Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight looming on the outskirts of American towns and cities. Many of these buildings were razed long ago, and those that remain stand as grim reminders of an often cruel system. For much of the nineteenth century, howeve ... Show More
Jan 28
Iain Jackson et. al., "Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company (Bloomsbury, 2025) pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the high colonial period through to independence. From the imperial Royal Niger Company’s charter in the 1890s through to commercial deve ... Show More
40m 43s
Jan 28
Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conception of purpose-built embassies to flex their diplomatic muscle and project nationhood on foreign soil. While scholars have primari ... Show More
37m 1s
Jan 25
Edward Dimendberg ed., "Richard Neutra and the Making of the Lovell Health House, 1925–35" (Getty Research Institute, 2025)
Richard Neutra and the Making of the Lovell Health House, 1925–35 (Getty Research Institute, 2025) tells the story of the Lovell Health House, designed and built by Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra (1892–1970). Perched on a steep hillside with panoramic views of Los Ang ... Show More
32m 12s
Apr 2020
The Smell of Concrete After Rain
<p>There have been over 200,000 deaths as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. All have been tragic, but there are two people in particular we’ve lost due to COVID that were part of the world of architecture and design that we want to honor with a couple of stories today. First, ... Show More
28m 31s
Sep 2021
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one anot ... Show More
35m 21s
Apr 2021
Lucas Richert, "Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture" (MIT Press, 2020)
"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was ... Show More
46m 4s
Oct 2023
EA531: Trevor Abransom - Running a Design-Intensive Architecture Practice
Running a Design-Intensive Architecture PracticeWith over three decades of commitment to his craft, Trevor Abramson strives to promote the art of architecture by evoking a deeply felt emotional and spiritual response from clients, critics, and the public. His work responds to his ... Show More
44m 55s
Aug 2022
Karen Archey, "After Institutions" (Les presses du réel, 2022)
Faced with waning state support, declining revenue, and forced entrepreneurialism, museums have become a threatened public space. Simultaneously, they have assumed the role of institutional arbiter in issues of social justice and accountability. The canon of Institutional Critiqu ... Show More
1h 8m
Jan 2021
Lucas Richert - Psychiatry and the Counterculture
<p><span class="dropcap dropcap2">L</span>ucas Richert is the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and historical director for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His work explores prescription and illicit drugs, t ... Show More
34m 25s
Dec 2017
28 – Le Corbusier – 3 – Towards a New Architecture
A new epoch has begun! Le Corbusier’s ‘discovery’ is that the style of future architecture is to be found new inventions of the machine age — planes, cars, ocean liners. But ‘Towards a New Architecture’ is, at its heart, an argument for a fusion of timeless values and contemporar ... Show More
1h 2m