 Shand's first book on architecture, "Modern Theatres and Cinemas" was published in 1930 and featured many of those buildings he had encountered in Germany during the late 1920s, arguing that there the cinema had emerged as a separate design typology, not an adaptation of traditional theatre design.Shand was befriended by some of the leading figures in European modernist architecture, including Peter Behrens, Le Corbusier, head of the Bauhaus Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto and Swiss historian-critic Sigfried Giedion, keeping correspondence with each of them.He also developed close links with architects back in the UK, encouraging their participation in the modernist debate.