Nathaniel Walker

Nathaniel Walker is Associate Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America.

He specializes in the history of urban form, public buildings, and spaces such as squares and streets. He especially studies the ways people have used architecture to imagine and shape their dreams of a more beautiful, fairer, and healthier world. He is inspired by cross-cultural exchange in architectural sites around the globe and is committed to telling more empowering stories about the history of architecture for peoples whose contributions have been overlooked or marginalized.

Walker’s publications include an award-winning book on science-fiction architecture from the 1800s and the Anglo-American fear of cities, entitled Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia: Abandoning Babylon. With Elizabeth Darling he co-edited a book on powerful female interventions in public space and life, entitled Suffragette City: Women, Politics, and the Built Environment. His research has also been published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Buildings and Landscapes, Utopian Studies, Arris, and a number of edited volumes. He co-curated with Jessica Renee Streit The City Luminous: Architectures of Hope in an Age of Fear at Charleston’s City Gallery in 2019. And in 2011 he curated Building Expectation: Past and Present Visions of the Architectural Future at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.