The Design Politics Reader: A Cambridge Talks Handbook for Architectural Studies considers how design has historically been a political mode of knowledge and action. The handbook focuses on the political positions articulated and challenged by design professionals and practices in nineteenth and twentieth- century architectural history. The primary aim of the Design Politics Reader is pedagogical: to serve as a reader for undergraduate students, to aid the research of postgraduate students, and to reinvigorate and substantiate interdisciplinary directions in design education, research, and practice. It is therefore intended for wide distribution. The publication presents a dialogue between primary source texts and emergent scholarship from a range of geographic, disciplinary, and historical positions. This scholarship provides theoretical and comparative perspectives to articulate the myriad means by which design is political and politics is designed.

Delia Wendel is coeditor of On the Spatial Epistemology of Politics, and a Harvard PhD candidate who researches post-conflict and post-disaster rebuilding strategies. She focuses on the relations between spatial and sociopolitical repair. Recent publications include research on post-Katrina rebuilding, justice, and political activism in New Orleans (Journal of Urban Design, 2009; The Handbook of Architectural Theory, 2012). In 2009, she worked for UNHABITAT as a research consultant; from 2008-11 served as a tenure-track lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and has recently taught architectural, urban, and landscape history courses to graduate students at Harvard GSD. Delia holds a BArch from Rice, and master's degrees in cultural geography from University College London and in architectural theory from Harvard.

Fallon Samuels Aidoo is coeditor of On the Spatial Epistemology of Politics, and a Harvard PhD candidate in urban, science and technology studies. Fallon's historical and contemporary research analyzes the growth and shrinkage of urban infrastructure. Fallon has developed publications, archives, and exhibitions concerning the modern built environment in conjunction with the Smithsonian Division of Architectural History & Historic Preservation (2005), the Afro-Antillean Museum of Panama (2006), the United States National Building Museum (2008) and, most recently, the Hagley Museum and Library (2012). Fallon holds a BS in civil engineering from Columbia University, and master's degrees in architectural and urban studies from MIT and Harvard, respectively. She currently teaches architectural and urban history to undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard University.

The project's primary editorial advisor is professor K. Michael Hays, the codirector of the PhD Program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning; Associate Dean; and Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard Graduate School of Design. From 2000 to 2009, he also served as the first adjunct curator of architecture at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He was the founder and editor of Assemblage (1986--2000), an influential journal of architecture and design, and is the author of numerous books, including Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject (1992, MIT Press) and Architecture's Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde (2009, MIT Press). All of his work and teaching involve issues of ideological and protopolitical representations in architecture. As codirector of the doctoral programs, he oversees program content and planning, and advises on the development of the annual Cambridge Talks symposium.

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design is a leading center for education, information, and technical expertise on the built environment. Its Departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design offer master's and doctoral degree programs and provide the foundation for its Advanced Studies and Executive Education Programs.