MULTI-NATIONAL CITY: Architectural Itineraries

Multi-National City follows three architectural itineraries through three cities and their histories. Like so many, these cities are caught within the feedback loops of globalization: Silicon Valley in northern California; New York’s internal suburbias; and Gurgaon, a burgeoning corporate city outside of New Delhi. Each exhibits a distinct character, while together, they also form important nodes in what the authors describe as a single Multi-National City (MNC) stretching across the globe. The itineraries traced through them take the reader on a tour of the architectural monuments of corporate globalization-corporate campuses, high-rise towers, public atriums, call centers, and gated communities-that tracks their shared logic, their internal discrepancies, and their undeniable strangeness. Each itinerary concludes with an unannounced stop at an architectural project that applies the lessons of the Multi-National City to itself.