In recent years the study of early modern global history has taken new shape and pursued new directions. This new study follows this trend, as Pedro Luengo underlines that he “attempts to accurately reconstruct Manila in 1645, before the earthquakes of the mid-seventeenth century” (1). The book seeks to analyze the layout and features of the city's houses in order to understand the configuration and urban planning of Intramuros. Most studies on the subject thus far have focused on the main buildings of the colonial port, such as its palaces, churches, or administrative buildings. Luengo, however, explores housing in colonial Manila as a means to establish a cultural dialogue between Southeast Asia and New Spain in the seventeenth century.

To achieve this goal, the author focuses on three different perspectives: first, the multilayered framework of Manila; second, the use of new technologies to obtain data that historical sources on architecture and urban history do not show; and, finally, the hybridization of the architecture of the city and its insertion into the first globalization. In order to make his argument, Luengo uses archival sources, maps, photos, old city images, and numerical data to locate the former plots of the city. Luengo's work is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1, “Manila-Macao: The Final Jewel in the Iberian Global Crown,” emphasizes that the study of Manila requires a multidimensional approach. It focuses on the connections and cultural dialogue among the Estado da India, China, and New Spain. It pays particular attention to Spanish, Chinese, and Portuguese intermediaries who influenced the creation of the buildings.

Chapter 2, “A Big Puzzle: The Urban Planning of Old Intramuros,” retraces the seventeenth-century city in 3-D. The author seeks to find the internal organization of the plots to understand the division of the city. He focuses on the study of the houses from a qualitative perspective instead of quantitative, using contemporary technologies. Luengo compares the pictorial representations at the beginning of the eighteenth century with the aerial pictures of Intramuros after the bombing of 1945. For this segment, he also relies on archaeology and traditional historiography. Chapter 3, “Portraits in Wood and Stone: Houses and Society,” aims to rebuild the domestic organization of Intramuros, focusing on its personal, familiar, and social activities. By deeply investigating a few select houses in Colonial Manila, Luengo claims that the internal organization of the city was a mirror of the development of its social life, taking into account its inhabitants, the dynamism of the city, and the floating population. The author concludes that the city dwellers chose where to live based on the availability of religious buildings and familiar and professional ties.

Chapter 4, “Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Adapting a Mediterranean House to the Tropics,” analyzes the cultural dialogue, hybridization, and influences of Chinese and Spanish models in the houses of the Intramuros area. The chapter emphasizes the manner in which geography influenced housing. It also differentiates the port from two other cities with similar functional characteristics within the Spanish Empire: Cádiz and Havana. The particularities of the houses are analyzed in light of the innovations of their ceilings, ventilation, and materials. Likewise, Luengo also looks into the space and the divisions of the houses: the lower floor, mezzanine, first floor, balconies, courtyards, moving staircases, roofs, kitchens, and Asian floors. The appendix greatly enhances the information presented in the preceding sections, as it contains specific data regarding the dwellings that Luengo located in the old city, along with their owners, materials, year of building, and price.

Overall, Manila, 1645 is an original contribution to our knowledge of cultural dialogue and architectural hybridization in Southeast Asia. The study offers a new methodology to investigate the first global connections between different continents and empires. Because the topic of housing is traditionally neglected in historiography, Luengo's book is a good example of interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and comparative research methods. This work will be a useful tool for scholars wanting to know more about the role of housing, colonial architecture, and urban planning in an overseas territory. The book could stimulate further and renewed study of architecture and globalization in Southeast Asia and/or early modern Spanish American cities.