Enrique Ramirez
@enriqueramirez.bsky.social
Director @manifestinstitute
Historian of Things
Occasional Musician
Frances and Gilbert P. Schafer Visiting Professor
of Architecture/University of Michigan
Historian of Things
Occasional Musician
Frances and Gilbert P. Schafer Visiting Professor
of Architecture/University of Michigan
I’m writing a book about Craig Ellwood’s Case Study House 16—an experimental biography, or by my calculus, a pulp detective novel masquerading as history in a tattered trench coat. The Los Angeles Review of Architecture published an excerpt. nyra.nyc/articles/col...
Cold Case
Who built Case Study House #16?
nyra.nyc
October 9, 2025 at 10:16 PM
I’m writing a book about Craig Ellwood’s Case Study House 16—an experimental biography, or by my calculus, a pulp detective novel masquerading as history in a tattered trench coat. The Los Angeles Review of Architecture published an excerpt. nyra.nyc/articles/col...
I wrote this piece on hurricanes and architectural history fourteen years ago … I still go back to it every now and then to see how it continues to inform my research: open.substack.com/pub/literary...
Of Hyphen and Hurricane
Thinking of a ship as architecture is enough to make it so ...
open.substack.com
June 2, 2025 at 11:11 AM
I wrote this piece on hurricanes and architectural history fourteen years ago … I still go back to it every now and then to see how it continues to inform my research: open.substack.com/pub/literary...
Season 2 of Andor is essentially an intergalactic version of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969)
May 1, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Season 2 of Andor is essentially an intergalactic version of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969)
Saw the movie about the Hungarian Bauhausler who designs a Suprematist community center in Doylestown, PA and who (at least for this viewer) was more Adrian Leverkühn than Marcel Breuer.
February 16, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Saw the movie about the Hungarian Bauhausler who designs a Suprematist community center in Doylestown, PA and who (at least for this viewer) was more Adrian Leverkühn than Marcel Breuer.
Happy Groundhog Day
February 2, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Happy Groundhog Day
I’m posting stuff I wrote several years ago. Here’s one piece: open.substack.com/pub/literary...
To The Pole Star
Journeys in and out of books, scaling latitudes like rungs on a ladder
open.substack.com
January 12, 2025 at 8:11 PM
I’m posting stuff I wrote several years ago. Here’s one piece: open.substack.com/pub/literary...
A fantastic read about the “Reindexing” of NYC property records from 1911 to 1917 www.archives.nyc/blog/2024/12...
Tracts, Farms, and the Great Reindexing Project of 1911-1917 — NYC Department of Records & Information Services
Introduction: why archive? Archives preserve materials for many reasons, some of which are not immediately obvious. It’s certainly true that some archived items have obvious historic importanc...
www.archives.nyc
December 14, 2024 at 1:09 PM
A fantastic read about the “Reindexing” of NYC property records from 1911 to 1917 www.archives.nyc/blog/2024/12...
… in 25,000 words
December 7, 2024 at 9:13 PM
… in 25,000 words
To immerse oneself in the rhythms and rituals of the stories of another country is a reminder that translation is more than just converting text from one language to another—it is spatial dislocation. So here I am in the tropical wilds of Quintana Roo, México, confronting Juan Rulfo once again
December 7, 2024 at 6:20 PM
To immerse oneself in the rhythms and rituals of the stories of another country is a reminder that translation is more than just converting text from one language to another—it is spatial dislocation. So here I am in the tropical wilds of Quintana Roo, México, confronting Juan Rulfo once again
This is amazing … theclassicphotomag.com/paperbase-vi...
Paperbase: Visualizing the Material History of Black and White Paper - The Classic
The Lens Media Lab at Yale University’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage has undertaken an extensive project to document and characterize its collection of over 7 500 dated and iden...
theclassicphotomag.com
November 15, 2024 at 11:26 PM
This is amazing … theclassicphotomag.com/paperbase-vi...
I wrote a review of Prior Art: Patents and the Nature of Invention in Architecture for @nyreviewofarch.bsky.social … many thanks to the editors for the opportunity to engage this text! I had my opinions on this book, but definitely check out if you can. nyra.nyc/articles/mot...
Motion Sickness
<em>Prior Art</em> trades in architectural alembics: spaces that distill, refine, and elucidate Christensen’s crucial triad: “creativity, novelty, and property.”
nyra.nyc
November 13, 2024 at 4:11 PM
I wrote a review of Prior Art: Patents and the Nature of Invention in Architecture for @nyreviewofarch.bsky.social … many thanks to the editors for the opportunity to engage this text! I had my opinions on this book, but definitely check out if you can. nyra.nyc/articles/mot...
My review of Jeffrey S. Nesbit’s design history of NASA’s spaceflight architectures is live: www.archpaper.com/2024/10/grou...
Ground Control provides a thorough architectural analysis of NASA’s spaceflight facilities
In the book Ground Control: A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex, Jeffrey Nesbit shares an “infrastructural history of the U.S. rocket launch complex.”
www.archpaper.com
October 26, 2024 at 12:25 AM
My review of Jeffrey S. Nesbit’s design history of NASA’s spaceflight architectures is live: www.archpaper.com/2024/10/grou...
My latest piece for Architectural Record www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/171...
Line of Discontent: Saudi Arabia's Linear Folly
Historian Enrique Ramirez looks to the long history of linear cities to understand Saudi Arabia's desert experiment.
www.architecturalrecord.com
October 10, 2024 at 11:34 AM
My latest piece for Architectural Record www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/171...
My daughter, Romy
May 16, 2024 at 12:42 AM
My daughter, Romy
I just added this beautiful 1985 Steinberger XL-2UF fretless bass to my collection. I’ve always loved fretless basses … they look like diagrams of bass guitars.
March 5, 2024 at 9:07 PM
I just added this beautiful 1985 Steinberger XL-2UF fretless bass to my collection. I’ve always loved fretless basses … they look like diagrams of bass guitars.
I’ll be presenting new research next month at the Yale Architecture Forum www.architecture.yale.edu/calendar/684...
Iceblink Space: Photography, Architecture, and International Law in the Circumpolar North - Yale Architecture
The Yale School of Architecture is dedicated to educating the next generation of leading architects and designers of the built environment.
www.architecture.yale.edu
February 28, 2024 at 7:50 PM
I’ll be presenting new research next month at the Yale Architecture Forum www.architecture.yale.edu/calendar/684...
Want to read something on Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, Sergei Eisenstein, and Mickey Mouse? Check out my piece on the Walt Disney Features Animation building in LARA #1. And also … SUBSCRIBE!
Hopped off the plane at LAX, with a dream and…my copy of the Los Angeles Review of Architecture.
Announcing LARA #1, guest edited by Mimi Zeiger.
Announcing LARA #1, guest edited by Mimi Zeiger.
February 22, 2024 at 7:59 PM
Want to read something on Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, Sergei Eisenstein, and Mickey Mouse? Check out my piece on the Walt Disney Features Animation building in LARA #1. And also … SUBSCRIBE!
I had a mushroom latte for the first time. It smelled like Amarillo Ramp and tasted like Double Negative.
February 12, 2024 at 6:56 PM
I had a mushroom latte for the first time. It smelled like Amarillo Ramp and tasted like Double Negative.
Three authors’ agreements are making my life kinda busy from now until 2026.
January 20, 2024 at 5:04 PM
Three authors’ agreements are making my life kinda busy from now until 2026.
I am so woefully out-of-step with such things, but I learned that novelist Paul LaFarge died earlier this year. I wrote one chapter of my dissertation while reading Haussmann, or The Distinction … a wonderful novel that I would not hesitate to assign for an arch. history class.
November 21, 2023 at 1:33 PM
I am so woefully out-of-step with such things, but I learned that novelist Paul LaFarge died earlier this year. I wrote one chapter of my dissertation while reading Haussmann, or The Distinction … a wonderful novel that I would not hesitate to assign for an arch. history class.
I had a paper accepted to the next meeting of EAHN … a first for me.
November 17, 2023 at 10:18 PM
I had a paper accepted to the next meeting of EAHN … a first for me.
My review of Alex Nemerov’s latest book is online at @nyreviewofarch.bsky.social … take a peek! nyra.nyc/articles/a-r...
A Rhumb Line into the Wilderness
*The Forest* reads like a heady and roving literary essay, whose forays into art and environment have a “blink and you’ll miss it” quality to them.
nyra.nyc
November 9, 2023 at 1:40 AM
My review of Alex Nemerov’s latest book is online at @nyreviewofarch.bsky.social … take a peek! nyra.nyc/articles/a-r...
My review of Kyle Dugdale’s new book is now available online at The Architectural Record digital.bnpmedia.com/publication/...
November 3, 2023 at 2:54 AM
My review of Kyle Dugdale’s new book is now available online at The Architectural Record digital.bnpmedia.com/publication/...
For the latest issue of Cite Magazine, I wrote a memoir of sorts that focuses on the years 1986/7, my first/second year of high school. It was the year of my first concert—Hüsker Dü at Phideaux’s in downtown Houston—and the year I began playing in punk bands in Houston.
November 2, 2023 at 10:32 PM
For the latest issue of Cite Magazine, I wrote a memoir of sorts that focuses on the years 1986/7, my first/second year of high school. It was the year of my first concert—Hüsker Dü at Phideaux’s in downtown Houston—and the year I began playing in punk bands in Houston.