About Buildings + Cities

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Bonus Unlocked — 44.5 — Italian Architecture Under Fascism Jan 04, 2019

Show notes

We're a bit late with the first episode of the new year, so I'm releasing our bonus conversation on Italian fascist architecture to tide you over until then. If you want more material like this, there's a link to the Patreon below.

We talk about the architecture of the Italian fascist period. Some of it is pretty good, unfortunately. Some of it is very weird indeed.

We cover a lot ground, including — Gino Coppedè, Giovanni Muzio, Antoni Sant’Elia, Mario Chiattone, Giuseppe Terragni , Fortunato Depero, Marcello Piacentini, Armando Brasini and more.

Music is Ottorino Respighi — Serenata per piccola orchestra

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45 — John Ruskin & the 19th century — Living Too Late Dec 16, 2018

Show notes

We finally get onto the last book of Stones of Venice, and its reverberations through the long second half of the 19th century. Young Ruskinians, EL Godwin, William Burges, William Morris and so on.

Music — Vivaldi concerto for two horns, strings and continuo in F major RV 539 pt I The Fall — Living too late

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44 — Giovanni Michelucci — Late Style Nov 27, 2018

Show notes

Giovanni Michelucci was born in 1891, and lived through nine-tenths of the 20th century, through all its terrifying and perplexing twists and dislocations. Throughout his career, his work manages to express an idiosyncratic and critical relationship to the spirit of the age. Over fifty at the end of the war, and sacked from his university job in the late 1950s for being too old, he would go on to produce his best and most daring work in the 60s and 70s.

We discuss Michelucci and Italy, fascism, post-war, and late style.

Apologies for the quality of Luke’s audio —

On the bonus, we take a longer look at the ideological tensions within Mussolini-era architecture, Giovanni Muzio, Giuseppe Terragni, and many others.

Music —
Rossini ‘Le Cenerentola’ Blackway — New Life

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Shoetopia! — by Stories from the Eastern West Nov 22, 2018

Show notes

A collaboration between About Buildings + Cities and Stories from the Eastern West (@sftewpodcast) — a cool podcast telling little-known stories from Central & Eastern Europe.

We discuss Tomas Bata's modernist shoe-factory Utopia in Zlin, Moravia, his project to create an orderly (and suitably hierarchical) paradise for loyal, productive, clean-living workers, and the spread of his model all over Europe — even as far as Essex!

Thanks a lot to Wojciech and Adam for coming to interview us.

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Conversation 2.2 — Adam Caruso — Second Thoughts Nov 12, 2018

Show notes

This is the audio from our ‘In Conversation’ with Adam Caruso, held at Nottingham Contemporary on October the 4th.

You can (and probably should, if you want to know what’s going on) download the slides from the presentation here — https://tinyurl.com/y7gab672

We didn’t get through the whole slideshow, but we’ll talk about what we missed on the second part.

Thanks a lot to Sam, Mercè et al at Nottingham Contemporary…!

And to you, listener, for listening.

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Conversation 2.1 — Adam Caruso — On the night Nov 12, 2018

Show notes

This is the audio from our ‘In Conversation’ with Adam Caruso, held at Nottingham Contemporary on October the 4th.

You can (and probably should, if you want to know what’s going on) download the slides from the presentation here — https://tinyurl.com/y7gab672

We didn’t get through the whole slideshow, but we’ll talk about what we missed on the second part.

Thanks a lot to Sam, Mercè et al at Nottingham Contemporary…!

And to you, listener, for listening.

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43 — John Ruskin's 'Stones of Venice' — Shafts! Oct 30, 2018

Show notes

We discuss the first two volumes of 'Stones of Venice' — the interminable first and dream-like second. Shafts, archivolts, more shafts, rotten and sun-whitened vegetation, encrustation, palaces (Gothic and Byzantine), melancholy ruins, the sound of distant seabirds, and lapis luzuli and gold aplenty.

Thanks for listening — we're gearing up for a productive autumn I hope.

Audio includes — the following site recordings from the Radio Aporee project on archive.org ‘Zadar, Sea Organ - Sea Organ’ by Doro-Koeln (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_8070_23343] ‘In a plane before the flight, 31700 Blagnac, France - Before the flight !’ by claire_sauvaget (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_34599_39770] ‘in the airplane - approaching tokio airport’ by Frank Schulte (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_7538_9283] ’cargo train terminal, Ljubljana - train arrives and stops’ by udo noll (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_15347_17883] ’West Wittering, UK - ships foghorn ... brent geese …’ by david m (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_34620_39791]

Plus music — Chris Zabriskie ‘Cylinder Nine’ from the album ‘Cylinders’ on the (Free Music Archive)[freemusicarchive.org] Waves of the sea — Royal Servian Tamburiza from (archive.org)[https://archive.org/details/78_waves-of-the-sea_royal-servian-tamburitza-orch-savski-volovi_gbia0018162b]

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42 — John Ruskin — Rock Lover Sep 30, 2018

Show notes

John Ruskin’s ‘Stones of Venice’ is one of the monuments of architectural theory in the 19th century. But it’s a hard book to get through, or to get inside. It’s incredibly long, and animated by a kind of moralistic passion that feels a little alien, at best quaint, or childish. Part of the reason is that Ruskin was a Victorian — indeed, one of the great formers of Victorian taste.

We were planning to talk about the first part of the book, but in the end we just spent the whole episode trying to get to grips with what that means. Why was he like this?

We’ll read the first two parts in the next episode. Thanks for being patient!

As usual we got a couple of things wrong — Little Nell is actually in ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’. Also the number of volumes of ‘modern painters’ isn’t five — there are 7, actually — though often sold as five volumes.

Music — Tita Ruffo ‘Visione Veneziana’

Audio includes — the following site recordings from the Radio Aporee project on archive.org Ksamil, Albanie - Midnight waves / by François-Emmanuel Fodéré (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_25349_29390] 17590 Ars-en-Ré, France - Waves wheeling / by Vincent Duseigne (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_40307_46036] river Drava, Loka - dry grass, river flow, stones / by OR poiesis (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_25057_29057] larnichtsberg, swallows, crows and insects / by Frank Schulte (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_11544_13596] Venice, Italy - fish market / by Carlos Santos (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_16461_19081] 12230 Nant, France - Nant bells / by Vincent Duseigne (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_32229_37026] Ksamil, Ksamil island, District de Sarandë, Albanie - Waves and waves / by François-Emmanuel Fodéré (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_30140_34668] Bruges, Belgique - Brugge bells / by Vincent Duseigne (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_31798_36523]

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Conversation 1 — Fred Scharmen — Zero-G Carnival Sep 16, 2018

Show notes

A short post-script to the Space Age episodes — we talked to Fred Scharmen about the mid 1970s NASA Space Settlements design study.

You can read his essay at Places Journal where you can also see a selection of Rick Guidice and Don Davis’s illustrations.

We’ll have a new full episode out very soon —

Luke's graphic novel is here

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