All Eyes on Space: An Architectural History of Television - Softcover

Dodd, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822968126 ISBN 13: 9780822968122

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2026

Synopsis

In All Eyes on Space, Sam Dodd looks at television and sees architecture: a dynamic system of spatial design, environmental planning, and bodily control operating behind and beyond the small screen. By transmitting images and sounds across vast distances, television brings faraway places into immediate view and, in the process, reshapes how space is imagined and inhabited. Yet, this seemingly effortless presentation of “distant sight” is only possible because of deliberate architectural investments made throughout the second half of the twentieth century. From the 1940s onward, American architects and planners designed stations, studios, towers, cables, and screens while also experimenting with television as a medium for public communication and engagement. Drawing on archival records, original broadcasts, and works of art and design, Dodd plots a history of television architecture in the United States to show how the medium produced a distinctly American spatial logic that tethered expansionist ambitions to the management of visibility and access. Ultimately, this book reveals how a ubiquitous medium commonly understood as immaterial—if not ephemeral—became one of the century’s most consequential built environments.

About this title

About the Author

Sam Dodd is an assistant professor of art history and criticism in the Department of Art at Stony Brook University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822968126
• ISBN 13: 9780822968122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304