Islands have a long history of appealing to the architectural imagination and have served as sites for architectural expressions of cultural specificity, cultural conquest, and cultural hybridisation over millennia. From offshore financial centres to immigrant detention camps, tourist havens to military bases, the architectures of islands concretise the forces at play in our contemporary, crisis-ridden societies.

Collecting writings by a wide range of established scholars together with exciting new voices in architecture and affiliated disciplines, this book shows the pertinence islands hold for critical spatial thinking and practice today. Covering war and colonialism, detention and tourism, the topics raised in this book range from issues of urban development to close readings of buildings – whether ruined, designed, projected, preserved, or absent. Combing case studies, critical historiography, and pieces of experimental writing, the chapters disclose the variety of ways in which architecture can be used as a lens for analysing, disclosing, and untangling island specificity.

This volume offers a very timely, vibrant, and methodologically varied approach to the subject of architecture and islands. Its global reach, innovative outlook, and rich material will be of interest to scholars and students in architecture, landscape architecture, geography, and urban design and planning, alongside arts and literary studies.