The Architecture of the Wire explores the development of telecommunications infrastructure and its impact on the architectural and urban culture of the modern age--from poles, wires, and cables, to "micro-architectures," such as the th trophone and the telephone booth. Starting with the intrepid worldwide infrastructures of the late nineteenth century, Carlotta Dar proposes a new history that explores the multiple links and crossroads of such technical "things" with architecture and art.

Based on extensive research of North American company archives, and French institutional ones, and drawing on secondary literature in art and architectural history, media studies, and the history of technology, Dar examines the aesthetic implications of material objects that have forever changed our urban, rural, and domestic environments.