Architecture as Exchange: Framing the Architecture Competition as Contact Zone

The editorial introduction to this issue of Footprint follows a double trajectory. On the one hand, it describes an ambition for architecture historiography. The social sciences have long recognised the need for more comprehensive and inclusive methods for writing history. Among them, comparative literature scholar Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘contact...

What’s in a cover image?: How to depict planning history

A book’s cover is frequently the first visual element of a book that a reader encounters in a library, bookshop, or—most likely now—on the Internet. Combining the publisher’s usually predetermined logo, typography and layout with an image provided by the volume editor or author, the cover aims to convey multiple meanings. These meanings are...

“Shaping Ahwaz' transnational oil modernity; at the crossroads of oil flows and international planning exchanges”

Through the lens of flows of petroleum, a key commodity of the 20th century, to revisit local urban histories, this paper contributes to the growing literature on transnational and cross-cultural urbanism. It argues that oil created a unique network of international stakeholders (British, German, and American), from various disciplines and...