H. G. Wells on the Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
"Metropolis" hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic...
View ArticleJ. G. Ballard: Atrocity Exhibition and the Modernist Motorcar Dystopia
"The Atrocity Exhibition" is J.G. Ballard’s instruction manual in how to disrupt mass media and recontextualize technology in a dystopian landscape overrun with industrial waste and technological white...
View ArticleIannis Xenakis: Musical Sorcery Using Mathematical Totems
Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer trained as an architect, created expressive works of mind-bending mathematical complexity that according to one critic, have "all the teeming unpredictable power of a...
View ArticlePablo Picasso: Dangerous Art and Political Posturing in Paris
"Art is never chaste," said Pablo Picasso. "Art is dangerous." One of the 20th century’s greatest painters was born in Málaga, Spain, but Jonathan Jones argues he came into his own amid the sleaze and...
View ArticleStarchitects and Spectacle: Sustainability Solutions Needed
Architecture must move on from an addiction to spectacle and fad, adrift in a sea of meaningless forms, leaving serious design and sustainability problems unresolved, says Peter Buchanan. But to do...
View ArticleDada as the Antidote to War and Capitalism
In the sobering aftermath of World War I in Zurich, Dada preached a radical-yet-whimsical philosophy of creativity, a self-styled anti-art. Random and meaningless by definition, calculatedly irrational...
View ArticleGerman Prefab House Generates Twice its Own Energy
The prefab Active House B10 prototype in Stuttgart can be built in a day, but its implications will be felt for years. Taking the passive house net zero concept one step further, this fully recyclable...
View ArticleImprovised Beat Generation Dreams of John Cassavetes
Cassavetes' Shadows "improvises" Beat Generation Manhattan, where two brothers and a sister, black but inexplicably played by two white actors, careening off track to scaled-back sketches of Charles...
View ArticlePruitt Igoe Myth: The Death of 20th Century US City
Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012...
View ArticleH. G. Wells on the Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
"Metropolis" hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic...
View ArticleJ. G. Ballard: Atrocity Exhibition and the Modernist Motorcar Dystopia
"The Atrocity Exhibition" is J.G. Ballard’s instruction manual in how to disrupt mass media and recontextualize technology in a dystopian landscape overrun with industrial waste and technological white...
View ArticleIannis Xenakis: Musical Sorcery Using Mathematical Totems
Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer trained as an architect, created expressive works of mind-bending mathematical complexity that according to one critic, have "all the teeming unpredictable power of a...
View ArticlePablo Picasso: Dangerous Art and Political Posturing in Paris
"Art is never chaste," said Pablo Picasso. "Art is dangerous." One of the 20th century’s greatest painters was born in Málaga, Spain, but Jonathan Jones argues he came into his own amid the sleaze and...
View ArticleStarchitects and Spectacle: Sustainability Solutions Needed
Architecture must move on from an addiction to spectacle and fad, adrift in a sea of meaningless forms, leaving serious design and sustainability problems unresolved, says Peter Buchanan. But to do...
View ArticleDada as the Antidote to War and Capitalism
In the sobering aftermath of World War I in Zurich, Dada preached a radical-yet-whimsical philosophy of creativity, a self-styled anti-art. Random and meaningless by definition, calculatedly irrational...
View ArticleGerman Prefab House Generates Twice its Own Energy
The prefab Active House B10 prototype in Stuttgart can be built in a day, but its implications will be felt for years. Taking the passive house net zero concept one step further, this fully recyclable...
View ArticleImprovised Beat Generation Dreams of John Cassavetes
Cassavetes' Shadows "improvises" Beat Generation Manhattan, where two brothers and a sister, black but inexplicably played by two white actors, careening off track to scaled-back sketches of Charles...
View ArticlePruitt Igoe Myth: The Death of 20th Century US City
Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012...
View ArticleSamuel Beckett, Confessions and the Human Condition
Samuel Beckett’s legacy endures, and reaches far beyond the written word. Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition,...
View ArticleH. G. Wells on the Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
"Metropolis" hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic...
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