115 - Dr. Andrew Shanken, Architectural History in California

Today, we have Dr. Andrew Shanken. Dr. Shanken is an architectural and urban historian with an interest in how cultural constructions of memory shape the built environment (and vice versa). He also works on the unbuilt and paper architecture, themed landscapes, heritage and conservation planning; traditions of representation in twentieth-century architecture and planning; keywords in architecture and American culture; and consumer culture and architecture. He is interested in historiography, particularly of architectural history, and the intersection of popular culture and architecture. Since this is too much for one person, he is looking to clone himself.

Professor Shanken’s first book, 194X, examines how American architects and planners on the American homefront anticipated the world after the war. Broadly speaking, it is a cultural history of American architecture, planning, and consumer culture in this formative and strained moment for the architectural profession. His second book, Into the Void Pacific, looks at the architecture of the neglected 1939 San Francisco world’s fair. His third book, The Everyday Life of Memorials came out from Zone Books in 2022. 

He is currently the Director of American Studies, Faculty Curator of the Environmental Design Archives, on the Faculty Advisory Committee at the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Global Urban Humanities. He has a joint appointment in American Studies. We dig into a lot in this conversation. If you like to think deeply about architecture and urban space, this is the episode for you. Please enjoy our conversation.