The Tomb of Agamemnon

Easily some of the best books of architectural history to be published in the last few years can be found in a series called the Wonders of the World, edited by Mary Beard.
Because I'll be posting part one of a two-part interview with Beard tomorrow morning, I thought I'd introduce BLDGBLOG readers to the Wonders of the World series and kick off my own (short) series of book reviews about each of the published titles.
As it is, I've read every book in the series – and I'm impatiently waiting for more.
In a nutshell, the Wonders of the World describes itself as "a small series of books that will focus on some of the world's most famous sites or monuments."

Their names will be familiar to almost everyone: they have achieved iconic stature and are loaded with a fair amount of mythological baggage. These monuments have been the subject of many books over the centuries, but our aim, through the skill and stature of the writers, is to get something much more enlightening, stimulating, or even controversial, than straightforward histories or guides.

So it may not be the place to go if you want to read about Archigram's Walking City; but if you want a quick shot of archaeology and architectural history, and if you're a fan of, say, the Parthenon, or the Alhambra, or the Colosseum, or even London's St. Pancras Station – or the Rosetta Stone – then it's an absolutely fantastic series to pick up.

In preparation for tomorrow's interview, then, I'll start with a quick look at the book that first hooked me: The Tomb of Agamemnon by Cathy Gere, one of the most exciting things I've read in years.
Ostensibly an armchair introduction to the Tomb of Agamemnon – a Mycenean shaft grave discovered in 1876 by the flamboyant amateur German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann – the book is really a study in European culture and the political stakes inherent in archaeological interpretation and discovery.
Schliemann, who presented himself through "a syrupy blend of Homer and Hollywood," and who developed quite a knack for media hype, transformed his somewhat accidental discovery into a de facto origin point for modern European self-identity.
The tomb was not just a hole in the ground, in other words, but a place through which Europe could explain itself, achieving narrative control over the archaeological past and rooting itself in a much more glorious version of what then passed for its history. Starting with the Greeks, she writes, "historians and dramatists reinvented the Trojan War and Agamemnon's horrible destiny time and time again, in an increasingly desperate effort to understand and control their own violent history."
On another level, Schliemann's discovery only intensified the already politicized stakes of Mediterranean archaeology; his deliberately spectacular excavations were part of a much larger media project, Gere writes, that "represented a symbolic reclamation of the monument from the Ottoman [Empire]," then the dominant power in the region.
For every site uncovered, that is, with the imaginative help of story-telling archaeologists and the enthusiastic newspaper editors who cheered them, Europe came into its own.
It could project its own wished-for history onto the dusty screen of archaeology.

The book is compulsively readable, and it's also short: I started reading it one afternoon and had finished it by that evening.
Though it's a history of the grave and of the grave's discovery, it's also an eye-popping look at the interpretive difficulties associated with how we dig up the past.
At several points, Gere ridicules what she calls the "genre of mytho-anthropology" – her term for how the past can be mis-used in the service of heroically re-narrating, and thus justifying, the present order.

As the great tide of Christian faith receded, a wave of archaeologically inspired origin myths swept in to replace it, every nation and group racing to rewrite the Book of Genesis in the image of its own interests.

Newly excavated and insufficiently understood "icons of antiquity" were thus "made to bear all the fears and desires of modernity."
This particular form of mytho-anthropology, Gere suggests, exhibited its most extreme tendencies in the historical era beginning with, say, the birth of Lord Byron and ending with the death of Adolf Hitler, and it is Gere's description of this politically volatile time period that makes her book so extraordinary.
She explores how a lost golden age of Homeric warriors – sailing the high seas, declaring war, hoarding treasure – became a referential presupposition for nearly all arguments of European nationalism – particularly, we read, in the case of Friedrich Nietzsche and the German military commanders who later read him.
In the early years of the 20th century, Gere explains:

Europe filled up with neurasthenic young scholars, innocent of the horrors of combat, marshalling archaeological evidence in the support of their dreams of blood and empire. War was repeatedly proclaimed as physically and morally desirable, an antidote for decadence and a prescription for spiritual renewal.

These were the "classically educated young men who went to meet the horrors of war at Gallipoli."
Things only got worse when the Nazis came to power.

By the time of Hitler's ascendancy, a Teutonic Mycenae had been completely assimilated into the crackpot mixture of archaeology, mythography and so-called 'racial science' that provided German fascism with its own tailor-made prehistory.

Nazi field commanders marshalled their own archaeological evidence for Aryan superiority, sending morally deluded and historically misinformed storm troopers marching south toward Athens.

[Image: The "mask of Agamemnon"].

In any case, I could go on and on about the book. Instead, I'll just say that it offers an intellectually refreshing and beautifully explained – if also sinister – angle from which to view the ideological construction of modern Europe, and the whole thing is told from the otherwise often dry perspective of archaeology.
In fact, it's difficult to over-emphasize how exciting I found the book to be. I'm not entirely sure I'm kidding when I say that, had I read Gere's book as a teenager, I might have become an archaeologist. Or at least a classicist.

And it will probably horrify Gere to hear me say this – because this implies that I completely misread the whole book – but The Tomb of Agamemnon falls somewhere between Indiana Jones and the most high stakes university lecture course you've ever taken – and it made me an absolute addict for the Wonders of the World.
More reviews coming soon! For now, stay tuned for tomorrow's interview with Mary Beard.

Highly recommended: The Tomb of Agamemnon by Cathy Gere

Buy a Silk Mill

[Image: This Gloucestershire silk mill is for sale; photo courtesy of Jackson-Stops & Staff].

An 18th-century silk mill, located in Chalford, Gloucestershire, is on the market for a mere £650,000. The house presents its future owner with an "artful marriage of old and new," we read, complete with "huge stone fireplaces, beams and a bread oven alongside a designer kitchen and a dashing mezzanine-level music room. It’s not short of space either, with three reception rooms, a study, utility room and four bedrooms."
I'd buy it for the small stream and bridge outside... Live there for a few summers and write books.

(Earlier: Buy a Fort, Buy a Church, or even buy an island).

Hot-Mapping the UK, or: Spy Planes Over Haringey

Earlier this year it was reported that the London borough of Haringey had used a spy plane to record residents' energy use patterns:

Thermal images of homes have been taken by a light aircraft fitted with military spy technology to record the heat escaping from people’s houses.
Maps identifying individual homes have now been placed on the internet to encourage occupiers to reduce their wastage and carbon emissions by fitting insulation and turning the thermostat down.

More specifically:

An aircraft, fitted with a military-style thermal imager, flew over the borough 17 times to take pictures of almost every house in the area.
Footage of heat loss was converted into stills, then laid over a map of the area, before each house was given colour-coded ratings.
Homes that were losing the most heat were represented as bright red on the map. The least wasteful households were shown in deep blue. Shades of paler blues and reds were used to show grades of heat loss.

The Haringey heat map is now available online.

The practice itself is referred to as "hot-mapping," and the company behind the Haringey project also has "complete aerial heat-loss data sets of most of London and all of Norwich. Other locations may follow, and specific areas can always be commissioned."
What's interesting, though, is that the use of a "spy plane" – really, just an airplane – makes the whole thing sound like some sort of Gestapo-esque invasion of privacy; one wonders if the Haringey heat-map would have generated quite as much negative commentary if it had used, say, random satellite maps or even a house-by-house home inspection team.
Though, having said that, I'm reminded of a story I heard on NPR a few months ago, about chimney sweeps in Germany and how they're still considered somewhat suspicious due to their historical use, by the Stasi, as domestic spies during the good old days of the DDR.
All of which is just a long way of saying: is it possible to monitor and regulate something like domestic home energy-use without tripping off people's sense of being targeted by The Man – some terrifying and abstract Big Government that sends agents to your home and fills the sky with spy planes? Does the very mention of the phrase "spy plane" lead to resentment and paranoia?

(Story spotted at collision detection).

BLDGBLOG Interviews...

For a variety of reasons I thought I'd post a quick round-up of the interviews I've done for BLDGBLOG – and announce, in the process, that more interviews are forthcoming, and I'm excited.

[Image: Rome's Colosseum].

In less than a week, for instance, I'll be posting a long, two-part interview with Cambridge University classicist and general editor of the Wonders of the World series, Mary Beard. In that interview, she discusses everything from Mussolini and the politics of urban archaeology to Cape Canaveral, the Taj Mahal, and the recent film 300. That'll be up by Monday morning. That interview is now up: Part One and Part Two.
Soon thereafter I hope to publish interviews with sci-fi novelist Kim Stanley Robinson – about climate change, sustainability, and the literature of the future – as well as with DJ /rupture (who spoke at Postopolis!) about sound, migration, cities, and the acoustic ins and outs of sonic borderlands.

[Image: A "short drop" in Toronto's Viceroy Drain; photo by Michael Cook].

In any case, perhaps you're new to the site and don't even know that I've been interviewing anyone, or maybe you just never read the interviews in the first place because they're too long – or perhaps you did read the interviews and you've just been dying for me to refer to them again...
So here's a quick list of links to old interviews:

• Drains of Canada: An Interview with Michael Cook Last week, BLDGBLOG posted an interview with urban explorer Michael Cook. Cook has extensively documented and photographed the concrete knots and tubes of Canada's municipal drains and hydroelectric stations. He discusses organized hydrology and the environmental impact of urban infrastructure, as well as the myths, waterproof boots, and respiratory infections that accompany his explorations.

• The possibility of secret passageways: An Interview with Patrick McGrath. Novelist Patrick McGrath talks to BLDGBLOG about the landscapes, buildings, weather, madness, and mold associated with Gothic fiction, from Mary Shelley's polar void to the swamps of Honduras. McGrath mentions dinosaur skeletons, psychiatric institutions, the desert, David Lynch, and his own forthcoming novel, Trauma.

• BLDGBLOG has also interviewed the editorial team behind Volume magazine, including Jeffrey Inaba and Ole Bouman, head of the Netherlands Architecture Institute:
• Of Cars, Dogs, Golf, and Bad Feng Shui: An Interview with Jeffrey Inaba
• Agitation, Power, Space: An Interview with Ole Bouman

• The Heliocentric Pantheon: An Interview with Walter Murch. Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch talks to BLDGBLOG about Nicolaus Copernicus and the heliocentric structure of Rome's Pantheon. I ask him about sound and the city, urban surveillance, and the architecture of solar alignment.

• Architecture and Climate Change: An Interview with Ed Mazria. Architect Ed Mazria explains the basics of his Architecture 2030 organization, elucidating the connections between architecture, the construction industry, and global climate change.

• War/Photography: An Interview with Simon Norfolk. In one of my favorite interviews yet, British war photographer Simon Norfolk explains what exactly makes him a photographer of war, capturing battlefields in their extended sense: the supercomputers that model nuclear warheads and the remote imperial radar installations sweeping empty space for signs of enemy aircraft.

• The Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations: An Interview with Simon Sellars. Simon Sellars, author and overseer of the excellent site Ballardian, talks to BLDGBLOG about the recent travel guide he co-edited for Lonely Planet: a field guide to micronations.

• Science Fiction and the City: An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer. Dark fantasist Jeff VanderMeer discusses the imaginative architectures of science fiction, via coral reefs, the pedestrianized city cores of Europe, a childhood spent on tropical islands, the vaults of York Minster, and a cathedral made from medical devices.

• The Visionary State: An Interview with Erik Davis. Author Erik Davis tells BLDGBLOG about his recent book, The Visionary State, a long look at the spiritual geography of California, from Philip K. Dick's final apartment to the intersections of greater Los Angeles.

• Interview with Mike Davis: Part 1 and Part 2. In BLDGBLOG's first interview, sociologist Mike Davis talks about all kinds of things: urban warfare, the Pentagon, the films of Ridley Scott, the RAND Corporation, global poverty, avian flu, and his widely discussed book Planet of Slums.

So there you go.
Watch out for the Mary Beard interview next week – and many more to come.

Sovereignties of air: the new strategic landscape

The Guardian writes today of a "new strategic landscape" taking shape as long-range Russian bomber patrols cross over into "remote areas" of ungoverned ocean air, brushing up against the aerial terrain of 21st-century British sovereignty – England scrambles its jets, phone calls are made, the crisis is defused – and as newly affiliated militaries co-simulate and train, linking distant nations in strategy.

[Image: A Russian TU-95; the TU-95s were originally "designed as bombers but are now frequently used for maritime reconnaissance." They have recently been intercepted in the north Atlantic].

"A burst of war games and military manoeuvres around the world hints at a new strategic landscape," we read.
NATO is training in Sevastopol, for instance, a former Soviet sea port; Japan, Singapore, Australia, and the United States are hosting "war exercises" with India in the Bay of Bengal; China has constructed "an intelligence listening post on the Cocos Islands" in that same Bay of Bengal (a future flash point?), even while helping Pakistan and Bangladesh "build deep-water ports"; and, of course, "Russia and China held their largest ever war games in the Urals last month," during which uniformed men and armed helicopters terrorized fake villages and filled empty architecture with smoke.
Stripped of ornament and devoid of decoration, such training sites are the military's version of a Modernist utopia: eminently functional, purpose-built, a testing ground for new forms of management and planning, they are temporary cities built for and by war – destroyed just as quickly by the forces that assembled them.
Meanwhile, repurposed jets fly above summer coastlines, radioing back and forth with coordinates and suspicious greetings.

A big cop in a small town: architecture of the model village

[Image: A model of the Arles Ampitheatre; photo by http2007].

I stumbled across a whole Flickr pool full of photographs of model villages the other week – and some of the pictures are just fantastic.

[Image: A model of the Fortified cité of Carcassonne; photo by http2007].

A Flickr user called http2007, in particular, has some great contributions – and he also maintains a great sub-set, called France Miniature Park, that's well worth checking out; all images in this post come from that collection.

[Images: Models of Notre-Dame de Paris, Montmartre, the Château de Versailles, and the Arc de Triomphe. All photos by a Flickr user named http2007].

Many, many, many more photos available at the model villages Flickr pool.

Bauhaus Pyramid

The German town of Dessau, home of the Bauhaus, may someday construct its own Great Pyramid.
"The pharaohs may have set the standard," the Telegraph reports, "but German entrepreneurs are hoping to challenge Egypt's pre-eminence in monumental self-indulgence by building the world's largest pyramid."

The Telegraph somewhat cynically continues, explaining that this "improbable plan is based on the belief that people will pay to have their ashes encased in the concrete blocks used to construct the monument."
If that does turn out to be the case, however, then these German entrepreneurs "will be rich beyond the wildest dreams of even the most ambitious pharaoh."

The blocks are expected to be up to one cubic metre in size and, given that the volume of the completed pyramid is likely to be in excess of 40 million cubic metres, it could ultimately bring in £13.2 billion.

Almost literally unbelievably, we read that an "international jury" will select the Pyramid's final design – and that the jury "will be headed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas."
In any case, the concrete structure itself – why not granite? let's please build huge structures out of stone again – would act as a "memorial site" for people "of all nationalities and religions."
You don't actually have to be buried there, meanwhile; you can "opt to have a memorial stone placed instead." Your stone can even be "designed with any number of colors" – instantly transforming the Great Pyramid into a badly weathered mountain of tinted concrete, cracked and stained more and more every winter as it stands in the heart of an east German floodplain.

Still, the entrepreneurs are optimistic:

The Great Pyramid will continue to grow with every stone placed, eventually forming the largest structure in the history of man.

So how large is large?
The original plans called for "an overall height of some 1,600ft," the Independent reports, "but the proposal has already been dramatically scaled down. The revised plans are for a pyramid of some 492ft."
1) What does Michiel think of this? 2) Will it cause earthquakes?

(Thanks, John!)