Materialized: The Global Life of Steel

FAIN: FEL-262178-19

Peter Christensen, PhD
University of Rochester (Rochester, NY 14627-0001)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book about the emergence of steel in the nineteenth century, and its global impact on architecture and the environment, through study of the German companies Krupp and Thyssen.

I seek an NEH Fellowship to work on my second major book project, tentatively titled Materialized: The Global Life of Steel. Steel, introduced into architecture on a broad scale during the nineteenth century, undoubtedly had a radical impact on architecture, forever changing the way we perceive and inhabit buildings. But it also produced a radical new ecology, one that reflected a parasitic and cyclical new relationship with the environment and natural resource. Materialized illustrates that as architects and engineers sought to harness steel’s incredible capacities, steel itself simultaneously transformed the natural world. The book explores the interrelationship mediated by steel between these artificial and natural habitats through the central prism of the corporate histories of Krupp and Thyssen. The book’s method, a close analysis of a material’s ecology, proposes an innovative way to understand the power of a material to shape the historical and global world.

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