Failed Architecture

For Breezeblock #20, FA NYC editor Michael Nicholas spoke to Andi Schmied, whose book Private Views documents her experiences being shown around high-rise luxury apartments in New York disguised as a Hungarian billionaire. Through transcripts of conversations with brokers, photos of views not intended to be seen by the public, and a number of essays from contributors on the subject, the book illuminates how inequality is built into New York City’s real estate market.

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Heroin is an urban thing. That's the image we've been fed by movies, music, literature, news, public service announcements, and school curricula ever since it became a subject of moral panic over a century ago. The problem is, heroin was only ever a drug of the city because this image has focused almost entirely on the (historically very urban) point of consumption. What has been left out is a whole geography of production and distribution that has tended to encompass large and often very rural parts of East, South-East and Southwest Asia where the opium poppy could be cultivated. Now, the image continues to distract us from the fact that heroin users can no longer support themselves in urban centres, our modern globalised world having long since forced all but the most economically productive subjects from the centre of cities, and out to the periphery, while at the same time still managing to support supply chains that can bring heroin, and all manner of other opioids, to even the most far-flung places.

By hiding this more extensive geography and focusing instead on the individual and the urban, this representation of heroin has prevented a proper confrontation with the often very intentional harm caused to vast swathes of humanity who have been exposed to the drug over the past century. For this episode, therefore, we’re going to zoom out, and try to connect the dots between some of the disparate spaces and places that have been touched by heroin, exploring some of the main historical shifts in where heroin is produced, who uses it, how it gets to the places where it’s used, and why it ends up in these places.

This episode was directed by Charlie Clemoes//The Failed Architecture Team

References:

"This is Your Brain on Drugs"

"Heroin Screws You Up"

Vangelis, "Prologue" Blade Runner soundtrack

Trainspotting (1996) opening scene

Tam Stewart, The Heroin Users, Pandora Press, 1996

Vanda Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs, Brookings Institution Press, 2010

Trainspotting (1996) final scene

Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, Bloomsbury, 2015

The Connection (1961) whole film

Eric C. Schneider, Smack: Heroin and the American City, Penn Press, 2013

Penn Press Podcast, S01E04 "Eric C. Schneider Smack: Heroin and the American City"

"Heroin" BBC Radio 4 documentary

Velvet Underground, "Heroin" from "Velvet Underground and Nico" LP

Velvet Underground, "Sunday Morning" from "Velvet Underground and Nico" LP

Velvet Underground, "I'm Waiting for the Man" from "Velvet Underground and Nico" LP

Burroughs: The Movie (1983) whole film

The Drug Years (2006) excerpt on heroin and the Vietnam War

Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Lawrence Hill Books, 2003

Henrik Krüger & Jerry Meldon, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism, Trine Day, 2015

"Wisdom Teeth Bringing Opioid Addiction Danger?" CBS New York, 2019

For Breezeblock #18, FA organiser René Boer talks to the founders of Radio Alhara, architects Elias and Yousef Anastas, on the one year anniversary of their radio project. It was launched in Bethlehem at the start of the global lockdown and by now has become a sonic public space reaching well beyond the confines of Palestine.

In this follow-up of Breezeblock #15, FA editors Michael Nicholas, Kevin Rogan, and Joshua McWhirter dive into the weird world of traditional architecture revivalism, or ‘trad arch’ for short. Where the first part of this discussion focused on a critique of the intellectual undercurrents of the trad arch movement, here, the editors explore how the trad impulse folds back onto the real world, from historic preservation projects, to former president Donald Trump’s infamous, and recently revoked, executive order mandating a ‘classical’ style for government buildings in the United States.

A few weeks ago, Yale Architecture professor Keller Easterling penned an article titled ‘On Political Temperament’, which became the subject of heated conversation about the role of architecture theory in discussions of politics. In response, Marianela D’Aprile wrote ‘Not Everything is Architecture’ for Common Edge. For Breezeblock #16, FA editor Michael Nicholas spoke to Marianela and fellow editor Kevin Rogan about Easterling’s new book Medium Design, the role of architects as workers in the class struggle, and the politics of the architecture profession at large.

A few weeks ago, Yale Architecture professor Keller Easterling penned an article titled ‘On Political Temperament’, which became the subject of heated conversation about the role of architecture theory in discussions of politics. In response, Marianela D’Aprile wrote ‘Not Everything is Architecture’ for Common Edge. For Breezeblock #16, FA editor Michael Nicholas spoke to Marianela and fellow editor Kevin Rogan about Easterling’s new book Medium Design, the role of architects as workers in the class struggle, and the politics of the architecture profession at large.