Professor

My training is in architectural history and cultural studies, and I use interdisciplinary approaches to study buildings, urban sites, monuments, public spaces, and landscapes in relation to a broadly-defined social context. This scholarship incorporates analytic categories such as race and gender, thereby adding relations of identity and power to its examination of the meanings and uses of spaces and places. 

In my work, a specific focus has been the relationship between built environments, bureaucracies, and national identity. I have studied this in different ways, through the architectural programs of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1910s-20s, the United States civil defence establishment during the Cold War, and the Canadian government departments responsible for immigration in the century after Confederation. My current research – drawing on the history of medicine and public health – takes a global look at the architecture of quarantine stations (also known as lazarettos), spanning from the late medieval period to early 20^th century.

Selected Publications

“For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers”: Architecture and Immigrant Reception in Canada, 1870-1930. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021.

                      Winner of the 2022 Abbott Lowell Cummings Book Award, Vernacular Architecture Forum [conferred annually upon the book that has made the most significant contribution to the study of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes]

                       Winner of the 2022 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, University of Virginia Center for Cultural Landscapes

“Pier 21 and the Production of Canadian Immigration” in Carolyn Loeb and Andreas Luescher, eds., The Design of Frontier Spaces: Control and Ambiguity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), 109-128.

Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War. University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

“Boston City Hall and a History of Reception,” Journal of Architectural Education 65:1 (October 2011), p. 45-62.

“Framing the American Dream,” Journal of Architectural Education 58:1 (September 2004), p. 24-33.

“Shelter From The Elements: Architecture and Civil Defense in the Early Cold War,” The Philosophical Forum XXXV:2 (Summer 2004), p. 179-199.

“‛From Canvas to Concrete in Fifty Years,’ The Construction of Vancouver City Hall, 1935-6." BC Studies 124 (Winter 1999/2000), p. 41-68.

“Constructing Buildings and Histories, Hudson’s Bay Company Department Stores, 1910-1930,” SSAC Bulletin SEAC 20:4 (December 1995), p. 97-103.

Reviews of For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers

“This well-researched, well-written, well-illustrated book… is sure to shape future studies not only of immigration architecture or institutional architecture broadly but also of the ways in which architecture acquires meaning.”

                                                                                                             M. Frank, Choice

“Il s’agit, en bref, d’un livre magnifique. Il est esthétiquement plaisant, riche en idées, et l’argument principal peut servir de métaphore pour l’étude de la migration de manière plus générale…

            L’analyse, riche et pénétrante… apporte une contribution essentielle à l’histoire de l’environnement bâti et à l’histoire de la migration.”

                                                    Laura Madokoro, Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française

“The committee particularly admired Monteyne’s ability to balance evidence and arguments concerning the design and programming of immigrant infrastructure – largely told through the architectural drawings and reports by architects and bureaucrats in the Dominion’s Department of Public Works – with the voices of immigrants themselves – discovered in a wide range of first-person sources. The interplay of these two very different types of evidence is what enables Monteyne to deftly and provocatively capture the spatial practices shaped by the built environments of immigration, but negotiated, challenged, and modified by the immigrants transiting through those environments.

            His work reminds us that… the built environment of immigration both structures a country’s interaction with potential future citizens and signals a country’s ability to show compassion for the wrenching experiences of  global migrants.”

                                                                                                              Excerpt from Cummings Award Citation

Book Reviews for Fallout Shelter

“It is a wonderful demonstration of how historical inquiry can expose level upon level of social construction through the detailed examination of a contained topic. By the book’s end we have encountered a full assessment of the architectural profession’s relationship to the civil defense establishment, and we have also taken a journey through early Cold War American domestic history.”

                                                                                          Robert Jacobs, American Historical Review

“Fallout Shelter confirms that the quest for governmental control resides not only in legislation but also in the manipulation of the ordinary spaces that surround us every day.”

                                                                                          Sarah Lichtman, Journal of Design History

“A volume that...contributes to broader conversations about professional conduct, government surveillance, and social implications of technological change.”

                                                                                           Sharon Irish, Technology and Culture

“Monteyne’s fascinating look at this inglorious chapter in American history may be a cautionary tale.” 

                                                                                            Anthony Paletta, Metropolis.

David Monteyne CV

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