In 1676-77 a single event revitalized the traditions of Roman design. That event, the union of the French Royal Academy and the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome, is given new significance in the present study. It has long been thought that the academies' fusion signaled the passing of artistic preeminence from Rome to France. Here, however, the author proposes a more complex interpretation. By demonstrating that Rome continued, in fact, to be the more innovative and influential of the two academies, Gil Smith is able to discern patterns of influence that cross geographical and temporal boundaries, and to portray late-Baroque architecture in international terms. For this Compelling portrait of a transitional period of European architectural trends, Professor Smith draws on the student competitions inaugurated at the Saint Luke Academy to commemorate its ties with the French academies. Far more important than mere "academic" work, these competition drawings reveal the nature of instruction in Rome, the influences of the academy's officers and patrons, and the nature of contemporary projects similar in program to the competitions. The design synthesis pursued in Rome until the end of the seventeenth century, particularly by Carlo Fontana, would become an important source of inspiration for prominent architects of the next century. Among others, the academy's design methodology influenced Fischer von Erlach, Filippo Juvarra, and Giles Oppenord in their search for a progressive Baroque language.

The Architecture of Diplomacy reveals the complex interplay of architecture, politics, and power in the history of America's embassy-building program. Through colorful personalities, bizarre episodes, and high drama this compelling story takes readers from scandalous "inspection" junkets by members of Congress to bugged offices at the Moscow embassy to the daring rescue of American personnel in Somalia by Marines and Navy Seals. Rigorously researched and lucidly written, The Architecture of Diplomacy focuses on the embassy-building program during the Cold War years, when the United States initiated a massive construction campaign that would demonstrate its commitment to its allies and assert its presence as a superpower.

Embassy architecture and design ranges from the humble to the stately, from the practical to the grand. Building Diplomacy is the first comprehensive photographic portrait of the official face of American diplomacy around the world. Elizabeth Gill Lui traveled to fifty countries to photograph American embassies, chanceries, and ambassadors' residences. This record of her journey includes approximately five hundred artful and eloquent interior and exterior views shot by Lui with a large-format camera. Keya Keita, Lui's daughter and partner on the project, shot a live-action documentary of embassies and the cultural milieu of each nation Lui and Keita visited. The text includes an essay by Jane Loeffler detailing the history of the U.S. Department of State's building program.America's commitment to historic preservation of properties has been realized in Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Prague, and Tokyo. The modernist tradition is showcased in Argentina, Greece, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Uruguay. Vernacular buildings adapted to diplomatic use are widespread: Lui photographed examples of adapted reuse in Ghana, Iceland, Mongolia, Myanmar, and Palau. Buildings that reflect Europe's colonial legacy are also in evidence. After the 1983 bombing in Beirut, embassy construction began to reflect increased security concerns. Embassies built after 1998, although isolated within walled compounds, are well regarded by those who work in them. The author makes a case that embassy architecture is a critical aspect of American identity on the international landscape and can be formative in defining a new cultural diplomacy in the twenty-first century.Structured geographically, Building Diplomacy portrays embassies in Africa, East Asia, Europe, the Near East, the Pacific, South Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. An appendix lists the architects and designers of the featured buildings. More information about Building Diplomacy is also available.

Architectural Temperance examines relations between Bourbon Spain and papal Rome (1700-1759) through the lens of cultural politics. With a focus on key Spanish architects sent to study in Rome by the Bourbon Kings, the book also discusses the establishment of a program of architectural education at the newly founded Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. Victor Deupi explores why a powerful nation like Spain would temper its own building traditions with the more cosmopolitan trends associated with Rome; often at the expense of its own national and regional traditions. Through the inclusion of previously unpublished documents and images that shed light on the theoretical debates which shaped eighteenth-century architecture in Rome and Madrid, Architectural Temperance provides readers with new insights into the cultural history of early modern Spain.

Relations between Australia and Japan have undergone both testing and celebrated times since 1952, when Australia’s ambassadorial representation in Tokyo commenced. Over the years, interactions have deepened beyond mutual trade objectives to encompass economic, defence and strategic interests within the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. This ‘special relationship’ has been characterised by the high volume of people moving between Australia and Japan for education, tourism, business, science and research. Cultural ties, from artists-in-residence to sister-city agreements, have flourished. Australia has supported Japan in times of need, including the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. This book shows how the Australian embassy in Tokyo, through its programs and people, has been central to these developments. The embassy’s buildings, its gardens and grounds, and, above all, its occupants—from senior Australian diplomats to locally engaged staff—are the focus of this multidimensional study by former diplomats and expert observers of Australia’s engagement with Japan. Drawing on oral histories, memoirs, and archives, this volume sheds new light on the complexity of Australia’s diplomatic work in Japan, and the role of the embassy in driving high-level negotiations as well as fostering soft‑power influences. ‘With a similar vision for the Indo-Pacific region and a like-minded approach to the challenges facing us, Australia and Japan have become more intimate and more strategic as partners. I am very pleased to see this slice of Australian diplomatic history so well accounted for in this book.’ — Jan Adams AO PSM, Secretary, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Australia’s Ambassador to Japan, November 2020–June 2022

Over the course of the nineteenth century, drastic social and political changes, technological innovations, and exposure to non-Western cultures affected Germany's built environment in profound ways. The economic challenges of Germany's colonial project forced architects designing for the colonies to abandon a centuries-long, highly ornamental architectural style in favor of structural technologies and building materials that catered to the local contexts of its remote colonies, such as prefabricated systems. As German architects gathered information about the regions under their influence in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—during expeditions, at international exhibitions, and from colonial entrepreneurs and officials—they published their findings in books and articles and organized lectures and exhibits that stimulated progressive architectural thinking and shaped the emerging modern language of architecture within Germany itself. Offering in-depth interpretations across the fields of architectural history and postcolonial studies, Itohan Osayimwese considers the effects of colonialism, travel, and globalization on the development of modern architecture in Germany from the 1850s until the 1930s. Since architectural developments in nineteenth-century Germany are typically understood as crucial to the evolution of architecture worldwide in the twentieth century, this book globalizes the history of modern architecture at its founding moment.

Seeing Architecture as a political art, this book concerns itself with boundaries: those of regimes, of culture, of law, and of social strata. In a silent crisis where sustained inscription of physical and social boundaries evacuates urban space into archipelagos of enclaves, Architecture with only ambiguous claims of public space is rendered both an accomplice and a victim, impotent against forces of capital and concerns of security. Exposing the absurdities in urban geopolitics and persistent spatial logics of exclusivity is as important as proposing to hack into them. Critical of the innocence of so-called public space and the underlying architectural impasse, the book offers an investigative commentary on the state of urban enclaves, while speculating on alternative strategies by designing an embassy, a bounded pseudo-extraterritory and the epitome of an enclave. Through absurd couplings and blatant image-making, a seemingly open US embassy is proposed for Beijing as an imploded fragment of a boundary, its incompleteness buttressed by other territories of privilege and its disparate barriers articulated as a mechanism of filtration. Away from popular strategies of conceptual and spatial blurring, the book defines an architectural porosity to orchestrate spaces of varying openness, as a nuanced response to both the embassy’s double identities and schizophrenic agendas of city-building. With an architecture that is diplomatic by function and diplomatic by disposition, one experiments with an agency beyond the single pursuit of public-ness and an escape from the ideological enclave of positivism. Ultimately, the goal is to suggest and develop a methodology of designing with oppositions, irony and latency.