Albert Kahn Inc.

In Albert Kahn Inc. Claire Zimmerman provides a history of second-wave industrialization associated with the growth and development of the United States auto industry and its global footprint. A forensic analysis of the “architects of Ford,” the book theorizes how building and capitalism intersected in the case of twentieth-century industrial buildings, but also in other kinds of architecture and in the built environment writ large. Generally a marginal subject in histories of architecture, industrialism here exposes the expansionist modern project in Western architecture and culture, which was based on natural resource extraction and labor exploitation. With more than 140 full-color illustrations, the book combines an analysis of industrial architecture with compelling photographic evidence drawn from assorted archives.