This book explores a number of issues associated with the shared ground between architecture and property, primarily in the context of America. Architecture's claim on property is both artistic (intellectual property) and material (real property). While the first has received some attention, the second has been almost entirely subsumed under real estate valuation. Although our contemporary economic landscape has shown the critical importance of development, the nexus between architecture and real property is more nuanced and influential than we have imagined. Contemporary and historical convergences between architecture (urban and suburban design and development, public and private housing) and property systems (property law, finance, governance, eminent domain, public and private claims) are examined through case studies and analysis. The book argues that these convergences have been deeply consequential for architecture and for the shaping of cities and policies.

Catherine Ingraham is professor of architecture at Pratt Institute in New York, a program she chaired from 1998 to 2005. Ingraham is the author of numerous publications, including Architecture, Animal, Human: The Asymmetrical Condition (Routledge, 2006) and Architecture and The Burdens of Linearity (Yale University Press, 1998); she has published over eighty articles, essays, and chapters in journals and book collections on architectural theory and history. Ingraham was editor of the journal Assemblage during the 1990s and has been visiting professor at Harvard University and Columbia University.  She is currently senior fellow at Columbia University's Center for Urban Real Estate. In 2013, Ingraham curated an exhibition on Cold War–era housing prototypes with Chilean architects Pedro Alonso and Hugo Palmarola, who won the Silver Lion for the Chilean Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale. In 2001, she was the winner, with Laurie Hawkinson, of a design competition for a ten-story building in Battery Park City for the Museum of Women's History. Ingraham has frequently given invited lectures at national and international schools of architecture, and has been honored with residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Canadian Centre for Architecture.