New Methods for Studying Transnational Urbanism and Architecture: A primer

Thanks to new technological advancements and due to global economic arrangements, today architectural firms simultaneously practice in multiple countries. Extremely complex projects, such as iconic museums or tall skyscrapers are often awarded to architects who are internationally known. The role and contribution of such architectural and urban projects in contemporary cities have been heatedly debated in both scholarly and public arenas for quite some time now. Nonetheless no one has collected systematic evidence regarding the magnitude of transnational projects, their histories and geographical trajectories, the strategies of multinational design firms and how cities plan such projects. This paper provides an early account of ongoing research activities for constituting the first spatial database dedicated to mapping transnational projects and to developing qualitative and quantitative methods.