Blobs. Doppelgangers. Giants. Puppets. Incontinent objects. Mullets. Army of Darkness. All and much more are covered in Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition by Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing. The book examines how horror genre tropes familiar from books and cinema also appear in architecture, and in so doing, how we can find another way to understand and criticize our built environment, using the language of mass culture in place of “weaponized jargon.” Comaroff is the guest of honor on episode 76 of Unfrozen.
Show Notes
Intro/Outro: “Scare Me,” by Deadbolt
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Discussed:
Harvard Graduate School of Design under Rem Koolhaas
Bigness, or the Problem of Large, by Rem Koolhaas
Centre Pompidou = Terry Gilliam’s Brazil
Xintiandi, Shanghai
The Architectural Uncanny, by Anthony Vidler
Built Beautiful, with narration by … Martha Stewart
Mullets
Ordos 100, Inner Mongolia
H.R. Giger -> Zaha Hadid -> Thomas Heatherwick-> Santiago Calatrava
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
Hannover Pavilion at Expo 2000 by MVRDV = Arby’s Breakfast Sandwich
Caltrans Building, Los Angeles, Morphosis
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, by Alan Moore
House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
Saddam Hussein’s Frank Frazetta-esque fantasy interior paintings
Idi Amin’s Chinese Garden
Great Basilica, Yamoussukro, Ivory Coast (110% the size of St. Peters)
Anti-Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
The Day of the Beast and Philip Johnson’s Gate of Europe, Madrid
Listen On
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