The second part of our discussion of '2001 A Space Odyssey'. At a certain point quite early on we started referring to the Monolith as 'the Obelisk' and neither of us noticed. Oh well. Thanks for listening and let us know your thoughts. Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook Were on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast ....
Stanley Kubricks 1968 film 2001 a space odyssey is the iconic depiction of space travel, channeling the optimism and excitement of radical advances in space exploration and technology. Its an uncompromising, utterly singular film, whose vision of a possible future is carried through comprehensively. Its scope and ambition are still basically unequalled. Kubrick is famous for the obsessiveness of his research in this case bringing in expertise from leading scientists, cutting edge digital pioneer...
The 1990s were when computers really entered the mainstream of architecture. The rise of personal computing, with wider access to inexpensive machines, the world wide web, advances in software and hardware, all took place against the background of global political transformation that at the time was theorised as the End of History, the breakup of the Soviet Union, democratisation, and the apparent rise of a single, global, liberal capitalist world order. But the exploration of CAD, rendering, ge...
We now have a Patreon you can subscribe to get additional content for every episode. Projects like the Villa Stein and Villa Savoye are icons of modernist architecture among the most famous of all modern buildings images and symbols of what modern architecture is. Below all the machine age crispness, there's also a certain amount of weird bourgeois sex stuff as well. This is the second part of the conversation we began in episode 37 it's best to listen to that one first. Music 'Easy Living' Bob ...
We now have a Patreon you can subscribe to get additional content for every episode. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanerret's 'Five Points' (1926) were an attempt to condense the fundamental structural and design principles underlying their new architecture. Drawing on the discoveries made during design and construction of their early villa projects, the points are in a sense the culmination and fulfillment of the original 'Maison Domino' idea of 1914. The points set the template for the most famous ...
Were launching a Patreon you can subscribe to get additional content for every episode. Bernard Rudofskys exhibition Architecture Without Architects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964 and the fantastically successful book which followed it, have become an iconic polemic in support of the architectural vernacular. Ever-keen to play up his own iconoclastic distance from mainstream of architectural thought, Rudofsky would later claim that the idea was, at the time he proposed it, simpl...
Jacques Tati's 'Mon Oncle' (1957) and 'Playtime' (1967) playfully dramatise the clash between old and new in the fast-changing cities of post-war France. Nostalgia, alienation, the absurdity of modern life and work, play, rhythm, rebellion and the curious affordances of materials and everyday items... serious fun, with silly noises. Hope you're all enjoying the summer weather and speak soon! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook Were on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast...
Adolf Looss essay Ornament and Crime (1910) is considered the classic modernist polemic against the frills and folderols of the established arts of the day. We're in the city of Freud and the neurotic subtext is very close to the surface. We discuss a little of Looss career as an architectural iconoclast, jersey fanatic, and pervert :-/ Then we go on to a more freeform discussion of ornament in the contemporary, during which we massively contradict ourselves several times. We discussed Freud Nie...
In this episode we explore in two early schemes for mass housing, at Pessac and in Stuttgart. Among many other things, we talked about Bourneville New Lanark -Arnold circus -Bruno tauts horseshoe estate -Pessac -Henri Frugs -The Weissenhofseidlung -Margarete Schutte-Lihotsky -Hannes Meyers essay The New World Music & Interlude Harry Ross Get Me an Apartment - Part 1 from archive.org Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook Were on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is p...
The concluding part of our discussion of Urbanism (1925) we look at the proposals for a Contemporary City for Three Million (1923), and the notorious Plan Voisin (1925). For Le Corbusiers detractors, these are really the crimes of the century. We did our best to think of something nice to say about them. Music Dave Gabriel Midst of their morning chimes Oneohtrix Point Never Nobody Here Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook Were on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is po...
The first of a two part episode exploring Le Corbusiers infamous and much-derided urban proposals, exhibited in the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion in 1925. In this part, were conducting a close reading of Urbanism (sometimes known as The City of Tomorrow and its Planning). We mostly stayed on topic but there are allusions to Camillo Sitte Augustus Welby Pugins Comparisons Music Glass Boy WELP Lovira All Things Considered Loyalty Freak Music Once More With You and Waiting TTTT Three Chain Links Heavy Tr...
Franz Kafkas first, and least-finished, novel is an imaginary journey around the USA (a country he never visited). Written in 1912, its a fantasy of America at a time when seemed, to Europeans at least, to be the most futuristic (and mysterious) place on Earth. Kafkas fascination with machinery, technology and engineering is on display in Amerika, in which the young Karl Rossmann finds himself cut adrift in a land of glass elevators, miles-long traffic jams, endless hotels, filled with delirious...
For our Christmas episode, we're discussing the early Purist villas! Knowing the right people, and a relentless programme of self-publicity yielded a steady stream of clients for Le Corbusier in the early 1920s, and allowed him to explore an architectural complement to Purism, most notably in a pair of houses for art-loving batchelors the Ozenfant Studio and Villa La Roche. We found time to discuss (probably with unwarranted levity, sorry) the death of Le Corbusiers father George, and his troubl...
A new epoch has begun! Le Corbusiers discovery is that the style of future architecture is to be found new inventions of the machine age planes, cars, ocean liners. But Towards a New Architecture is, at its heart, an argument for a fusion of timeless values and contemporary technology provocatively encapsulated in its juxtaposition of a sports car and the Parthenon. We went through the book in order, focussing on the chapters: The Engineers Aesthetic Three Reminders to Architects -Regulating Lin...
Were in Paris, 1917, where Charles-Edouard Jeanneret is making friends, thinking about sex (and writing enormous letters about it), designing the occasional mechanised abattoir / concrete garden terrace, going bankrupt, trying to sell concrete blocks to postwar society, inventing a new style of painting, launching a highly costly art magazine, and (finally!) acquiring the name under which he would become famous Le Corbusier! One of us had a very creaky chair in this episode. Also we were drinkin...
Were taking on the origin story of (for better or worse) the most important architect of the 20th century Charles-Edouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier. His origins petit bourgeois, Swiss, provincial can make his eventual rise to world-enveloping notoriety and era-defining influence seem all the more unlikely. Were digging into his childhood, family, education and travels as a young man before taking on a couple of early projects. We discuss La Chaux de Fonds Charles LEplattanier, his teacher Jugen...
First announced in 1931, the project for the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow evolved into a staggeringly vast and bizarre proposal which stalled during WWII when only the foundations had been completed. A 400m tall neoclassical fantasy topped with a vast statue of Lenin; the Palace would probably, if completed, have still been the tallest building in the world in the year 2000. Forming a counterpart of sorts to our discussion of the Chicago Tribune the Palace is another worldwide competition of ...
Dont listen if you havent seen the movie yet! We discuss Denis Villeneuves Blade Runner 2049. Its pretty formless and we forgot the names of most of the characters, actors, significant plot entities. Youll get who were talking about it youve seen it. We refer in passing to Moebius & Jodorowsky The Incal Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island Outro Dharma Plastic Doll (1982) Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook Were on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org...
As a postscript to our discussion of Cyberpunk in episodes 20-21, and vaguely looking ahead to the release of the upcoming sequel, we talked about Ridley Scotts 1982 film Blade Runner. We were really winging it on the research for this one and as a result it marks a high point for getting key facts completely wrong, including the name of a key character (see if you can guess which one!), various attributions of ethnicity, dates, names, places, the ending of the book on which its based, and a bun...
We conclude our discussion of the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition, going through a few of the less favoured entries, and discussing how its been seen and understood in the years since. Apologies for some clipping on the audio weve tried to edit most of it out but some is still left. As before, you can see all the entries in this book We discuss the entries of Walter Gropius (197) Adolf Loos (196) Paul Gerhardt (159 & 160) Saverio Dioguardi (248) Vittorio Pino (252) Alfred Fellheimer & S...
In 1922, to coincide with its 75th birthday, the Chicago Tribune set out to endow the city with the worlds most beautiful office building. The results of the design competition have been seen in retrospect less as the ultimate in civic expression than as an expression of aesthetic and theoretical crisis within architecture. Hugely varied, bizarre, ingenious and occasionally grotesque, the entries provide a window into a discipline in transformation, as well as into the politics of a new American...
Leaving the waste-strewn Earth behind, we follow the team on their run all the way to its conclusion in orbit. On the way, we cast our eyes over the weed-smelling shanty-hulk of Zion, the sunlit Cond Naste-styled resort-perfection of Freeside, and the gloomy, Victorian-styled warren of the Villa Straylight. Fewer mattresses, more carpets. Music Heliograph CGI Snake Wonder Cycle and Oxygen Garden from the album Divider by Chris Zabriskie from the Free Music Archive Outro Hypnosis Pulstar(1984) Th...
Were back in dystopia, soaking up the glamour, danger and decadence of the cyberpunk city. Were reading William Gibsons seminal science fiction novel Neuromancer (1984), which combines the pace of a thriller with a vivid and almost archaeological view of the technological and material fabric of the near future city glue, chipboard, broken TVs, epoxy resin, dirty water, and a strange profusion of foam mattresses. Gibson has spoken about the city as a compost heap and were sifting through it along...
During the 1960s and 70s, the French architect Jean Renaudie designed and built a series of projects in which he attempted to upend the staid and formulaic model of postwar slab-block mass housing. Architecture, for Renaudie, had to acknowledge and enshrine human being's 'Right to Difference'. But this didn't mean discarding the achievements or social ideology of modernism rather, as part of a wider European project of dissent, critique and reformation, he formulated his own daring formal soluti...
A fuzzy empire of blur, a low grade purgatory, a perpetual Jacuzzi with millions of your best friends We're discussing Junkspace (2001), Rem Koolhaas's notoriously elliptical wander through the dystopian and formless morass of early 21st retail architecture that seems gradually to be devouring the city, and the world. In keeping with the essay, the episode is radically unstructured, only barely makes sense, and is held together largely by hyperbole. We discussed Rem Koolhaas and OMA The books SM...
Michelangelos incredibly long career meant that he was old for a very long time, and the idea of death, and of what comes afterwards, hang over many of the projects he worked on late in life. We discuss his pivotal role in the design of St Peters in Rome, the sombre and terrible Last Judgement in the Sistene Chapel, and a series of fragmentary late drawings, designs and sculptures which seem to be pointing to the future and the past at the same time. Its been about four hours of solid Michelange...
We continue our discussion of the architecture of Michelangelo Buonarotti with an exploration of two of his most important projects the Laurentine Library, in which his sculptural understanding of form and mass is most powerful and disconcerting and the Piazza del Campidoglio, an urban ensemble which would become a definitive reference for the idea of civic space. In between George extemporises for about 20 minutes on late medieval Italian history despite having done no research, and we dip into...
The first of a three-parter in which we try to understand the work, and myth, of Michelangelo Buonarroti, referred to by followers as the Divine, and genuinely described by his biographer as a messenger sent from God to stop people from doing bad art. Its a long recording and we may have spent a bit too long talking about the New Sacristy in Florence. But the 15 minute, rhapsodic description of Davids perfect body? We regret it Not At All. Some slightly excessive chat about a particular part of ...
The second part of your discussion of Ayn Rand's extremely long fantasy about the 'ideal man' and the buildings he makes. The book gets weirder and more political as it goes on, and we meet Rand's Mary-Sue character, the long-suffering helmet-haired ice princess Dominique Francon. All these things make the book worse. Features music by Chris Zabriskie 'Heliograph' from the album 'Divider', 'We always thought the future would be kind of fun' from the album 'The Dark Glow of Mountains' and 'Cylind...
This isn't one of those book reviews where you're expected to read the book first we did it so you don't have to. Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' is a 750 page long novel which at times is physically painful to read. It's a supposedly 'philosophical' book in which none of the motivations and actions of the characters make any sense. People have long conversations which are nearly impossible to follow. Rand maunders on about apparently random bits of mise-en-scene for pages. Even if you were going ...
