Architecture provides the lens through which to examine Dubai and its emergence as one of the world’s most talked-about cities. It also bears the evidence that the city, far from being a gross aberration, grew according to prescribed rules of modernization. Enriched by an abundant catalogue of unpublished photographs, exclusive interviews, and archival documents, the book elucidates Dubai’s modernization from the mid-1950s until 1979. The main protagonist is British architect John Harris who–working alongside engineers, diplomats, and financiers–delivered key architectural projects, including the city’s first master plan and skyscraper. Harris’s designs for Dubai anchor the book's examination of how architecture interfaced with such urban-scale topics as hygiene, global migration, international standards, and business-class comfort. Pursued amidst constant pitch-making and deal-brokering for Dubai, architecture, through it all, emerges as a tactic of both calculated compromise and firm persistence.

Todd Reisz is an architect and writer. His work examines cities of the Arabian Peninsula, from historical and contemporary perspectives. He is currently the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale School of Architecture, after serving five years as the school’s Rose Visiting Assistant Professor. He has also taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Reisz edited the Al Manakh series (Archis, 2010), two essential publications on the urbanization of the Arabian Peninsula. He was also editor and contributing writer for Beirut-based Portal 9. For six years he was a leading designer and researcher at OMA in Rotterdam. Reisz’s work has been featured in several Venice Architecture Biennials, the Sharjah Biennial, The Guardian, Perspecta, Log, Jadaliyya, Journal of Urban History, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Architectural Design, Artforum, Volume, and ARCH+. He holds degrees in English literature and architecture from Yale University.