The Architectural Review 1534: United States arrives on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and reads the founding principles it set out, from the buildings up, as a distant dream.
About this issue
The AR's United States issue treats presidential architecture as evidence. Daniel Jonas Roche reads the remaking of the White House and its Washington DC surroundings as a mirror held to the death throes of a 250-year-old imperial project, and the proposal for Donald Trump's presidential library—a 47-floor tower in Miami for the 47th president—as an expression of might that doubles as a distraction from what the United States is doing beyond and within its borders. Zach Mortice finds the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, an unflattering mirror to the administration it commemorates. Elsewhere the issue looks at architects taking commissions for detention facilities from a state at war with immigrants, and at the way US colonial control over Puerto Rico is accelerating development along its coastline. Catherine W. Zipf revisits Fallingwater in the forests of south-western Pennsylvania, where the recent restoration is only the latest episode in a lifetime of repair. Against all this, the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center and the Tekαkαpimək Contact Station in Maine are offered as glimmers of light.
Key features
- The United States issue of the AR, edited by Manon Mollard with Eleanor Beaumont and Patricia Roig
- Daniel Jonas Roche on the White House, Trump's proposed Miami library tower and the architecture of presidential power
- Zach Mortice on the Obama Presidential Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
- Catherine W. Zipf on Fallingwater and its long history of repair
- Work and figures including Amaza Lee Meredith, Saunders Architecture, Reed Hilderbrand, Miró Rivera Architects, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Atelier Peter Zumthor and OJT
- Detention architecture, and the coastal development of Puerto Rico under US control
What you'll discover
- How a presidential library becomes a claim about the president who commissions it
- Why the Obama Presidential Center reads as a critique of the administration it was built to honour
- What it means for architects to accept work from an immigration detention system
- How colonial arrangements shape who gets to build on Puerto Rico's coastline
- Why Fallingwater has needed repairing almost since the day it was finished
About the publication
Founded in 1896 and published in London ever since, The Architectural Review is among the longest-running architecture magazines in the world. It publishes essays, building studies, interviews, profiles and competitions, alongside material drawn from its own considerable archive. Manon Mollard is editor.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Language: English
- ISSN: 0003-861X (EAN 9770003861144)
- Publisher: The Architectural Review
- Publication date: September 2026
Perfect for: architects and students following international practice through a critical lens, readers interested in the politics of American public building, and anyone tracking how power gets built.