Image descriptions
Image one: E-book titled Syria's Monuments: Their Survival and Destruction (2016) - synopsis: Syria's Monuments: Their Survival and Destruction examines the fate of the various monuments in Syria (including present-day Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine/Israel) from Late Antiquity to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. It examines travellers’ accounts, mainly from the 17th to 19th centuries, which describe religious buildings and housing in numbers and quality unknown elsewhere. The book charts the reasons why monuments lived or died, varying from earthquakes and desertification to neglect and re-use, and sets the political and social context for the Empire’s transformation toward a modern state, provoked by Western trade and example.
Image two: E-book titled Modern Architecture in Mexico City: History, Representation, and the Shaping of a Capital (2017) - synopsis: Mexico City became one of the centers of architectural modernism in the Americas in the first half of the twentieth century. Through an exploration of schools, a university campus, a government ministry, a workers' park, and houses for Diego Rivera and Luis Barragán, Kathryn O'Rourke offers a new interpretation of modern architecture in the Mexican capital, showing close links between design, evolving understandings of national architectural history, folk art, and social reform.
