Concrete Colonialism: Architecture, Urbanism, and the US Imperial Project in the Philippines

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Diana Jean S. Martinez

Concrete Colonialism

Architecture, Urbanism, and the US Imperial Project in the Philippines

Diana Jean S. Martinez

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English

Duke University Press
12 September 2025

History of architecture; Colonialism & imperialism; Ethnic studies; Politics & government

During US colonial rule in the Philippines, reinforced concrete was used to the near exclusion of all other building materials. In Concrete Colonialism, Diana Jean S. Martinez examines the motivations for and lasting effects of this forgotten colonial policy. Arguing that the pervasive use of reinforced concrete technologies revolutionized techniques of imperial conquest, Martinez shows how concrete reshaped colonialism as a project that sought durable change through the reformation of environments, colonial society, and racialized biologies. Martinez locates the origins of this material revolution in the development of Chicago, highlighting how building this urban center atop exceptionally challenging geology made it possible to transform diverse global ecologies. She details how the material’s stability, plasticity, strength, and other qualities served the shifting imperatives of the US colonial regime, playing a central role in defending territory, controlling disease, and the construction of monuments to nation and empire. By describing a world irreversibly remade, Martinez urges readers to consider how colonialism persists—in concrete forms—despite claims of its conclusion.

By: Diana Jean S. Martinez
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 445g
ISBN: 9781478032380
ISBN 10: 1478032383
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 12 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Diana Jean S. Martinez is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University.

Reviews for Concrete Colonialism: Architecture, Urbanism, and the US Imperial Project in the Philippines

""Diana Jean S. Martinez brilliantly details the misadventures of colonizers in the Philippines who found in concrete a material that perfectly expressed their bombast and obliviousness to culture or climate. Heavy, brittle, and inert, concrete obligingly took the shape of whiteness and ensured that tilted economic playing fields and other patterns of harm will continue into the future.""--Keller Easterling, Enid Storm Dwyer Professor Architecture, Yale University ""In this brilliant book, Diana Jean S. Martinez casts the architectural logic of the American empire in an entirely new light, stressing how it differed from its Spanish predecessor while drawing useful comparisons to the urbanizing projects of the US mainland. Martinez's enlightening approach to the infrastructure of empire fills many holes in our knowledge of the US colonization of the Philippines and shows how the landscape of empire would be unimaginable and unrealizable without the use of concrete.""--Vicente L. Rafael, author of ""Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte""