About Buildings + Cities

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 to live for a thousand years, it would still be an outrageous misuse of your time.

In spite of this, it's probably the most successful and influential depiction of an architect in fiction – the indominatable will of one (orange haired) man, Howard Roark, pitted against the entire resources of a corrupt and servile society, determined to try and make him care about other people's well-being.

Millions of people have read (and claimed to enjoy!) it.

We've had a moderately good time making fun of it.

Expect bad language and worse politics throughout.

Features music by Chris Zabriskie –

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The second half of Aldo Rossi's career. We discuss his role on the ushering in of the age of po-mo, a few selected monstrosties, and do listener correspondance (one email – that's how easy it is to get read out).

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Aldo Rossi’s strange and elegiac early buildings – from the tiny Monument to the Partisans, to the vast, unfinished cemetery at Modena – set him on a path toward the widespread fame

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A valiant attempt to understand Aldo Rossi's 1966 'L'Architettura della Citta', a book which both Luke & George have owned for years, but which neither have actually read until now (the pictures are nice, and the spine is an attractive orange colour).

Aldo Rossi's celebrity began with this book, and a certain mythic image of him – gloomy, nostalgic, perverse – is widely recognised within architectural history. But what does the book actually say? We explore monuments, urban artifacts, fragments of the city, the persistence of time and memory; and the promise of a new 'science' of urban analysis.

Music – 'Sleep Trance' and 'Ciro' both by Lee Rosevere from the albums 'Time-Lapse Volume 3: ASMR' and 'Farrago Zabriskie'...

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The collapse of the Imperial German state after WW1 seemed an opportunity for Taut and his fellow visionaries to become architect-leaders themselves, and shape the form of post-war society. But faced with widespread political violence, and all at sea in dealing with bureaucratic power, Taut and his fellow avant-gardists retreated together into the secret group correspondance – 'The Crystal Chain'.

The final episode in our three part exploration of the Glass Dream, including ecstatic visions, the architecture school as monastery, and Bruno Taut's pitch for a big-budget movie feature – 'The Lucky Slippers.'

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Paul Scheerbart is dead, and Europe has dissolved into conflict, but the Glass Dream continues. Luke & George explore Bruno Taut's manifestos, the dissolution of the dirty old cities, the transfiguration of the Alps into crystal, and the uniting of the people around the new religion – architecture.

Featuring Alpine Architecture (1917), The City Crown (1919), The Dissolution of the Cities & the Earth – a Good Dwelling (1920), and an original audio-only translation of Die Weltbaumeister: An Architecture Play (1920).

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We begin a three-part exploration of the Glass Paradise – an early 20th vision of a better world – starting off with Bruno Taut’s extraordinary Glashaus (1914), and the even stranger text which inspired it, Paul Scheerbart’s ‘Glassarchitektur’. Conceived as a model for a new and more beautiful way of living – the Glashaus is a glimpse at a future that never came to pass, filled with jewel-like cites and kaleidoscopic colour. Also, vacuum cleaners as insect exterminators, spinning crystal globes at every door, gold-leafed factories, glass fibre soft furnishings, and the ever-present threat of zeppelin attack.

Much of our material is drawn from the excellent ’Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart Reader’ by Josiah McElheny & Christine Burgin (eds) (University of Chicago, 2015) – highly recommended.

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Luke & George visit and discuss Switch House, the new extension to Tate Modern – and the architects of both it, and the original museum, Herzog & de Meuron. Plus – thoughts on the machine tool utopia also known as Switerland, design process, and the centrality of the spreadsheet in modern architecture.

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Luke & George read and discuss Pliny the Younger’s two luxurious (but still so modest!) villas, as described in his letters. The box hedges have been trimmed, and dinner is swimming around on the back of a wooden duck.

We discussed the essay ‘The Villa as Paradigm’ by James Ackerman, from Perspecta, Vol. 22, Paradigms of Architecture (1986) pp10-31

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Exploring the history and architecture of the inimitable Barbican Estate, the joys of brutalism, concrete, late modernist planning, concealed historical references, getting lost, etc. Includes a couple of short forays into the imagined lives of inhabitants and visitors...

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