Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961

This is an in-person program at the Museum's lower Manhattan gallery.

In her new book Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961, Claire Zimmerman charts a history of second-wave industrialization associated with the growth and development of the United States auto industry and its global footprint. Her case study of the architecture firm most closely associated with the major auto companies in Detroit explores how industrial capitalism fueled campuses of the auto industry and helped catalyze the militarization of industry. While the book theorizes how capitalism drives the development of built environments (industrial or other), it also focuses specifically on three stages of architectural production: the design, construction, and occupation of buildings. The product of a decade of research, AKI combines analysis of architecture after industrialization with 140 illustrations drawn chiefly from Detroit-area archives, in a new study of modern architecture.

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