About Buildings + Cities

For the first AB+C of 2019 we’re tackling one of the seminal texts of the 1960s, and an iconic moment in the stylistic overthrow of the postwar modernist order — Robert Venturi’s ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture’ (1966). It’s a slim, lavishly illustrated volume, which seems lucid and straightforward, but upon closer reading turns out to be much more elusive. What are complexity and contradiction, where are they found, and what are architects supposed to do with them? On the bonus we’ll be discussing the early projects of Venturi and Rauch. This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus — a streaming learning service with video lectures by experts in all sorts of fields. Go to thegreatcoursesplus.com/BUILDINGS to get a month of free access to thousands of courses. Edited by Matthew Lloyd Roberts. Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram /

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 Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildings

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. Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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. Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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. Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Please rate and review the show on your podcast store to help other people find us! Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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/aporee807023343] ‘In a plane before the flight, 31700 Blagnac, France - Before the flight !’ by clairesauvaget (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee3459939770] ‘in the airplane - approaching tokio airport’ by Frank Schulte (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee75389283] ’cargo train terminal, Ljubljana - train arrives and stops’ by udo noll (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee1534717883] ’West Wittering, UK - ships foghorn ... brent geese …’ by david m (link

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 wav

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 Support the show on Patreon to receive bonus content for every show. Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org

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 ever

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 —  —

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. Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 Support

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 con

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 We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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,

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 Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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’ Follow us on twitter // instagram // facebook We’re on the web at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.