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)

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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 [email protected] – 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)

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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)

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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

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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

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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 – 'Heliograph' from the album 'Divider', 'The Dark Glow of the Mountains', 'I need to start writing things down' and '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'. All at the Free Music Archive

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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).

Music includes: ‘Β15’ and 'B16' from the album ‘ΝΕΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΚΟΚΚΑΛΑ’ by Kοκκαλα, from the Free Music Archive at freemusicarchive.org

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 and influence he would achieve during the 1980s. In many ways, his architectural vision seems to arrive already fully formed – the strange geometry, the stripped down, abstracted versions of familiar types. We explore these varied works, and how his ideas he was formulating about urban memory and history became works of architecture.

Music: Chris Zabriskie 'Cylinder 4' and 'Cylinder 5' from the album 'Cylinders' at the Free Music Archive at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/2014010103336111/

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'... at the Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/

Look at pictures on our Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104384327113725304822

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.'

Music by – Chris Zabriskie 'Cylinder 2', 'Cylinder 4', 'Cylinder 5', 'Cylinder 6' and 'Cylinder 7' from the album 'Cylinders' at the Free Music Archive at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/2014010103336111/ ‘Tarnished Copper’ from the album ‘Marimba, Vibraphone, Chimes & Bells’ by Podington Bear at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Marimba_Vibraphone_Chimes__Bells

Look at pictures on our Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104384327113725304822