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 waves / by François-Emmanuel Fodéré (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_25349_29390] 17590 Ars-en-Ré, France - Waves wheeling / by Vincent Duseigne (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_40307_46036] river Drava, Loka - dry grass, river flow, stones / by OR poiesis (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_25057_29057] larnichtsberg, swallows, crows and insects / by Frank Schulte (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_11544_13596] Venice, Italy - fish market / by Carlos Santos (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_16461_19081] 12230 Nant, France - Nant bells / by Vincent Duseigne (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_32229_37026] Ksamil, Ksamil island, District de Sarandë, Albanie - Waves and waves / by François-Emmanuel Fodéré (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_30140_34668] Bruges, Belgique - Brugge bells / by Vincent Duseigne (link)[https://archive.org/details/aporee_31798_36523]

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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

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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.

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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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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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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

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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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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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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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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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