Alan Dunn

Name: Alan Dunn
Price: 95 AUD
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ISBN: 9780262052597

The Cartoonist as Architectural Critic

Gabriele Neri, Barry Bergdoll

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English

MIT Press
16 June 2026

Architecture

The first in-depth study of American artist Alan Dunn (1900-1974), whose incisive cartoons mocked twentieth-century architecture and urban environments, expanding the field of architectural criticism.

Drawing on his pioneering expertise in the relationship between graphic satire and architecture, Gabriele Neri retraces Alan Dunn's path from painter to renowned cartoonist, offering an unconventional perspective on architectural and urban transformations-and on their perception within society.

Featuring 200 carefully selected images, including Dunn's correspondence, preliminary sketches, unpublished cartoons, watercolors, and rare photographs, this book demonstrates the critical potential of caricature and cartoons for architectural history. It also reveals the complex intersections of architecture with media, publishing, commerce, society, art, and politics.

Among the thousands of cartoons and illustrations Dunn created for The New Yorker, Architectural Record, and other periodicals, many addressed key themes such as the evolving skyline of American metropolis; the appearance of controversial buildings; housing models; technological innovations; the relationship between architects, clients, and other figures in the construction industry; the protection of built heritage; and the obsessions, oddities, foibles, and even misdeeds of the architectural world.

As Lewis Mumford once wrote of Dunn- ""Shall I say that he is obviously a better architect than the architects whose fashionable cliches and grim follies he exposes? Or shall I say that his urbane satiric style, deft but merciless, puts him in a class by himself; for this is what has been missing from contemporary criticism in all the arts. All this is true; but it is not enough.""

By: Gabriele Neri, Barry Bergdoll
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 159mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262052597
ISBN 10: 0262052598
Pages: 424
Publication Date: 16 June 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Gabriele Neri is Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He was a Weinberg Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, NY, and has been teaching at the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland since 2012. He currently serves on the Scientific Committee of the MAXXI Foundation in Rome.