Horror in Architecture

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.

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Intro/Outro: “Scare Me,” by Deadbolt

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Discussed:

Immanuel
Kant

Edmund
Burke

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

Jan Gehl

The Architectural
Uncanny, by Anthony Vidler

Built
Beautiful, with narration by … Martha Stewart

Mullets

Army of
Darkness

Twins
are in

Doppelgangers

Ordos
100, Inner Mongolia

-             
House House, by
Johnston Marklee

-             
Gaston Bachelard

-             
Preston
Scott Cohen

-             
Ai
Weiwei

H.R. Giger
-> Zaha Hadid -> Thomas Heatherwick->
Santiago Calatrava

Zeitz
MOCAA, Cape Town

Gordon
Matta-Clark

Jan
Kaplicky / Future Systems

Frank
Gehry

Francois
Roche

Parc
de la Villette

American
Psycho

Hannover
Pavilion at Expo 2000 by MVRDV = Arby’s Breakfast Sandwich

Toshiko
Mori

Caltrans
Building, Los Angeles, Morphosis

Daniel
Libeskind

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