Exporting totalitarian architecture to the rest of the world
And finally, showcasing Nazi architecture was not limited to Germany. When the International Exposition Dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life was held in 1937 in Paris, the two most prominent pavilions were those belonging to Germany and the Soviet Union, which were located directly across from each other. With a height of 500 feet, the Nazi pavilion designed by Albert Speer, was topped with a tower displaying a gigantic swastika and eagle, symbols of National Socialism.
Like the Zeppelinfield in Nuremburg, at night Speer used floodlights to illuminate the structure. The pavilion’s purpose was to showcase German pride and the strength of Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Communism, symbolized by the Soviet pavilion directly opposite.
Fighting against private car invasion….in 1896
Some weeks ago I came across a great story in The Urban Country blog. The photograph shows the front cover of the San Francisco Call, headlining a demonstration of thousands of protesters -more than 100.000 according to the newspaper- who gathered to protest against what started to be an excessive presence of private cars in the streets of this Californian city.
The “video” tag in my Delicious keeps growing and has reached 275 references. I opened this tag to prepare an experiment of facilitating a discussion session in the course Repensar las políticas urbanas 30 años después. That exercise took place late in 2010 and one year later, I posted A selection of 75 videos about cities and urban policies highlighting some of the videos that were considered for the final short-list of videos we finally used in the session. I will try to find the time soon to update this list but, in the meantime, here you can find 10 pieces that draw a selective and incomplete (but still relevant I guess) picture of some of the main ideas that influenced how cities were thought, designed and built in the 20thcentury. A mix of names, cities and rarities in some cases, and not an official chart of the most important ideas or topics of last century urbanism.
Manhatta (1921) is a short documentary film which revels in the haze rising from city smoke stacks. With the city as subject, it consists of 65 shots sequenced in a loose non-narrative structure, beginning with a ferry approaching Manhattan and ending with a sunset view from a sky scraper. The primary objective of the film is to explore the relationship between photography and film; camera movement is kept to a minimum, as is incidental motion within each shot. Each frame provides a view of the city that has been carefully arranged into abstract compositions.
I have just finished this book and I have to say it is one of the best books I have read. It´s not only about architecture or landscapes. It is a complete study of how urban economy, urban planning, history, lifestyle, sociology and the future of work link.
Pastoral capitalism as a marketing idea to complete suburban lifestyles for white-collar workers after II world War. Pastoral capitalism as a set of social values to take headquarters and laboratories out of city centres.
This is the way we organized professional services in the last decades BUT, WILL IT LAST? The way we work is changing. Do we need these big spaces?
After an incendiary bombing, a view of some of the damage in Tokyo, Japan in 1945. A strip of residential buildings remains undamaged, surrounded by ashes and rubble of neighboring structures burned or blasted to the ground. (USAF)
