resilience of constructed oppositions between tradition and modernity, Architecture and Representation: The Arab City critically engages contemporary architectural and urban production in the Middle East. Taking the “Arab City” and “Islamic Architecture” as sites of investigation rather than given categories, the book reframes the region’s buildings, cities, and landscapes and broadens its architectural and urban canons. Arab cities are multifaceted places and sites of layered historical imaginaries; defined by regional and territorial economies, they bridge scales of production and political engagement. The essays collected here investigate cultural representation, the evolution of historical cities, contemporary architectural practices, emerging urban conditions, and responsive urban imaginaries in the Arab World.

The Arab City includes contributions from Ashraf Abdalla, Senan Abdelqader, Nora Akawi, Suad Amiry, Amale Andraos, Mohammed al-Asad, Caitlin Blanchfield, Mohamed Elshahed, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Rania Ghosn, Saba Innab, Adrian Lahoud, Lila Abu Lughod, Ziad Jamaleddine, Bernard Khoury, Laura Kurgan, Ali Mangera, Reinhold Martin, Timothy Mitchell, Magda Mostafa, Nasser Rabbat, Hashim Sarkis, Felicity Scott, Hala Wardé, Eyal Weizman, and Gwendolyn Wright.

Published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, distributed by Columbia University Press.