The faces of contemporary cities and the transnational circulation of architectural technologies

11 Our way of observing and understanding the world often starts from its surface. We tend to first recognize the people around us by their appearance and facial features. Just as someone’s face does not tell us the entire history or character of a person, neither can we expect this from a complex composition like a city. Even if we frequently recognize one city through key images—an iconic building, a square, or the skyline—we cannot necessarily claim to know its deeper characteristics or historic evolution. This book shows how the built environment and the creation of its material surfaces can help to better understand processes of urban transformation and architecture more generally. The research behind this book interprets the material dimension of buildings and the built environment as the product of multiple networks of skills and transnational sociopolitical relationships, revealing the connections among cities and their transforming agents to explore, in particular, the role of designers and design technology providers over time.