An informative primer on architectural engineering, looking at how tension in an inverted model can be used to model compression in a completed structure and how it generates new, elegant forms. Admittedly this isn't about unbuilt architecture but it follows on from my posts on Wren's St Paul's. He doesn't mention that St Paul's actually has circumferential iron chains at the base of the masonry dome acting in tension to resist the outward forces produced by the weight above, along with all the cleverly concealed buttressing.

We really see the technique bloom with Gaudi, though I was annoyed that some on the illustrations of the Sagrada Familia models are hideous AI creations.

Name drop: New Zealand architect Mark Burry is mentioned. He's actually been at RMIT in Melbourne for decades now but back in the day he taught me here in NZ. He would spend several months each year in Barcelona directing construction. His lectures on how they modelled the complex hyperboloid forms and used those models for computer aided manufacturing of cut stone were fascinating.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRv_syz2DAc
 
It's not appropriate to comment on this news article (don't mention the war), but it reminded me of this collage by the Austrian architect, Hans Hollein, which was a kind of spoof of Le Corbusier's argument that the ocean liner was the exemplar for mass housing.


holleinship.jpg
 
Lebbeus Woods was a pure paper architect. In this video, Dami Lee offers a good explanation of the role of paper architecture and its presence in popular culture with a discussion of the manga BLAME! and Woods' work.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ynSG5GLoQ0


Her channel is here, and the videos are enjoyable and accessible:


Interestingly, the older ones are about making a living as a young architect and the more recent ones look at fictional and theoretical architecture.
I've always enjoyed Lebbeus Woods' work and I remember when I saw the movie Twelve Monkeys and thinking he worked on it, only to find out they simply ripped off his image (below) without his permission. He won the lawsuit.

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Pulp Fiction;)
 

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Post-2
 

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Post-3
 

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Alex Raymond
 

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The cartoonists who made science fiction illustrations during the golden age created fantastic cities with the buildings surrounded by spiral ramps with an inclination impossible to use on foot or in some kind of car.
 

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But tonight, going through my Flash Gordon collection, I found the origin of the myth: a rocket-powered train... Can you imagine the centrifugal force?:oops:
 

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Learning from nature

Odd
 
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A late 1940s/early 1950s proposal to completely reshape Chicago.

[SNIP]​
Thank the gods we avoided that, and only a small part was inflicted on Detroit.

Some of the broad claims about Chicago in the early part of the video made me raise an eyebrow though, to the extent of questioning the accuracy of the whole.


Frank Lloyd Wright’s mile high skyscraper.

[SNIP]​
Not a fan of its design towards the peak where it's narrowing but then you get the two wings, or that most illustrations have it sited over the fountain in the middle of Grant Park.
 
Mies' 'Brick House.' The long walls would have been somewhat like planted avenues in a baroque garden. The red lines indicate lines of sight linking interior spaces and external vistas. The coloured rectangles represent functional spaces that overlap though open planning instead of being separated by doors.
 

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Mies' 'Brick House.' The long walls would have been somewhat like planted avenues in a baroque garden. The red lines indicate lines of sight linking interior spaces and external vistas. The coloured rectangles represent functional spaces that overlap though open planning instead of being separated by doors.
You were saying Brick House? Behold:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBx6mAWYPU
 
has anyone got anything on the the unbuilt germania?
Albert Speer wasn't Hitler's only architect but the master plan for Germania and most of the significant buildings (and a lot of the details, such as streetlamps) were his responsibility.

Leon Krier is the living champion of Speer's architecture and was advisor to now-King Charles III, when he was, um, Prince Charles. The town of Poundbury, in the Duchy of Cornwall (owned by the Prince of Wales, whoever they may be - now it's William) was master planned by him.

Krier authored this book on Speer's architecture - and before you click 'Buy,' check the price! Then have a cup of tea and a lie down. Architecture school libraries are the ones likely to have copies (mine did). You may be able to get it via Interloan through a local library.


As Antonio said, there's plenty of information on the Internet. Try using 'Albert Speer' as a search term, but most of what you get will be memoirs and biographies (he was a complicated and obviously controversial figure), so add 'Germania' or 'architecture'.

For pretty good fictional depictions of Germania, Robert Harris' counterfactual novel, Fatherland, is good (there was a film adaptation too, starring Rutger Hauer) and the TV series The Man in the High Castle also did it well in a later season.
 
Some documentaries by Jonathan Meades on totalitarian architecture.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQJZD9USbM8&list=PLg2FiAx8csPvXOD0IkI2OwZD149v7s2Q8&index=44&t=7s

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPBc5h5AcyU&list=PLg2FiAx8csPvXOD0IkI2OwZD149v7s2Q8&index=20&t=3s

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0y_zmtquh8&list=PLg2FiAx8csPvXOD0IkI2OwZD149v7s2Q8&index=4&t=63s

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmvPyI6kCAc&list=PLg2FiAx8csPvXOD0IkI2OwZD149v7s2Q8&index=2&t=13s

Notable points, common to all, are kitsch, vast scale, anti-cosmopolitanism. Meades' discussion of Soviet 'style' is quite illuminating - as 'Stalinism' meant whatever Stalin said on a given day, to save their hides, architects threw everything at their buildings in the hope that at least some would be in favour when they were completed. Hence the 'wedding cake' appearance of many Soviet buildings.

Another crucial point of Soviet architecture is that because many of the competition projects for the main state buildings were so grandiose, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were never meant to be built. And you'd be right. Because the utopia of communism was always in the future, everyone's suffering now could be construed as striving towards that future, so if anything was completed, then the future had arrived, so why was everyone still suffering? Stalin was educated as a priest...

One-upmanship would also have been part of it - competition among officials to outdo each other in sycophancy to the leader is universal. Speer, IIRC, described in his memoirs something like this happening with weapons specifications: every official in turn would say, 'it has to be bigger!' to gain Hitler's favour until they became quite ridiculous (the Ratte is an example). Then in his role as Minister of Armaments, Speer would quietly cancel each project when Hitler's attention shifted elsewhere.
 
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London was no exception, although progress on Patrick Abercrombie’s 1944 plan was slow in starting. Like Liverpool, it was based on the thesis that the existing city was obsolete. Traffic volume forecasts demanded five rings of motorways and 10 radials, destroying more houses than had been lost in the blitz. Apart from selected “villages” and famous buildings, most of the centre would be cleared. Whitehall was to be demolished from Downing Street to Westminster Abbey. A tunnel would run from Parliament Square to Aldwych. Also set to be demolished were Carlton House Terrace, Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury. Shopping hubs would be replaced with large traffic gyratories. A glimmer of humanity lay in the proposal for a green belt and “green wedges”.
 
Would have made a gaudy rocket (run for cover)
Hello Archibald, as a very dear close to my heart frenemy of mine, being an extremely blunt German I'd really urgently recommend you to drop the lame pun/run for cover strategy and instead invite you to join the have it out in the open drag out discussion in your face brawl instead :).
 
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