Writer Geoff Manaugh will present the research and reporting that underpins his forthcoming book, The Burglar’s Guide to the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). From routine flights with the L.A.P.D. Air Support Division to learning how to pick locks in Chicago, and from interviewing a reformed bank robber in the Bay Area to visiting the warehouse of a “panic room” designer in New Jersey, Manaugh’s book encompasses a diverse mix of sources and research strategies. Manaugh will discuss the relationship between burglary, policing, architecture, and urban design, learning along the way how Tactical Flight Officers with the L.A.P.D. would redesign the city, as well as how a retired Toronto burglar relied on the city’s fire code to help determine his next architectural target.

Geoff Manaugh is a freelance writer and curator, and the former director of Studio-X NYC at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. His work has appeared in The New York Times,New Scientist, Popular Science, Domus, newyorker.com, and many other publications, and he has curated exhibitions for Venice Biennale of Architecture, Nevada Museum of Art, and the Storefront for Art & Architecture, among others. Manaugh is the author of BLDGBLOG, a long-running online catalog of spatial ideas and innovations at various scales and genres, from archaeology to urban planning, science fiction to geology. The BLDGBLOG Book (2009), based on the blog, was selected by Amazon.com as one of their “Top 100 Books” of 2009.

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