Claire A. Zimmerman

Books   

Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture-Labor-Industry, 1905-1961 (MIT Press, 2025). 

Reviews: Critical Inquiry; Kelvin Browne, Literary review of Canada 34:2 (2026) 16.  

Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) 

Outstanding Academic Title 2015, Choice  

Reviews:  

Esther Choi, Art Papers 

Jack Quinan, Choice 

Hugh Campbell, Journal of Architecture  

Martino Stierli, Journal of Architectural Education 

Jon Yoder, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians  

Martin Hartung, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 

Michael Windover, Journal of Visual Resources  

Mies van der Rohe, 1886-1969: The Structure of Space (Cologne: Taschen, 2006). Published in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Czech, Portuguese. Reprinted 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2022. 

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

2026 issues: 85.1 (March), 85.2 (June), 85.3 (September), 85.4 (December) 

Editorials: 

“Historical Activity,” JSAH 85.1 (January 2026) 

“JSAH, African Architectural History, and the U.S. Semiquincentennial,” JSAH 85.2 (March 2026) 

“Discuss, Debate, Disputate,” JSAH 85.3 (June 2026) 

Roundtables: 

“Academic Journals in the Age of Information Automation II” EAHN International Conference, Aarhus, June 20, 2026 

“Academic Journals in the Age of Information Automation I” SAH International Conference, Mexico City, May 17, 2026 

“Meet the Editors,” SAH International Conference, Mexico City, May 16, 2026 

“Meet the Editors,” SAH International Conference, Atlanta, May 2, 2025 

Co-Edited Books and Journal Numbers  

Architecture against Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). Co-edited with Reinhold Martin.  https://power.buellcenter.columbia.edu/initiatives/150 

Reviews:  

Sean Keller, Critical Inquiry 51: 4 (Summer 2025), 597-757. 

Enrique Ramirez, The Architectural review (London), 2024 (1511), p.74-77 

“North American Industry and Architecture,” Oxford Bibliographies Online in “Architecture, Planning, and Preservation,” ed. Kevin Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, April 22, 2024): https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190922467/obo-9780190922467-0092.xml 

  (accessed 22 Apr. 2024). Co-authored with Sarah Wheat. 

Detroit Moscow Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917-1945 (MIT Press, 2023). Co-edited with Jean-Louis Cohen and Christina Crawford. 

Reviews:  

Ed Dimendberg, Modernism/ Modernity 30:4 (2024), 853-855 

Sheila Crane, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 84.4 (2025), 589. 

Maria Lipmann, Foreign Affairs 103:1 (2024), 193. 

The Costs of Architecture (guest editor with Z. Çelik Alexander and L. Allais) Grey Room 71 (Spring 2018), MIT Press Journals. 

Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern: Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond, Yale Studies in British Art no. 21 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), edited with Mark Crinson. 

Reviews:  

Steve Parnell, “1956 and All That,” Architecture Today: http://www.architecturetoday.co.uk/?p=13096 

Alex Kitnick, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71 no. 2 (June 2012): 232-235. 

Chris Miele, The Burlington Magazine 153 no. 1302 (September 2011): 611-12;  

Kester Rattenbury, “Pop goes Brutalism,” RIBA Journal (April 2011): 24. 

Douglas Murphy, “Two Households, both alike in dignity,” Architects’ Journal 233 no. 5 (Feb. 2011): 44-46.  

Enrique Ramirez, Contructs, Yale University School of Architecture (April 2011): n.p.;  

Glenn Adamson, EAHN Newsletter (February 2012): http://www.eahn.org/site/en/neoavantgardeandpostmodernpostwararchitectureinbritainandbeyond.php 

The Built Surface (Tallahassee: Florida A&M University School of Architecture, 1998), edited with D. Brown. 

Peer-Reviewed Articles, Essays and Chapters  

  1. “Ford Motor Company Plant, Highland Park,” in Flashpoints, ed. Robin Middleton, Mary McLeod, Joan Ockman (London: Thames & Hudson, 2026), in press. 
  1. “‘Capitalist Sorcery’ and the Daylight Auto Factory,” in Struggles in the Concrete – Architecture and the Marxist Tradition, ed. Luisa Lorenza Corna and Mark Crinson (Basel: Birkhaüser Verlag, 2025) 67-86. 
  1. “Introduction,” Architecture against Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International, eds. C. Zimmerman, R. Martin (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), 1-16. 
  1. “Section Introduction: Technocracy,” “Section Introduction: Hegemony,” “Section Introduction: Democracy,” Architecture against Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International, eds. C, Zimmerman, R. Martin (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). 
  1. “Introduction: From Detroit to Detroit, via Moscow,” Detroit Moscow Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917-1945, with J.-L. Cohen, C. Crawford (MIT Press, 2023), 15-30. 
  1. “Comrade Kahn: Capitalizing on Communism in New Deal America,” in Detroit Moscow Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917-1945, eds. C. Zimmerman, J.-L, Cohen, C. Crawford (MIT Press, 2023), 315-321. 
  1. “A66, Situating Architecture in Resistance,” Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration, ed. Anooradha Siddiqi and Rachel Lee, CCA Online, https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/issues/30/of-migration/83320/migration-briefly-arrested-revisiting-atelier-66  
  1. “Built Environment,” The Art Institute of Chicago Field Guide to Photography and Media (A. Byrd and E. Siegel), 2023 (https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9990/a-field-guide-to-photography-and-media) 
  1. “Der Sockel: Terrace and Podium of the New National Gallery,” Neue Nationalgalerie. Das Museum von Mies van der Rohe, ed. J. Jaeger, C. von Marlin (Deutsche Kunstverlag/ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2021), 136-143. 
  1. “Forum: Situating the Cold War,” Fabrications 31:2 (2021), 11-16. 
  1. “Anticipating Images: Buffalo Industry under Construction, 1906-1943,” in Currents: Buffalo at the Crossroads, ed. P. Christensen (Cornell University Press, 2020), 151-174. 
  1. “Heedless Oblivion: Curating Modern Architecture after WWII,” in G. Eley and J. A. Thomas, eds., Visualizing Fascism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 258-283. 
  1. “Kahn after Kahn: Lasting Influence and Historical Ellipsis, 1947–1974,” Albert Kahn’s Industrial Architecture, eds. T. Bürklin, J. Reichart (Birkhaeuser Verlag, 2019), 208-223. 
  1. “Building the World Capitalist System: The ‘Invisible Architecture’ of Albert Kahn Associates of Detroit, 1900–1961, Fabrications 29:2, 231-256, DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2019.1603134 
  1. “Editor’s Introduction: The Costs of Architecture,” Grey Room 71: “The Costs of Architecture” (Spring, 2018): 6-13. 
  1. “Queequeg’s Coffin: A Conversation on Architecture and Ornament,” Hybrid Forms. bfo-Journal 3 (2017) [30,000 characters/ bauforschungonline.ch]  
  1. “Reading the (Photographic) Evidence,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76:4 (December 2017), 446-448. 
  1. “New Brutalist Image 1949-1955: ‘atlas to a new world,’ or, ‘trying to look at things today’” (co-authored with Victoria Walsh), British Art Studies 4 (November 2016): http://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-4/new-brutalist-image 
  1. “Ethnographic Architectural History: Yukio Futagawa and Nihon no minka” (with E. Zimmerman), Journal of Architecture 20: 4 (August 2015), 718-750. 
  1. “Albert Kahn’s Territories,” in Eva Franch i Gilabert, Amanda Reeser Lawrence, Ana Miljacki and Ashley Schafer, eds., OfficeUS Agenda (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers and PRAXIS, 2014), 52-63.  
  1. “The Labor of Albert Kahn,” Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative: http://www.we-aggregate.org/piece/the-labor-of-albert-kahn 
  1. “Siegfried Kracauer’s Architectures,” in Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer, ed. G. Gemünden and J. von Moltke (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 145-161. 
  1. “Photography into Building in Postwar Architecture: The Smithsons and James Stirling,” Art History 35 (April 2012): 270-287. 
  1. “From Legible Form to Memorable Image: Architectural Knowledge from Wittkower to Banham,” Candide 5 (2012): 93-116. 
  1. “Introduction” (with Mark Crinson), in Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern: Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond, ed. M. Crinson and C. Zimmerman (New Haven: Yale Studies in British Art 21, Yale University Press, 2010), 7-25. 
  1. “The Photographic Image from Chicago to Hunstanton,” in Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern: Postwar Architecture in Britain and Beyond ed. M. Crinson and C. Zimmerman (New Haven: Yale Studies in British Art 21, Yale University Press, 2010), 203-228. 
  1. “James Stirling’s ‘Real Function’,” OASE Tijdschrift voor Architektuur/ Journal for Architecture 79 (2009): 122-142. 
  1. “Photographic Modern Architecture: Inside ‘The New Deep’,” Journal of Architecture 9 (2004): 331-354. 

Reviews and Short Form Writings

  1. “Labor” and “Cost” in Uwe Fleckner and Mari Lending (eds.), Provenance in Architecture. A dictionary of terms. Hatje Cantz, Berlin (2025). 
  1. Jean-Louis Cohen’in Ardından: Dış Çatışma mı? Jean-Louis Cohen’le Çalışmak: https://manifold.press/dis-catisma-mi-jean-louis-cohen-le-calismak (Turkish publication, edited by Esra Akcan) 
  1. Review of Concrete Century: Julius Kahn and the Construction Revolution in The Michigan Historical Review (Fall 2025), 11-13. 
  1. “Foreword,” Architecture and Real Estate: Historical Perspectives, ed. Gregorio Astengo and Davide Spina (Zurich:  gta Verlag, 2025). 
  1. Afterword, Family Foundations: Four Stories of Black Washtenaw County Community Building (Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor District Library, 2024). 
  1. Review: “The Subtle Tones of Race and Modern Architecture,” review essay, Architectural Histories (European Architectural History Network: Zimmerman, C., (2022) “Summer reviews 2022,” Architectural Histories 10 (1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ah.8755). 
  1. “The Airplane Industry in World War II,” The Art of Innovation and Collaboration: Albert Kahn Associates (New York: Visual Profile Books, 2022). 
  1. Review: D. Drellinger, “Built in the USSR (by Detroit)”: https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/built-in-the-u-s-s-r—by-detroit-.html (accessed December 28, 2021). 
  1. “Anti-Photographs,” in Modern Management Methods: Architecture, Historical Value, and the Electromagnetic Image, ed. C. Blanchfield and F. Lotfi-Jam (Columbia Books on Architecture at the City, 2019), 403-410. 
  1. “Architecture, Product of Capital(ism),” Architectural Review 1464 (September 2019), 54-59 [retitled by editor: “If the price is right: the hard currency of architecture”] 
  1. “InterVIEW 17: Sounding the Depths,” in Federica Goffi, Inter-VIEWS: Insights and Introspection on Doctoral Research in Architecture (London: Routledge, 2019)  
  1. “Smithdon School, Hunstanton,” SOS Brutalism (Frankfurt: Deutsches Architekturmuseum, 2017) 
  1. “The Smithsons and Pop” This was Tomorrow: The Invention of Pop Art in Great Britain (Wolfsburg Kunstmuseum, 2016). 
  1. “Stateside,” Interview on Albert Kahn under Construction, Michigan Radio, February 2017 
  1. “Albert Kahn in the Second Industrial Revolution,” AA Files 75 (December 2017: Architectural Association, London), 28-44. 
  1. “Jim Cogswell’s Tattoo Esperanto,” in James Cogswell, Cosmogonic Tattoos (University of Michigan, 2017) 
  1. Review: “The Old Functionalist,” Ludwig Hilberseimer, Metropolisarchitecture (New York: Columbia University GSAPP, 2012; edited and translated by Richard Anderson) in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73:1 (March 2014) 
  1. Review: “The New Functionalists,” Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, Governing by Design (University of Pittsburgh Press 2011) in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73: 2 (June 2014). 
  1. “Modern Architecture between Photograph and Image,” UED Urban Environment Design (Beijing, January 2012): 66-71. 
  1. “Cambridge History Faculty Building,” in Cambridge in Concrete, ed. M. Iuliano (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012), 64-67. 
  1. “Absent or Deferred? Utopia and Desire in Postmodern Architecture,” Oxford Art Journal 34 (2011): 297-302; doi: 10.1093/oxartj/kcr024 (review of R. Martin, Utopia’s Ghost and K. M. Hays, Architecture’s Desire). 
  1. “Photography into Building: The Smithsons and James Stirling,” in Postmodernism ed. J. Pavitt and G. Adamson (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011), 144-149. 
  1. “Optical Immersion or Mixed Reality: Some New Architectures of Architecture” (review: Stanford Humanities Lab and Photosynth/ Seadragon, Microsoft Labs), The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 69: 3 (September, 2010): 465-468. 
  1. “The Monster Magnified: Architectural Photography as Visual Hyperbole,” Perspecta 40: Monster (2008): 132-143. 
  1. “James Stirling Reassembled,” AA Files 56 (November 2007): 30-41. 
  1. “Spatial Choreography and the Modern Domestic Interior: The Tugendhat House,” Domès. International Review of Architecture 54: 1 (Jan. 2007): 110-125. 
  1. “Histories of British Architecture. What Next?” Constructs, Yale School of Architecture, Dec. 2006 (conference review). 
  1. “Kurt Forster’s Surface Tensions,” Constructs, Yale School of Architecture, Dec. 2005 (lecture review). 
  1. “Ultra-Slim,” (review: Werner Sobek, Show me the Future), The Architect’s Newspaper 13 (July 27, 2004): 14. 
  1. “Moneo’s Apologia,” The Architect’s Newspaper 9 (May 25, 2004): 14 (lecture review). 
  1. Exhibition previews, Artforum, New York, NY. Various dates 
  1. “Eliat House,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “Dexel House,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “The German Pavilion in Barcelona,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “Tugendhat House,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “Nolde House,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “Gericke House,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “The German Pavilion at Brussels,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “The Krefeld Golf Course,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “The New National Gallery,” Mies in Berlin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001). 
  1. “Tugendhat Frames” Harvard Design Magazine 15 (Fall 2001): 24-31.                     
  1. Reprint in translation, ARCH+ Zeitschrift für Architektur und Städtebau 161 (June 2002): 22-35. 
  1. “Mies in Photos,” MoMA Magazine, Museum of Modern Art (June 2001): 2-5.  
  1. “Interleavings and Exchanges,” in Dagmar Richter, XYZ (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001): 20-34. 
  1. Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60:1 (March 2001): 98-100 (book review). 
  1. K. Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58, no. 2 (June 1999): 216-219 (book review). 
  1. “Comrades and Citizens: Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and K. Michael Hays,” Part 3 (Spring 1998): http://www.brickhaus.com/amoore/magazine (book review) 
  1. “Narrative Surface,” The Built Surface, 1994 Building Workshops (Tallahassee: Florida A&M University, 1998), n.p.  

Exhibitions  

  1. Advisor, Sounds in the City: Mapping Acoustical Environments in Communities of Faith in Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan-Mellon Project on the Egalitarian Metropolis, Michigan Research Lab, Detroit, May 15-June 14, 2019 
  1. Advisor, Past Present/ Presence Past: The University of Michigan Bicentennial Exhibition, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, 2017 
  1. Curator, Albert Kahn under Construction, University of Michigan Museum of Art, February- July, 2016; 
  1. Curator, Albert Kahn under Construction, Lawrence Technological University and Münster School of Architecture, Spring 2017 (multi-media presentation) 
  1. Co-curator, New Brutalist Image 1949-1954, Tate Britain, November 2014-October 2015 (with Victoria Walsh).  
  1. Reviews and mentions, 2014-16: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (E. Harwood); Criterion (Michael J. Lewis); The Courtauldian (C. Nadal); Feature Shoot (E. Kail); Wallpaper (N. Compton). 
  1. Faculty advisor, The Path of Kahn: http://www.pathofkahn.com/ digital exhibition based on Summer 2014 travel course 
  1. Research Consultant for James F. Stirling Exhibition, Yale Center for British Art, 2005-07 
  1. Consultant for research and production, Mies in Berlin, Museum of Modern Art, 1999-2001 

Community Engagement and Public Service  

  1. Principal Investigator, 2022-23: Black Washtenaw County, Humanities Collaboratory Project 
  1. “Detroit orders demolition of historic Packard Plant, derelict for decades,” Here and Now, WBUR Boston, April 14, 2022:  https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/04/14/detroit-packard-plant 
  1. Spotlight on the News: Albert Kahn. WXYZ (ABC TV), Detroit: April 27, 2019: https://www.wxyz.com/news/spotlight-on-the-news-the-life-times-and-impact-of-famous-detroit-architect-albert-kahn 
  1. Architecture guide to the European Court of Justice visit to the United States, April 2017 
  1. “Fourth International Congress of Modern Architecture—CIAM IV,” interview with BBC 3 radio program Meeting of Minds, September 17, 2006.