Michael Graves: a city hall painted peach
Portland, 1982. A fifteen-storey cube in peach and turquoise, with a giant keystone and columns that support nothing. Michael Graves builds the first major public building of American postmodernism, and later the same eye ends up on a kettle with a whistling bird.
Charles Moore: an Italian-style piazza, fake on purpose
New Orleans, 1978. Classical columns of mirrored steel, lit by neon, around a fountain shaped like the Italian boot. Charles Moore builds the manifesto of American postmodernism — and the story of his piazza also tells how fragile a good design is without a community to use it.
Boullée and Ledoux: architecture as an idea
An empty sphere for Newton, an ideal city in a semicircle around a saltworks, toll houses shaped like cylinders and pyramids. Two Enlightenment architects who draw more than they build and change how form is thought.
Venturi and Scott Brown: less is a bore
In 1966 Robert Venturi answers Mies with a quip and a book: “less is a bore”. In 1972, with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, he goes to Las Vegas to learn from the street. Two books that change architectural theory.
Vitruvius: firmitas, utilitas, venustas
1st century BC. Vitruvius, one of Caesar's military engineers, writes "De Architectura" — 10 books defining the three fundamental principles of good architecture. Rediscovered in 1414, it inspires the Renaissance and every architectural theory that follows.
The ideal city: a dream never realized
Milan, 1461. Filarete describes Sforzinda — an eight-pointed star-shaped city, never built. From Palmanova (1593, the only one actually realized) to Brasília (1960) to Jane Jacobs' critique: the dream of the perfect city and its failures.
Haussmann and the transformation of Paris
Paris, 1853. Napoleon III appoints Haussmann prefect of the Seine. In 17 years he demolishes 60% of medieval Paris, builds 95 km of boulevards and 400 km of sewers. The Paris we know — and its banlieues — are the same operation.
Le Corbusier the urban planner: the city as a machine
Paris, 1925. The "Plan Voisin" proposes demolishing central Paris and replacing it with 18 skyscrapers set in a park. It is never built. But Europe's 1950s–70s peripheries apply the same logic — without the parks and without the services.
Situationism: the city as a battlefield
Cosio d'Arroscia, 1957. Debord founds the Situationist International and proposes the urban dérive — wandering the city without a destination, guided by "psychogeographic currents". It anticipates parkour, the critical smart city, and Jane Jacobs.
The World's Fair: architecture's laboratory
London, 1851. The Crystal Palace — prefabricated iron and glass — opens the first World's Fair. Every major World's Fair has produced at least one work of architecture that changed history. The Eiffel Tower, the Barcelona Pavilion, Fuller's dome.
Fascist and Nazi Architecture: When Buildings Become Propaganda
Berlin, 1937. Speer designs "Germania" — an Avenue of Victory 120m wide, a Great Hall 290m tall, holding 180,000 people. It is never built. Nazism, Italian fascism and Stalinism all use architecture as a tool of power. With very different results.
Sustainable Architecture: What It Really Means, Beyond Greenwashing
Oslo, 2014. Powerhouse Kjørbo produces more energy than it consumes over its entire life cycle. It's not a "green" building with panels on the roof: it's energy-positive. The difference between this and architectural greenwashing is enormous.