About Buildings + Cities

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40 — '2001 – A Space Odyssey' 1/2 — Pink Upholstery in Cartesian Space Aug 02, 2018

Show notes

Stanley Kubrick’s 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. It’s 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 pioneers, animators, makers of special effects. As a result, 2001 seems to capture the imagination of a very particular era of technological optimism in the mid 1960s in America and worldwide.

We talk about the film, its amazing worlds and interiors, the Worlds Fairs in Seattle and New York which were a proving ground for many of those involved, as well as passing references to — Chris Marker’s La Jetee
— Charles and Ray Eames
— Xerox PARC
— Superstudio

Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. On this episode's bonus — we're talking Osaka Expo and Space habitats.

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39 — Catastrophe Curves — Early 90s Computer Architecture Jul 17, 2018

Show notes

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, generative design and CNC manufacture would all be theorised through a pre-existing set of ideas and agendas, drawing heavily on ‘French theory’ — Derrida, (and particularly) Deleuze — and a partially pre-digested blend of complexity mathematics. We find ourselves — among the blobs, deformed surfaces, landscapes and evolutionary forms — in a world of ‘affective singularities’, ‘the Fold’, pliancy, Catastrophe Theory…

We talk technology, key actors, and attempt a glossary of key concepts…

Under discussion —
— Frank Gehry’s fish sculpture
— Revit / BIM
— The F117 and B2 defense projects
— Peter Eisenman
— John Frazer
— MIT Computer Lab
— the Bilbao Guggenheim
— Cardiff opera house
— Yokohama ferry terminal
— NOX’s Freshwater and Saltwater pavilions
— The Affective
— Catastrophe Theory
— D’Arcy Thompson
— The Fold
— Singularity
— Max Reinhardt Haus
— Phallogocentrism & Helene Cixous

Recordings are from Peter Eisenman’s Lecture ‘Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media’ (1993) (AA archive)[https://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=737]

Music —
Lee Rosevere ‘Quizitive’
Lee Rosevere ‘Curiosity’
Lee Rosevere ‘Thoughtful’ all from (Free Music Archive)[freemusicarchive.org]

Clips of — Awesome 3 ‘Don’t Go’ (1992)
Liquid ‘Sweet Harmony’ (1992)
2 Bad Mice ‘Bombscare’ (1992)
M.A.N.I.C ‘I’m Coming Hardcore’ (Original Mix) (1991)

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38 — Le Corbusier — 9 — Villa Stein & Villa Savoye Jul 02, 2018

Show notes

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 Howard and his Orchestra from archive.org

Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show.

We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org

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37 — Le Corbusier — 8 — Five Points Towards a New Architecture Jul 01, 2018

Show notes

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 'Purist' villas of the later 1920s, culminating in the Villas Stein-La Monzie and Savoye, icons of what became the 'International Style.'

This episode started off as a single chat but there was too much so we've split it.

We discuss — — Villa Church (need photos of spaces)
— Pierre Chenal's film 'L'architecture d'aujourd'hui'
— Five points towards a new architecture
— Villa Meyer
— Villa Ocampo
— Ramps
— Villa Cook

Music — 'Modern Design' Johnny Messner And His Orchestra from archive.org

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36 — Bernard Rudofsky & 'Architecture Without Architects' Jun 13, 2018

Show notes

We’re launching a Patreon — you can subscribe to get additional content for every episode.

Bernard Rudofsky’s 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, ‘simply not respectable.’ In hindsight though, the exhibition actually fits very clearly within a broader ‘return’ to an image of architecture’s pre-industrial roots among the postwar avant gardes all over the world.

Architecture Without Architects definition of vernacular architecture is (typically) idiosyncratic. It contains more or less everything outside the canon of architectural history, and free from entanglement in industrial supply chains. There are 3000-year-old rock dwellings, bamboo houses under construction. The images in the catalogue are carefully paired — the hollowed-out tufa pinnacles of Göreme in Turkey above a village of Apulian trulli — each one an ingenious conical pile of stones around a pitched circular chamber — mountains above and below. But what matters is that these houses, towns, and structures, the anonymous creations of these isolated and anonymous designers are presented, in the clarifying light of black and white photography, as a window into a world outside the prison of modernity — organic, communally unified and bizarrely and daringly creative.

We’re talking about Architecture Without Architects within the context of Rudofsky’s polymathic, crankish, sarcastic and wholly inimitable vision and career.

Music — Eddie Dunstedter — ‘Dancing Tambourine (Pandereta)’ Dick McDonough and his Orchestra — ‘My Cabin of Dreams’ from archive.org Athenian Mandolin Quartet — ‘Cacliz March’ Chris Zabriskie — ‘The Dark Glow of Mountains’ From the Free Music Archive

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35 — 'Playtime' & 'Mon Oncle' — Modern life in Tativille May 07, 2018

Show notes

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!

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34 — Adolf Loos's 'Ornament and Crime' — Bathroom Kink Apr 10, 2018

Show notes

Adolf Loos’s 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 Loos’s 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 Nietzsche Hegel Darwin
Louis Sullivan
Mrs Beeton
English Free Building — Hermann Muthesius
Peter Behrens
Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Joseph Maria Olbrich
Henry van der Velde
Joseph Hoffmann
Josephine Baker’s 'Banana Dance'
The black granite bathroom at Villa Karma
(On the subject of reprehensible characters) Albert Speer

Contemporary ornamenters —

Caruso St John
Farshid Moussavi & her book on facades

Music —

Victor Sylvester and his Ballroom Orchestra ‘Vienna, City of my Dreams’
The Three Suns ‘Alt Wien’ (1949)
Philharmonic Orchestra Berlin ‘Von Wien durch die Welt'
Oldbrig's zither trio ‘Wien bliebt Wien’
All from archive.org

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33 — Le Corbusier — 7 — Early Mass Housing Mar 25, 2018

Show notes

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 taut’s horseshoe estate
- Pessac
- Henri Frugès
- The Weissenhofseidlung
- Margarete Schutte-Lihotsky
- Hannes Meyer’s essay ‘The New World’

Music & Interlude —

Harry Ross ‘Get Me an Apartment - Part 1’ from archive.org

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32 — Le Corbusier – 6 – Urbanism — Let's Demolish Paris (Again) Mar 05, 2018

Show notes

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 Corbusier’s 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’

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31 – Le Corbusier – 5 – Urbanism – Of Men & Asses Feb 13, 2018

Show notes

The first of a two part episode exploring Le Corbusier’s infamous and much-derided urban proposals, exhibited in the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion in 1925. In this part, we’re 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