Albert Narath’s research and teaching interests focus on the history of the built environment from the 19th century to the present. His current work operates within the intersection of architectural and environmental history.

His first book is Solar Adobe: Energy, Ecology, and Earthen Architecture (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). The project focuses on the emergence of a "solar adobe" design scene in the American Southwest following World War II, when debates about ecology and technology were central to the social and political context of design developments in a range of settings, including design offices, architecture schools, government-funded energy laboratories, networks of owner-builder experimentors, and Indigenous communities.

He is currently at work on a second book project, Designing California, which is an environmental history of California design from the mid-19th century to the present.

He maintains a second research focus in the historiography of modern architecture. In tracing German art historical conceptions of the Baroque at the end of the nineteenth century, for example, he has explored the interplay between history, theory, and practice in a period when architects reexamined their discipline in the face of profound urban and political transformations.