Architecture and Radio

Architectural History

In this episode we talk about architectural and aurality, asking what impact radio had on architecture, architects and public audiences.

Our Contributors:

Olga Touloumi is Associate Professor of Architectural History at Bard College. Her research concerns questions of globalization and media in twentieth architecture. Her first book Assembly by Design situates mid-20th century architectural constructions of global governance within debates on media democracies and liberal internationalism. Touloumi has co-edited Sound Modernities, a volume on how acoustics and sound technologies transformed modern architectural culture during the twentieth century; and with Theodora Vardouli Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground, a volume about the exchanges between designers and computational technologists in Europe and North America.

Shundana Yusaf is Associate Professor of History and Theory at the School of Architecture, University of Utah. Her scholarship juxtaposes colonial/ postcolonial history with sound studies in architecture. Her first book is Broadcasting Buildings: Architecture on the Wireless, 1927-1945 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014). Her current book is called Resonant Tombs: A Feminist History of Sufi Shrines in Pakistan. As its starting point, it takes sound as an architectural material of construction and women as secondary architects, collectively nestling ephemeral auditory monuments with their bodily resources within material monuments built by heroic men with material resources.

Details of audio clips:

Movietone News newsreel of First United Nations General Assembly at Westminster Hall 1946 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3em8Yvf13y4

British Pathe newsreel U.N. Hears President - Kennedy Asks Joint US - Soviet Moon Trip, 1963 https://youtu.be/iBcfSqwvVlg?si=iS7nJ0aIRIjbMFzp

Charlie Chaplin - Adenoid Hynkel Speech - The Great Dictator (1940)

https://youtu.be/isLNLpxpndA?si=iWZNmbzMehKQwT9y

The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain brings together all those with an interest in the history of the built environment – academics, architects, heritage experts and the wider public. As the leading body in the field, we believe that appreciation of architectural history plays a vital role in understanding our culture, past and present. With the help of our members, we publish new research, organise a broad range of events, provide educational opportunities and advance the understanding of the built histories of all periods and places, in Britain and beyond.

Membership https://www.sahgb.org.uk/