About Buildings + Cities

We conclude our discussion of the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition, going through a few of the less favoured entries, and discussing how it’s been seen and understood in the years since. Apologies for some clipping on the audio – we’ve 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 & Steward Wagner (158) – the big pyramid Emile Pohle & Adolf Ott (200) – the bridge Walter Fischer (221) Bruno & Max Taut (231, 229) Gerhardt Schröder (228) Fritz Sackermann (225) Anonymous (281)  Plus anonymous entries by –  Hans Scharoun Wassili Luckhardt Manfredo Tafuri’s 'The Disenchanted Mountain' — published in ‘The American City’ (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1979) Ludwig Hilberseimer’s unentered design Hugh Feriss’s Envelope Drawings Pier Vittorio Aureli’s ‘The Barest Form in which Architecture Can Exist’ The book of ‘Late Entries’ can be found here Diana Agrest ‘Architectural Anagrams’ in Oppositions 11 Music includes Collins and Harlan ‘The International Rag’ King Olivers Creole Jazz Band ‘Just Gone’ …both from the Free Music Archive and first heard on the excellent Antique Phonograph Music Program This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

In 1922, to coincide with its 75th birthday, the Chicago Tribune set out to endow the city with ‘the world’s 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 metropolis. Apologies for some slight issues with the sound. A book showing all the competition entries has been uploaded to Monoskop — if you download it you will be able to see what we’re talking about… https://monoskop.org/File:Tribune_Tower_Competition_vol_1_1980.pdf We discuss the entries by John Mead Howells & Raymond Hood (plate 1) Eliel Saarinen (13) Holabird & Roche (20) John Wynkoop (90) Ross & Sloan (84) Hornbostel & Wood (91) Daniel Burnham (44) Jarvis Hunt (118) William Drummond (134) Sjostrom & Eklund (190) Music includes — Arthur Fields ‘How Ya Gonna Keep Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?’ Jockers Dance Orchestra ‘The Royal Vagabond’ The Columbians ‘Just Like a Rainbow’ Victor Dance Orchestra ‘The Great One Step’ …all from the Free Music Archive and first heard on the excellent Antique Phonograph Music Program This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 Condé 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) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

We’re back in dystopia, soaking up the glamour, danger and decadence of the cyberpunk city. We’re reading William Gibson’s 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 we’re sifting through it alongside Case, Molly, Armitage, the AI Wintermute, and the rest of the misfit expedition – and considering Noir, technology, desire, fear of the suburbs, and the vast consensual hallucination you’re plugged into right now. Some topics – – Chiba – Kowloon walled city – White flight – Noir – Paris review – William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211 Music from Chris Zabriskie 'Cylinder Seven’ from the album ‘Cylinders’ And from Three Chain Links ‘Demons’, 'The Chase’, ‘Phantoms’, 'Magic Hour’ all from the album ‘Phantoms’ both from the Free Music Archive Outro music is from the Neuromancer computer game (1988) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 solution to the problem of uniting the needs and image of the individual with those of the collective. And how did he do it? Well, for a start, the rooms are mostly triangular… We discussed – slab blocks and Le Corbusier's Unite d’habitation in Marseilles 'Jean Renaudie: A Right to Difference' by Irénée Scalbert CIAM (Congress Internationaux d'Architecture) George Lucas's 'THX 1138' Team X and the ‘Mat Building' Renaudie's theory of 'structuralism' The Projects The New Town of La Vaudreuil Ivry-sur-Seine The Jean Hachette Building, Flats 4, 16 and 9 Town Plan at Vitrolles Housing at Givors Music by – Chris Zabriskie – The House Glows With Almost No Help from The Dark Glow of Mountains from the Free Music Archive Robert Cogoi - Pas une place pour me garer (1966) We've posted some pictures on our twitter and instagram feeds – addresses for these at aboutbuildingsandcities.org This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 SMLXL and Delirious New York – Exodus: The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture – Frederic Jameson's review of Junkspace in NLR 21 (2003) – Jameson's Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) – Walter Benajmin's Passagenwerk or Arcades Project Music – 'Ruca' and 'Agnes' from the album 'Teal' by Rod Hamilton and 'Curiosity', 'Quisitive' and 'Biking in the Park' from the album 'Music for Podcasts' by Lee Rosevere; both from the Free Music Archive Blue Gas 'Shadows From Nowhere' (1984) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Michelangelo’s 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 Peter’s 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. It’s been about four hours of solid Michelangelo now, and it’s time to send him (and the other cast of characters) into the tender arms of our Lord & Saviour. It'll be back to late Capitalism next time. Please let us know what you think – tweet us @about_buildings or email aboutbuildingsandcities@gmail.com – you can also find links to subscribe to the podcast, and all our social media profiles at our website – aboutbuildingsandcities.org Music – Gervaise 'Bransles de Bourgogne' from Gothic and Renaissance Dances at https://archive.org/details/GOTHICANDRENAISSANCEDANCES Vocal Ansambl Gordela ‘Zinzkaro’ Lee Rosevere ‘Dream Colours’ from the album Time-Lapse Volume 4 Sleep Music at the Free Music Archive at freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere Ago ‘Trying Over’ (1982) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Music – Tielman Susato (c. 1490-c. 1560)- Pavane - ''The Battle'' from Gothic and Renaissance Dances at https://archive.org/details/GOTHICANDRENAISSANCEDANCES Koto ‘Chinese Revenge’ (1982) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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. It’s 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 David’s perfect body? We regret it Not At All. Some slightly excessive chat about a particular part of David's body but otherwise extremely wholesome. Music – GF Handel’s ‘Unto us a son is born’ ‘Kyrie Chant’ from Cantores in Ecclesia on archive.org https://archive.org/details/CantoresInEcclesia/05Track5.wma Outro: Kano ‘I Need Love’ (Full Time / Zig Zag, 1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AypT-SaUJE This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

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 'Cylinder 3' from the album 'Cylinders'. and by MMFFF –  'Meeting the Demon' from the album 'The Dance of the Sky' All at the Free Music Archive This podcast is powered by Pinecast.