Why Europe Has So Few Skyscrapers

in Architecture, History | December 28th, 2021

Guy de Mau­pas­sant ate lunch at the restau­rant in the base of the Eif­fel Tow­er near­ly every day, that being the only place in Paris where he would­n’t have to look at the Eif­fel Tow­er. 130 years lat­er, the obser­va­tion deck of the Tour Mont­par­nasse is known to offer the most beau­ti­ful vista on the French cap­i­tal — thanks pre­cise­ly to the invis­i­bil­i­ty of the Tour Mont­par­nasse. Spare a thought, if you will, for that high­ly con­spic­u­ous build­ing, quite pos­si­bly the loneli­est in Europe. Since its com­ple­tion in 1973, it has stood as the sole sky­scraper in Paris prop­er, its famous unsight­li­ness hav­ing inspired a ban on the con­struc­tion of build­ings over sev­en sto­ries high in the city cen­ter.

Paris isn’t alone in its lack of sky­scrap­ers, a con­di­tion trav­el­ers from Asia and Amer­i­ca notice in cities all over the Con­ti­nent. In the video above, con­struc­tion-themed Youtube chan­nel The B1M explores the rea­sons for this rel­a­tive pauci­ty of tall tow­ers in the cap­i­tals of Europe. “When sky­scrap­ers first rose to promi­nence in the 19th cen­tu­ry, first in Chica­go and lat­er in New York, many Euro­pean cities were already firm­ly estab­lished with grand his­toric build­ings and pub­lic spaces that left lit­tle room for large new struc­tures,” says its nar­ra­tor. At that time, a grow­ing sense of cul­tur­al com­pe­ti­tion between Amer­i­ca and Europe also meant that “each con­ti­nent became wary of adopt­ing the oth­er’s con­cepts.”

Then came the Sec­ond World War, in the wake of whose dev­as­ta­tion of Europe “an over­whelm­ing desire to restore what had been destroyed took hold.” Few Con­ti­nen­tal cities held off the kind of demand for floor space that drove sky­scraper con­struc­tion in Amer­i­ca. In the east, the Sovi­ets built most­ly “mid-rise, repet­i­tive struc­tures that sought to rehouse much of the pop­u­la­tion”; in the west, the restric­tive phe­nom­e­non of “Brus­seliza­tion” took hold in response to a wave of bulky post­war-mod­ernist struc­tures “that had lit­tle regard for archi­tec­tur­al or cul­tur­al val­ue.” This led to “a gen­er­al dis­like for mod­ern build­ings across Europe, with many see­ing them as bland or soul­less.”

No one who’s spent time in Amer­i­can city cen­ters built up pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the 1960s and 70s can dis­miss those Euro­pean detrac­tors’ fears. But it would be a lie to claim that Euro­pean cities have avoid­ed sky­scrap­ers entire­ly: even Paris has sim­ply pushed them a few miles away, into unro­man­tic busi­ness dis­tricts like La Défense. Ever-taller build­ings have sym­bol­ized moder­ni­ty for well over a cen­tu­ry now, and no civ­i­liza­tion can afford to keep moder­ni­ty at too great a dis­tance. Tak­ing note of how atti­tudes toward sky­scrap­ers have been “soft­en­ing across the Con­ti­nent” in the 21st cen­tu­ry, this B1M video spec­u­lates on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a “sky­scraper boom” in Europe. But even if that should hap­pen, the Tour Mont­par­nasse will sure­ly con­tin­ue stand­ing alone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the Building of the Empire State Building in Color: The Creation of the Iconic 1930s Skyscraper From Start to Finish

in Architecture, Film, History | December 23rd, 2021

Ambi­tion is not unknown in the New York City of the 2020s, but the New York City of the 1920s seems to have con­sist­ed of noth­ing but. Back then, where else would any­one dare to pro­pose the tallest build­ing in the world — much less end up with the job twelve days ahead of sched­ule and $9 mil­lion under bud­get? The con­struc­tion of the Empire State Build­ing began in Jan­u­ary of 1930, just three months after the Wall Street Crash that began the Great Depres­sion. Though eco­nom­ic con­di­tions kept the project from attain­ing prof­itabil­i­ty until the 1950s (and stuck it with the nick­name “Emp­ty State Build­ing”), it nev­er­the­less stood in sym­bol­ic defi­ance of those hard times — and, ulti­mate­ly, came to stand for New York and indeed the Unit­ed Sates of Amer­i­ca itself.

You can see footage of the Empire State Build­ing’s con­struc­tion in the com­pi­la­tion above, which gath­ers clips from con­tem­po­rary news­reels and oth­er sources and presents them in “restored, enhanced and col­orized” form.

These images show­case the his­to­ry-mak­ing sky­scrap­er’s tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions as well as its mar­shal­ing of labor at an immense scale: at the height of con­struc­tion, more than 3,500 work­ers were involved. That most of them were recent immi­grants from coun­tries like Ire­land and Italy reflects the pop­u­lar image of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca as a “land of oppor­tu­ni­ty”; the sheer scale of the sky­scraper they built reflects the pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­in­able works made pos­si­ble by Amer­i­ca’s resources.

The Empire State Build­ing set records, and over the 90 years since its open­ing has remained a dif­fi­cult achieve­ment to sur­pass. Only in 1970 did it lose its title of the tallest build­ing in New York City, to Minoru Yamasak­i’s World Trade Cen­ter — and then regained it in 2001 after the lat­ter’s col­lapse. Today, one can eas­i­ly point to much taller and more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced sky­scrap­ers all around the world, but how many of them are as beloved or rich with asso­ci­a­tions? Back in 1931, archi­tec­ture crit­ic Dou­glas Haskell described the Empire State Build­ing as “caught between met­al and stone, between the idea of ‘mon­u­men­tal mass’ and that of airy vol­ume, between hand­i­craft and machine design, and in the swing from what was essen­tial­ly hand­i­craft to what will be essen­tial­ly indus­tri­al meth­ods of fab­ri­ca­tion” — as good an expla­na­tion as any of why they don’t build ’em like this any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

Watch the Build­ing of the Eif­fel Tow­er in Time­lapse Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New York’s Lost Skyscraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tower

in Architecture | December 15th, 2021

New York is nev­er just one city; it’s always sev­er­al, inter­act­ing with – or push­ing out – each oth­er. This goes for the city’s archi­tec­ture as much as for its pop­u­la­tion. Its stra­ta of pub­lic works projects, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, depart­ment stores, hotels, hos­tels, hous­ing, and sky­scrap­ing office build­ings tell the sto­ry of its evo­lu­tion. Now, artists, urban­ists, and archi­tects protest face­less con­dos and big box stores. In decades past, they fought the face­less tow­ers that rose into the atmos­phere and blocked the sun. Such oppo­si­tion stretch­es back well over 100 years, to the turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry New York of the Flat­iron Build­ing and Beaux Arts won­ders like Penn Sta­tion, a build­ing, The New York Times writes, that “once made trav­el­ers feel impor­tant.”

“In the 1890’s,” writes Christo­pher Gray, Paris-trained archi­tect Ernest Flagg “denounced the grow­ing crop of sky­scrap­ers, and by the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry he was hor­ri­fied by the dark­ened streets and raw side walls pro­duced by such build­ings.” Flagg’s opin­ions were of lit­tle inter­est to his New York employ­ers, so he “shift­ed his focus to reform­ing sky­scraper design” instead of decry­ing them out­right.

The endeav­or pro­duced a mod­ern mar­vel, “a one-of-a-kind tow­er” ris­ing above the New York City sky­line, notes the video above, “a total mas­ter­piece of archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing unlike any­thing seen before” — the Singer Tow­er, built for the Singer Sewing Machine Com­pa­ny in 1908.

So impres­sive was it for its time that Flag­g’s build­ing won com­par­isons to the pyra­mids of Ancient Egypt. For a brief moment, between the years 1908 and 1909, it was the tallest build­ing in the world, until it lost the title to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life Insur­ance Com­pa­ny Tow­er, anoth­er unusu­al build­ing unlike the rec­tan­gu­lar sky­scrap­ers against which Flagg railed. Uncon­cerned with max­i­miz­ing avail­able real estate, he “urged that sky­scraper tow­ers more than 10 or 15 sto­ries high should be set back from the prop­er­ty lines, so that the tow­er occu­pied only one-quar­ter of the lot,” writes Gray. “All four sides could then be treat­ed archi­tec­tural­ly, and ‘we should soon have a city of tow­ers instead of a city of dis­mal ravines.’ ”

Work­ing in a Beaux-Arts style, Flagg put his the­o­ries to the test in the Singer Tow­er, also called the Singer Build­ing, expand­ing an orig­i­nal 10-sto­ry base to 14 sto­ries, then build­ing a small­er 33 ‑sto­ry tow­er atop it. Capped by a dome with a lantern and flag­pole ris­ing from it, the tow­er’s “bul­bous top became one of New York’s best known land­marks.” Its lob­by had the ornate lux­u­ry “seen in world’s fair and expo­si­tion archi­tec­ture of the peri­od.” But Flag­g’s vision of “a city of free-stand­ing tow­ers” would remain the dream of a sin­gle archi­tect. Despite his work for leg­is­la­tion to curb sky­scrap­ers that took up entire city blocks, such build­ings, includ­ing the 34-sto­ry City Invest­ing Build­ing, would con­tin­ue to rise around the dis­tinc­tive Singer Tow­er.

Final­ly, Flag­g’s quirks proved too much for New York’s real estate elite. When the Singer com­pa­ny moved its head­quar­ters in 1961, inter­est in the Tow­er remained low “because the small square footage of the build­ing’s nar­row tow­er was anti­thet­i­cal to the boom­ing growth of mod­ern busi­ness, which demand­ed more, not less, office space,” writes Katie Hiler. Decon­struc­tion of the first sky­scraper “ever to be peace­ful­ly demol­ished” began in 1967, five years after the demo­li­tion of Penn Sta­tion. In place of the Singer Tow­er would rise the 54-sto­ry One Lib­er­ty Plaza, a har­bin­ger of things to come in the city’s new finan­cial hub, the World Trade Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph of 11 Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When the Colosseum in Rome Became the Home of Hundreds of Exotic Plant Species

in Architecture, Biology, History | December 7th, 2021

The Colos­se­um is one of the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tions in Italy, and thus one of the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tions in all of Europe. But the nature of its appeal to its many vis­i­tors has changed over the cen­turies. In the Atlantic, nov­el­ist and pod­cast­er Paul Coop­er notes that, “the belief that Chris­t­ian mar­tyrs had once been fed to the lions in the are­na,” for exam­ple, once made it a renowned site of reli­gious pil­grim­age. (This “despite lit­tle evi­dence that Chris­tians were ever actu­al­ly killed in the are­na.”) But in that same era, the Colos­se­um was also a site of botan­ic pil­grim­age: amid its ruins grew “420 species of plant,” includ­ing some rare exam­ples “found nowhere else in Europe.”

Notable tourists who took note of the Colos­se­um’s rich plant life include Charles Dick­ens, who beheld its “walls and arch­es over­grown with green,” and Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, who wrote of how “the copse­wood over­shad­ows you as you wan­der through its labyrinths, and the wild weeds of this cli­mate of flow­ers bloom under your feet.”

Coop­er quotes from these writ­ings in his Atlantic piece, and in an asso­ci­at­ed Twit­ter thread also includes plen­ty of ren­der­ings of the Colos­se­um as it then looked dur­ing the 18th and 19th cen­turies. He even select­ed images from Flo­ra of the Colos­se­um of Rome, or, Illus­tra­tions and descrip­tions of four hun­dred and twen­ty plants grow­ing spon­ta­neous­ly upon the ruins of the Colos­se­um of Rome (read­able free online at the Inter­net Archive), the 1855 work of a less well-known Eng­lish­man named Richard Deakin.

A botanist, Deakin did the hard work of cat­a­loging those hun­dreds of plant species grow­ing in the Colos­se­um back in the 1850s. The inter­ven­ing 170 or so years have tak­en their toll on this bio­di­ver­si­ty: as Nature report­ed it, only 242 of these species were still present in the ear­ly 2000s, due in part to “a shift towards species that pre­fer a warmer, dri­er cli­mate” and the growth of the sur­round­ing city. In its hey­day in the first cen­turies of the last mil­len­ni­um, the are­na lay on the out­skirts of Rome, where­as it feels cen­tral today. Pay it a vis­it, and you both will and will not see the Colos­se­um that Dick­ens and Shel­ley did; but then, they nev­er knew it as, say, Titus or Domit­ian did. In recent years there have been moves to restore and even improve ancient fea­tures like the retractable floor; why not dou­ble down on the exot­ic flo­ra while we’re at it?

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rome’s Colos­se­um Will Get a New Retractable Floor by 2023 — Just as It Had in Ancient Times

The Roman Colos­se­um Has a Twin in Tunisia: Dis­cov­er the Amphithe­ater of El Jem, One of the Best-Pre­served Roman Ruins in the World

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest Lego Set Ever

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Introduction to the Chrysler Building, New York’s Art Deco Masterpiece, by John Malkovich (1994)

in Architecture, Design, Film, History | November 5th, 2021

No old stuff for me, no bes­tial copy­ings of arch­es and columns and cor­nices. Me, I’m new.  
             — archi­tect William Van Alen, design­er of the Chrysler Build­ing

Many peo­ple claim the Chrysler Build­ing as their favorite New York City edi­fice and actor John Malkovich is one such:

It’s so crazy and vig­or­ous in its exe­cu­tion, so breath­tak­ing in its vision, so bril­liant­ly eccen­tric.

Malkovich, who’s not shy about tak­ing pot­shots at the city’s “vio­lence and filth” in the BBC doc­u­men­tary short above, rhap­sodizes over Detroit indus­tri­al­ist Wal­ter P. Chrysler’s “lat­ter day pyra­mid in Man­hat­tan.”

Malkovich’s unmis­tak­able voice, pegged by The Guardian as “waft­ing, whis­pery, and reedy” and which he him­self poo poos as sound­ing like it belongs to some­one who’s “labored under heavy nar­cotics for years,” pairs well with descrip­tions so plum­my, one has to imag­ine he penned them him­self. (No writer is cred­it­ed.)

After show­ing us the open-to-the-pub­lic lobby’s “deli­cious Art Deco fit­tings,” ceil­ing mur­al, and intri­cate, veneered ele­va­tor doors, Malkovich gives us a tour of some off-lim­its upper floors.

Unlike the Empire State Build­ing, which best­ed the Chrysler Building’s brief record as the world’s tallest build­ing (1046 feet, 77 sto­ries), you can’t pur­chase tick­ets to admire the view from the top.

But Malkovich has the star pow­er to gain access to Celes­tial, the sev­en­ty-first floor obser­va­to­ry that has been closed to the pub­lic since 1945 and is cur­rent­ly occu­pied by a pri­vate firm.

He also has a wan­der around the bar­ren Cloud Club, a sup­per club and speakeasy for gen­tle­man one per­centers. Its mish­mash of styles rep­re­sent­ed a con­ces­sion on archi­tect Van Alen’s part. The build­ing’s exte­ri­or was an ele­gant mod­ernist homage to Chrysler’s hub­caps and hood orna­ments, but between the 66th and 68th floor, the Cloud Club catered to the promis­cu­ous tastes of the rich and pow­er­ful — Tudor, Olde Eng­lish, Neo-Clas­si­cal…

The New York Times reports that it boast­ed what “was reput­ed to be the grand­est men’s room in all of New York.”

A Duke Elling­ton sound­track and vin­tage footage fea­tur­ing Van Alen cos­tumed to resem­ble his famous cre­ation sup­ply a taste of the excite­ment that her­ald­ed the building’s 1930 open­ing, even if those with a fear of heights may swoon at the sight of pret­ty young things reclin­ing on high beams and per­form­ing oth­er feats of der­ring-do.

Malkovich, ever the cool cus­tomer, dis­plays his lack of ver­ti­go by casu­al­ly prop­ping a foot on the rooftop’s edge to com­mune with the icon­ic eagle-head­ed gar­goyles.

The building’s unique flour­ish­es caused a sen­sa­tion, but not every­one was a fan.

Malkovich clear­ly savors his swipe at crit­ics who decried the new build­ing as too shiny:

For­tu­nate­ly these crit­ics are long dead so we can’t even call their offices and taunt them as they should be taunt­ed.

He’s more tem­per­ate when it comes to author and social philoso­pher Lewis Mum­ford, whose beef with the sky­scraper is under­stand­able, giv­en the his­toric con­text — the stock mar­ket crashed the day after the secret­ly con­struct­ed spire was riv­et­ed into place:

Such build­ings show one of the real dan­gers of a plu­toc­ra­cy: it gives the mas­ters of our civ­i­liza­tion an unusu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to exhib­it their bar­barous egos, with no sense of restraint or shame.

Near­ly one hun­dred years lat­er, bar­barous egos con­tin­ue to erect sky­scrap­ing tem­ples to their own van­i­ty, but as Malkovich points out, they’re far bland­er, if taller.

The Chrysler Build­ing is now wide­ly rec­og­nized as one of New York City’s most mag­nif­i­cent jew­els, and the Land­marks Preser­va­tion Com­mis­sion recent­ly approved plans to con­struct a pub­lic obser­va­tion deck on the Chrysler Building’s 61st floor, just above its icon­ic Art Deco eagles, though it’s too ear­ly to tell if it will be ready in time for a cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion.

Until then, the gen­er­al pub­lic must con­tent itself with explor­ing the Chrysler Building’s lob­by dur­ing week­day busi­ness hours.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Famous Archi­tects Dress as Their Famous New York City Build­ings (1931)

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Do People Hate Modern Architecture?: A Video Essay

in Architecture | September 21st, 2021

This month brought the 20th anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, which prompt­ed peo­ple around the world to remem­ber all that was lost on that day. The fall­en Twin Tow­ers of Minoru Yamasak­i’s World Trade Cen­ter have only gained sym­bol­ic res­o­nance over the past two decades, despite hav­ing been unloved when they still stood. “They often appeared to New York­ers like a pair of mid­dle fin­gers — to good devel­op­ment, to good eco­nom­ics, to good taste,” writes Gothamist’s Hen­ry Stew­art. “They brought all, high and low, rich and poor, togeth­er to hate.” Some crit­ics of the World Trade Cen­ter made com­plaints root­ed in pol­i­tics, finance, and urban design; most just did­n’t like how the thing looked.

For 28 years, what the World Trade Cen­ter in gen­er­al and its Twin Tow­ers in par­tic­u­lar sym­bol­ized was all that the Amer­i­can pub­lic detest­ed about what it thought of as the out­landish scale, aes­thet­ic drea­ri­ness, and sheer inhu­man­i­ty of “mod­ern archi­tec­ture.” But as Bet­ty Chen of ARTic­u­la­tions points out in the video above, there’s mod­ern archi­tec­ture, and then there’s Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture.

“A tru­ly Mod­ernist design,” she says, “adheres to a strict set of for­mal rules that upholds Mod­ernism’s fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple: form fol­lows func­tion.” Such Mod­ernists as Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Cor­busier sub­scribed to the notion that “archi­tec­tur­al design should be dis­as­so­ci­at­ed from his­toric ref­er­ence, be free of unnec­es­sary orna­men­ta­tion, and be sim­pli­fied to the essen­tials of func­tion.”

As ver­sions of these prin­ci­ples for rebuild­ing a new post­war civ­i­liza­tion — vul­gar­ized ver­sions, some might say — caught on in the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tu­ry, cities around the world set enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly about putting up “emp­ty box­es of noth­ing­ness.” Or so argued Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture’s detrac­tors, who gained the cul­tur­al upper hand short­ly there­after. “If the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry is con­sid­ered to be the age of Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture,” says Chen, “then the lat­ter half of the cen­tu­ry can be defined by a con­tin­u­al, unre­lent­ing assault on Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture.” That assault includ­ed the demo­li­tion of anoth­er of Yamasak­i’s mid-cen­tu­ry projects, the Pruitt-Igoe hous­ing com­plex, which began on March 16, 1972. Though car­ried out with­out mur­der­ous intent, it did involve a notable death: the death, as archi­tect Charles Jencks famous­ly declared, of archi­tec­tur­al Mod­ernism itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

A Quick Ani­mat­ed Tour of Icon­ic Mod­ernist Hous­es

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

1,300 Pho­tos of Famous Mod­ern Amer­i­can Homes Now Online, Cour­tesy of USC

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Roman Colosseum Has a Twin in Tunisia: Discover the Amphitheater of El Jem, One of the Best-Preserved Roman Ruins in the World

in Architecture, History | September 15th, 2021

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When Rome con­quered Carthage in the Third Punic War (149–146 BC), the Repub­lic renamed the region Africa, for Afri, a word the Berbers used for local peo­ple in present-day Tunisia. (The Ara­bic word for the region was Ifriqiya.) There­after would the Roman Empire have a strong­hold in North Africa: Carthage, the cap­i­tal of the African Province under Julius and Augus­tus Cae­sar and their suc­ces­sors. The province thrived. Sec­ond only to the city of Carthage in the region, the city of Thys­drus was an impor­tant cen­ter of olive oil pro­duc­tion and the home­town of Roman Emper­or Sep­ti­m­ius Severus, who bestowed impe­r­i­al favor upon it, grant­i­ng par­tial Roman cit­i­zen­ship to its inhab­i­tants.

In 238 AD, con­struc­tion began on an amphithe­ater in Thys­drus that would rival its largest cousins in Rome, the famed Amphithe­ater of El Jem. “Designed to seat a whop­ping crowd of 35,000 peo­ple,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra, El Jem was list­ed as a UNESCO World Her­itage site in 1979. Built entire­ly of stone blocks, the mas­sive the­ater was “mod­eled on the Col­i­se­um of Rome,” notes UNESCO, “with­out being an exact copy of the Fla­vian con­struc­tion…. Its facade com­pris­es three lev­els of arcades of Corinthi­an or com­pos­ite style. Inside, the mon­u­ment has con­served most of the sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture for the tiered seat­ing. The wall of the podi­um, the are­na and the under­ground pas­sages are prac­ti­cal­ly intact.”

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

 

Although the small city of El Jem hard­ly fea­tures on tours of the clas­si­cal past, it was, in the time of the Amphitheater’s con­struc­tion, a promi­nent site of strug­gle for con­trol over the Empire. The year 238 “was par­tic­u­lar­ly tumul­tuous,” Atlas Obscu­ra explains, due to a “revolt by the pop­u­la­tion of Thys­drus (El Jem), who opposed the enor­mous tax­a­tion amounts being levied by the Emper­or Maximinus’s local procu­ra­tor.” A riot of 50,000 peo­ple led to the ascen­sion of Gor­dian I, who ruled for 21 days dur­ing the “Year of the Six Emper­ors,” when “in just one year, six dif­fer­ent peo­ple were pro­claimed Emper­ors of Rome.”

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

From such fraught begin­nings, the mas­sive stone struc­ture of the El Jem Amphithe­ater went on to serve as a fortress dur­ing inva­sions of Van­dals and Arabs in the 5th-7th cen­turies. A thou­sand years after the Islam­ic con­quest, El Jem became a fortress dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tions of Tunis. Lat­er cen­turies saw the amphithe­ater used for salt­pe­tre man­u­fac­ture, grain stor­age, and mar­ket stalls.

Despite hun­dreds of years of human activ­i­ty, in vio­lent upheavals and every­day busi­ness, El Jem remains one of the best pre­served Roman ruins in the world and one of the largest out­door the­aters ever con­struct­ed. More impor­tant­ly, it marks the site of one of North Africa’s first impe­r­i­al occu­pa­tions, one that would des­ig­nate a region — and even­tu­al­ly a con­ti­nent with a dizzy­ing­ly diverse mix of peo­ples — as “African.”

via @WassilDZ

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Explore the Ruins of Tim­gad, the “African Pom­peii” Exca­vat­ed from the Sands of Alge­ria

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Build Wooden Models of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Building: The Guggenheim, Unity Temple, Johnson Wax Headquarters & More

in Architecture | August 31st, 2021

Frank Lloyd Wright had his eccen­tric­i­ties, in not just his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al con­duct but also the very lan­guage with which he described the world. Among the endur­ing­ly fas­ci­nat­ing ele­ments of his idi­olect is the word Uson­ian, which refers to things of or per­tain­ing to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.  Wright did­n’t coin the term: its ear­li­est record­ed user is the ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry writer James Duff Law, who declared that “We of the Unit­ed States, in jus­tice to Cana­di­ans and Mex­i­cans, have no right to use the title ‘Amer­i­cans’ when refer­ring to mat­ters per­tain­ing exclu­sive­ly to our­selves.” The most famous archi­tect in Amer­i­can his­to­ry took Uson­ian fur­ther, using it to label an Amer­i­can archi­tec­tur­al sen­si­bil­i­ty — of, nat­u­ral­ly, his own design.

Though Wright did envi­sion an ide­al­ly Uson­ian city, his clear­est expres­sions of the aes­thet­ic stand today in the form of the Uson­ian hous­es. Built between 1934 and 1958, these six­ty or so res­i­dences take advan­tage, as Wright saw it, of the range of dis­tinc­tive set­tings offered up by the land­scapes of the Unit­ed States.

Designed with fea­tures like gar­den ter­races, cleresto­ry win­dows, flat roofs with wide over­hangs, and easy visu­al and phys­i­cal pas­sage between the indoors and out­doors, these urban-rur­al hybrids still today draw the admi­ra­tion of archi­tects and non-archi­tects alike. But tru­ly to under­stand a Uson­ian house, per­haps you must build one your­self: luck­i­ly, the Lit­tle Build­ing Com­pa­ny offers a mod­el kit that lets you do just that.

Their Wright line­up also includes minia­ture wood­en ver­sions of his 1908 Uni­ty Tem­ple in Oak Park, his 1937 John­son Wax Head­quar­ters in Racine, and his 1937 Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um in New York. The dif­fer­ences in scale and com­plex­i­ty between these build­ings make for a nat­ur­al mod­el-build­ing dif­fi­cul­ty curve: once you’ve done a Wright house, you’ll be ready for a Wright tem­ple; once you’ve done a Wright tem­ple, you’ll be ready for a Wright cor­po­rate head­quar­ters, and so on. Not only will the effort hone your man­u­al dex­ter­i­ty, it will height­en your appre­ci­a­tion for the Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture-defin­ing inno­va­tions Wright pulled off in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. But do you have to be from the Unit­ed States to under­stand the Uson­ian? Based in Aus­tralia and sell­ing to the world, the Lit­tle Build­ing Com­pa­ny sug­gests not.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – a Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

Omoshi­roi Blocks: Japan­ese Memo Pads Reveal Intri­cate Build­ings As The Pages Get Used

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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