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Researching Asian/Pacific Islander Americans & architecture: General resources

Recommended resources on Asian American and Pacific Islander architects, builders, communities, and related issues, providing location info for print resources and links for digital resources.

Recommended books

Other resources

"Explore Asian American & Pacific Islander Stories," Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage, National Park Service, updated May 4, 2024 (via nps.gov)

"Asian American Architecture: Mapping the Field and Its Futures," Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), 2020 Virtual conference (via Vimeo, 1:29:06 duration)

"Masters of Modern Design," Artbound, Season 10, Episode 1, KCET, PBS SoCal, May 15, 2019 (via YouTube, 56:05 minute duration)

"Preserving Heritage - Unveiling the narrative of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California," California Natural Resources Agency, May 29, 2024 (via YouTube, 59:44 minute duration)

Where are my people? Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander in Architecture,” research report compiled by ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture)

Recommended for all architectural research

Specialized resources on related topics

Brightwell, Eric, “Pan-Asian Metropolis — Pioneering Asian American Architects in Los Angeles,” EricBrightwell.com, 5 October 2016

Dubrow, Gail, et al, "Rediscovering Asian American & Pacific Islander architects & designers," Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, March 8, 2023 (Final report)

Five Alive, "Erasing Asian American Midcentury Design," Plan A Magazine, [2018]

“Hawaiian,” Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, Cambridge University Press, Reference NA208.E53 1997 Vol.2, p.1214

Hibbard, Don, Buildings of Hawaii, University of Virginia Press, NA730.H3 H53 2011

Lancaster, Clay, "Japanese buildings in the United States before 1900: their influence upon American domestic architecture," The Art Bulletin, #3, 1953, p. 217-224 (PDF via Jstor)

"Masters of Modern Design," Artbound, Season 10, Episode 1, KCET, PBS SoCal, May 15, 2019 (56:05 minute duration) (via YouTube)

Price, Virginia, “Washington Place: harboring American claims, housing Hawaiian Culture,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, #2, 2009, p. 48-72 (PDF via Jstor)

Vinnitskaya, Irina, “Breaking Ground: Chinese American architects in Los Angeles,” ArchDaily, 13 April, 2012 (Review of exhibit at the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles)

Dearborn, Lynne M., “Socio-Spatial Patterns of Acculturation: Examining Hmong Habitation in Milwaukee’s North-Side Neighborhoods,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Vol.15, 2008, p.58–77 (PDF via JSTOR)

Ding, Hao & Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, “Racism by Design? Asian Immigration and the Adoption of Planning and Design Regulations in Three Los Angeles Suburbs,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol.89, #1, January 2023, p.120–33

Lin, Jan, Reconstructing Chinatown: ethnic enclaves and global change, University of Minnesota Press, F128.68.C47 L56 1998 (ebook available via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Miller, James, “Indigenous Placemaking in the Climate Diaspora: Rimajol Resettlement in the U.S.,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Vol.32, #2, 2021, p.38–52 (PDF via JSTOR)

Nguyen, Minh Q., “An Empirical Exploration of Southeast Asian American Residential Patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area (2000–2019),” Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement, Vol.17, #1, 2022, p.1–25 (PDF via JSTOR)

Oda, Meredith, “Rebuilding Japantown: Japanese Americans in Transpacific San Francisco during the Cold War,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol.83, #1, 2014, p.57–91 (PDF via Jstor)

Rast, Raymond W., "The cultural politics of tourism in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1882-1917," Pacific Historical Review, #1, 2007, p. 29-60 (PDF via Jstor)

Tangherliini, Timothy R., "Remapping Koreatown: folklore, narrative and the Los Angeles riots," Western Folklore, #2, 1999, p. 149-173 (PDF via Jstor)

Vo, Linda Trinh & Rick Bonus, Contemporary Asian American communities: intersections and divergences, Temple University Press, 2002 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Ward, Josi, “Dreams of Oriental Romance: Reinventing Chinatown in 1930s Los Angeles,” Buildings & Landscapes, Vol.20, #1, March 2013, p.19–42 (PDF via JSTOR)

Wong, Bernard P. & Chee-Beng Tan, Chinatowns around the world: gilded ghetto, ethnopolis, and cultural diaspora, Brill, 2013 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Bald, Vivek, Bengali Harlem and the lost histories of South Asian America, Harvard University Press, 2013 (ebook via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Chattel, Inc. (prepared by), Survey LA: Chinese American Historic Context Statement, City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Office of Historic Resources, September 2013

Hawley, Michael, Sikh Diaspora: theory, agency, and experience, Brill, 2013 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Hsu, Madeline Y., Asian American history : a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, E184.A75 H89 2016

Huang, Guiyou, et al., The Columbia guide to Asian American literature since 1945, Columbia University Press, 2006 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Ishizuka, Karen L., Serve the people: making Asian America in the long sixties, Verso, E184.A75I84 2016

Joyner, Brian D. Asian Reflections on the American Landscape: Identifying and Interpreting Asian Heritage, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2005

Lee, Erika, At America's gates: Chinese immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943, University of North Carolina Press, 2003 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Lee, Jonathan H. X. (editor), Southeast Asian Diaspora in the United States : memories and visions yesterday, today, and tomorrow, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015 (via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Mabalot, Linda, Manong, [DVD], Visual Communications, E184.F4 M366 1978 (Media shelf)

Markwyn, Abigail M., Empress San Francisco; the Pacific Rim, the Great West, and California at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, University of Nebraska Press, 2014 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Okihiro, Gary Y., American history unbound : Asians and Pacific Islanders, University of California Press, 2015 (via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Okihiro, Gary Y., Margins and mainstreams: Asians in American history and culture, University of Washington Press, 2014 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Prashad, Vijay, Everybody was kung fu fighting  Afro-Asian connections and the myth of cultural purity, Beacon Press, 2001 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Raphael-Hernandez, Heike, AfroAsian encounters: culture, history, politics, New York University Press, 2006 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Wu, Jean Yu-Wen Shen, et al., Asian American studies now: a critical reader, Rutgers University Press, 2010 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Zhao, Xiaojian, New Chinese America: class, economy, and social hierarchy, Rutgers University Press, 2010 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

American concentration camps” (Densho.org)

Bishop, Ronald, et al., Community newspapers and the Japanese-American incarceration camps : community, not controversy, Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2015 (ebook via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Burton, Jeff, Garden Management Plan: Gardens and Gardeners at Manzanar, Manzanar National Historic Site, California, 2015 (via the Digital Public Library of America)

Burton, Jeffery F., et al., Confinement and ethnicity: an overview of World War II Japanese American relocation sites, University of Washington Press, 2011 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Cannaday, Shelley, “Tule Lake today: internment and its legacies,” Boom: a Journal of California, Spring 2013, p. 17-33 (PDF via Jstor)

Daniels, Roger, et al., Japanese Americans: from relocation to redress, 2nd ed., University of Washington Press, 2013 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Hayashi, Brian Masaru, Democratizing the enemy: the Japanese American internment, Princeton University Press, 2010 (ebook via ProQuest Ebrary)

Hirabayashi, Gordon K., et al, A principled stand : the story of Hirabayashi v. United States, University of Washington Press, 2013 (via Proquest Ebook Central)

Nakamura, Robert A., Manzanar, [DVD], Visual Communications, D769.8.A6 M35 2006 (Media shelf)

Tamura, Eileen, In defense of justice : Joseph Kurihara and the Japanese American struggle for equality, University of Illinois Press, 2013 (Tule Lake Relocation Center) (ebook via Proquest Ebook Central)

Burton, Jeff & Mary Farrell, “Creating Beauty behind Barbed Wire: Manzanar’s Japanese Gardens,” Journal of the North American Japanese Garden Association, Issue #2, 2015, p.50-59 (via najga.org)

Burton, Jeff, Garden Management Plan: Gardens and Gardeners at Manzanar, Manzanar National Historic Site, California, 2015 (via the Digital Public Library of America)

North American Japanese Garden Association

Brightwell, Eric, “Pan-Asian Metropolis — Pioneering Asian American Architects in  Los Angeles,” EricBrightwell.com, 5 October 2016

Chattel, Inc. (prepared by), Survey LA: Chinese American Historic Context Statement, City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Office of Historic Resources, September 2013

Fong, Timothy P., The first suburban Chinatown : the remaking of Monterey Park, California, Temple University Press, F869.M72 F68 1994

Fujii, Takashi, Omai Fa'atasi : Samoa mo Samoa, [DVD], Visual Communications, E184 .S12 O424 1978 (Media shelf)

Greenwood, Roberta S., Down by the station : Los Angeles Chinatown, 1880-1933, Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, F869.L86 C454 1996

Hoffman, Abraham, “The Conscience of a Public Official: Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron and Japanese Removal,” Southern California Quarterly, Vol.92, #3, 2010, p.243–74 (PDF via JSTOR)

Jenks, Hillary, “Bronzeville, Little Tokyo, and the Unstable Geography of Race in Post-World War II Los Angeles,” Southern California Quarterly, Vol.93, #2, 2011, p.201–35  (PDF via JSTOR)

Kubo, Duane & Robert A. Nakamura, Hito hata : raise the banner, [DVD], Visual Communications, F869 .L86 L585 1995 (Media shelf)

Lee, Shelley Sang-Hee, Koreatown, Los Angeles : immigration, race, and the "American dream", Stanford University Press, F869.L86 K675 2022

Meares, Hadley, “How Chinese Restaurants Shaped Tiki Culture In LA,LAist, May 3, 2019

Rawitsch, Mark Howland, The house on Lemon Street : Japanese pioneers and the American dream, University Press of Colorado, 2012 (via Proquest Ebook Central)

Song, Min, Strange future : pessimism and the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Duke University Press, F869.L89 A27 2005

Crisman, Jonathan Jae-an, “Art and the Aesthetics of Cultural Gentrification: The Cases of Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo in Los Angeles,” Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City, edited by Christoph Lindner and Gerard F. Sandoval, Amsterdam University Press, 2021, p.137–54 (Open access book chapter via JSTOR)

Machida, Margo, “‘Ae Kai Rising: Trans-Oceanic Communities of Cultural Imagination,” Pacific Arts, Vol 22, #1, 2022, p.58–78 (PDF via JSTOR)

Coutant, Linda, "Preserving Chinatowns: How Many Are at Risk of Being Lost?" National Parks Conservation Association, May 1, 2024 (Blog post, via npca.org)

Joyner, Brian D. Asian Reflections on the American Landscape: Identifying and Interpreting Asian Heritage, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2005

"Places of Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage," National Trust for Historic Preservation, accessed November 6, 2024

"Preserving Heritage - Unveiling the narrative of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California," California Natural Resources Agency, May 29, 2024 (via YouTube, 59:44 minute duration)

"Small Town Preservation and Revitalization, Part 1: Isleton's Asian American Heritage Park," & "Part 2: Isleton's Downtown Corridor," CivicWell, published April 29 & May 30, 2022

Please note

  • These guides are intended to provide initial orientation, and suggest a variety of different lines of investigation—not take the place of individual research.
  • All the resources cited here--print and digital--are available through the Kappe Library at SCI-Arc.Items not available at SCI-Arc are not included.
  • Surveys covering multiple projects are preferred over monographic studies focusing on specific works or individuals.
  • Resources on Los Angeles and Southern California are stressed.
  • Proprietary digital resources (Avery Index, Oxford Art Online, ArtStor, etc) can be accessed on-campus at SCI-ARC via any SCI-Arc internet provider. Off-campus they can be accessed 24/7 via the Kappe Library proxy server, and a valid SCI-Arc Network username and password.

The Kappe Library at SCI-Arc

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