An Architectural History of Public Interiors: United Nations and the Ordering of the World

FAIN: FT-279174-21

Olga Touloumi
Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-9800)

Research and writing for a book analyzing the architectural integration of media and technology into the design of the U.N. Headquarters’ interior spaces, and how that design reflected contemporary conceptions of global governance and diplomacy.

My project presents the first book-length examination of the media and material construction of the United Nations, with attention to the new spaces for global governance that emerged in the immediate years following World War II (1945-1955). The United Nations, as the multilateral structure to regulate the passage from a colonial to an institutional organization of the world, brought forward new diplomatic practices, means of assembling, anticipating that the introduction of a global polity in its main organs. This book examines how the United Nations used architecture and media in its Council Chambers, General Assembly, courtrooms and conference halls to produce a new kind of public interior that insulated governing bodies from the publics they governed. My goal is to interrogate how these public interiors reconfigured the "imaginary institution" of globality and instrumentalized mass media and architecture for liberal internationalism.