Architecture and Globalisation in the Persian Gulf Region is an impressive volume that deals exclusively with the architecture of a region in need of much historical analysis and scholarly attention. This book is a very timely and important contribution to our improved understanding of the region and its global impact. Such understanding is imperative not only because the region itself is, and has long been, a hotbed of debates and solutions, but also because many of the most extreme manifestations of globalism—both in breathtaking architectural works and in the most ghastly violations of human rights that make them possible—are played out here.

The text is divided into three parts: “Western Coastline of Persian Gulf,” “Eastern Coastline of Persian Gulf,” and “Contemporary Design Approaches.” In the first and second parts each chapter examines a different city in the region, while the third part comprises four thematic explorations of contemporary stylistic, ideological, and design strategies. Murray Fraser provides a comprehensive introduction, outlining the unique approach of the book to the study of the region as a cultural and historical unit. While methodological and thematic concerns—for instance, the rather controversial question regarding the name of the Gulf—are well traced in the introduction, the collection of essays would have benefited from an in-depth historical examination of the Persian Gulf’s architectural and corresponding sociopolitical history.

In part I, Tanis Hinchcliffe lays out a brief history of the region and explores the relationship between the discovery of oil and large architectural commissions in the Gulf states between 1950 and 1980. He examines the motivations, disparities, difficulties, and lingering colonial stereotypes that conditioned interactions between Arab clients and British architects. While British architects found in the Gulf region a …