Book review: Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior By Olga Touloumi

Olga Touloumi’s Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior is a compelling exploration of how architecture and interior design shape global governance’s operations, identities, and ideologies. The headquarters of the United Nations (UN) was commissioned post-World War II, when architects, diplomats, and political leaders believed that the design of assembly spaces could foster a new model of international cooperation. Assembly by Design presents a nuanced critique of the UN’s architecture as a physical space and a site of ideological, political, and cultural negotiation. In her absorbing and deeply researched book, Touloumi focuses on the interiors of the United Nations Headquarters in New York as physical spaces that intersect with the abstract principles of diplomacy, cooperation, and global order. Touloumi introduces how “global interiors” are political sites of power with under examined dual roles as both spaces of governance and communicative tools.