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# Degraded Orbit

Unusual architecture, abandoned places, underground culture.

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## Posts

- [ANTIFASCIST ARCHITECTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/antifascist-architecture/) - Antifascist ArchitectureAndrew Santa Lucia & Daniel Jonas RocheIllustrated by Lane RickPark Books, Hardcover, 256 pages, CHF 39.00 In the opening sections of Antifascist Architecture, the authors examine what they call "The Fascist Architecture Industrial Complex": an obsession with the built relics of fascist regimes that is found at the highest levels of academic and cultural
- [WOOD, STONE, AND HEAT](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/wood-stone-and-heat/) - Saunas are, by nature, an experience of self-fulfilling minimalism: at sufficient temperatures, adornments become annoyances, and excesses become unbearable. Heat pairs well with silence, bare walls and floors, and subdued scents of steam and birchwood. As spaces built to effectively hold and distribute heat, saunas-as-architecture lend themselves to the straight lines and simple geometries of
- [BOOKS OF THE BAUHAUS: FROM MATERIAL TO ARCHITECTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/from-material-to-architecture/) - László Moholy-Nagy’s From Material to Architecture is the 14th book and final book in the Bauhausbücher series. Published in 1929, a year after his departure from the Bauhaus, it offers a comprehensive overview of the themes he explored as an artist and professor during his half-decade at the school, as well as insight into the holistic teaching approaches he developed alongside Walter Gropius. The book’s general trajectory follows that of its title, beginning with materials in their most basic form.
- [BOOKS OF THE BAUHAUS: THE NON-OBJECTIVE WORLD](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/books-of-the-bauhaus-the-non-objective-world/) - Like Kandinsky before him, Kasimir Malevich arrived at the Bauhaus already wielding an impressive international reputation. His trip to Germany in the spring of 1927 saw him visit both Dessau and Berlin; while in the former he met with Gropius and was able to arrange for the publication of what would be the eleventh book in the Bauhausbücher series: The Non-objective World (Die gegenstandslose Welt).
- [BRUTALIST BERLIN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/brutalist-berlin/) - As a major center of iconic postwar architecture, Berlin has featured frequently in the Blue Crow Media catalog, with various offerings covering the city’s Modernist and Brutalist architecture, as well as its fascinating Cold War-era U-Bahn stations. Brutalist Berlin, out this month, transforms and expands the corresponding map into a proper full-length book, which serves equally well as both an on-the-ground travel guide and reference book for armchair travelers and scholars.
- [BOOKS OF THE BAUHAUS: POINT AND LINE TO PLANE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/books-of-the-bauhaus-point-and-line-to-plane/) - Wassily Kandinsky was already an internationally renowned artist and thinker by the time he joined the Bauhaus in 1922, having written Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art) a decade prior and exhibited his work throughout Europe yet longer. While he claimed to have written the majority of Point and Line to Plane prior to 1914, it was not published until 1926, when it would become the ninth book in the Bauhausbücher series.
- [BOOKS OF THE BAUHAUS: INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/books-of-the-bauhaus-international-architecture/) - International Architecture, the initial title in the Bauhausbücher series, serves as a manifesto of sorts for editor Walter Gropius. Its general subject asserts the primacy of architecture over the other disciplines covered by the Bauhaus, and the specific structures he chooses are unerringly contemporary—some so new they are unbuilt, existing only as sketches or models.
- [TEMPLES OF THE ROAD: TRUCKS AND TUKS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/temples-of-the-road-trucks-and-tuks/) - The newest book from Christopher Herwig, author of the celebrated Soviet Bus Stops series, shifts to a new part of the world but a related subject: the vivid and varied decorated vehicles of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Trucks and Tuks celebrates an art form that, while present worldwide, arguably reaches its pinnacle of devotion and self-expression in South Asia, with vehicles ranging from tiny two-seaters to massive road-spanning lorries displaying a wide array of styles.
- [MAPPING MODERN HELSINKI](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/mapping-modern-helsinki/) - With the new Modern Helsinki Map, Blue Crow Media extends their ever-expanding series to one of the world’s northernmost capitals. Too long seen as an outlier to the predominant cultural spheres of Europe, Helsinki is finally reclaiming its unique place in the continent: a thoroughly Nordic country that is at the crossroads of Scandinavian and Baltic, west and east, traditional and modern. Hundred-year-old wooden houses sit side-by-side with hypermodern concrete-and-glass structures, and modern buildings often have traits of traditional Finnish and Nordic architecture, built outward from a core of minimalism and functionality.
- [BERLIN U-BAHN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN MAP](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/berlin-ubahn-map/) - Blue Crow Media, perhaps the foremost current publisher of city maps focused on modernist architecture, returns with the Berlin U-Bahn Architecture and Design Map. Like the previous entries in their series showcasing the architectural highlights of urban transit systems – London, New York, Paris, Moscow – the Berlin entry is attractively printed on thick, sturdy paper with a die-cut slipcase.
- [PSYCHOTRONIC BERLINALE: LOST / FRAGMENTED / CULT](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/psychotronic-berlinale/) - THIS YEAR'S BERLINALE Festival—the 67th—featured a wide-ranging selection of curiosities from decades past, from thwarted epics to camp relics to vast, inscrutable psychedelia.
- [SOCIALIST MODERNISM IN RIGA](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/socialist-modernism-in-riga/) - Riga’s architectural history spans centuries: many of its traditional Baltic wood buildings are battered but still standing, and its Art Nouveau structures are a standout, competing even with powerhouse cities like Paris in preservation and density. But it is Riga’s socialist modernist buildings that offer a unique lens into the city’s mid-to-late 20th century, with several major projects initiated before the fall of the Soviet Union but finished after, a physical record of Latvia’s postwar urban development under the shadow of occupation.
- [PORTO: SIGNS AND FACADES](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/porto-signs-and-facades/) - The storefronts, façades, and marquees of Portugal’s second city offer a startling blend of styles. Traditional tilework, geometric modernism, and startlingly honed typography often cover multiple stories, with signage making full use of the city’s often tall, narrow buildings.
- [UKRAINIAN MODERNISM](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/ukrainian-modernism/) - Ukraine’s 20th-century architectural legacy is complex, layered, and endlessly fraught. Featuring structures weathered by war, politics, and time in turn, Ukrainian Modernism, new from Fuel Publishing, captures the country's architectural infrastructure at a particularly fraught and fragile moment. The result is a striking document of buildings that are conceptually complex, surprisingly varied, and, despite everything, resilient in the face of insurmountable forces.
- [WORLDWIDE CONCRETE: FROM CHICAGO TO SEOUL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/worldwide-concrete-from-chicago-to-seoul/) - A new collection from Blue Crow Media gives a global perspective on monumental concrete structures.
- [HANSAVIERTEL: THE SPIRIT OF '57](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/hansaviertel-spirit-of-57/) - The Interbau (International Building Exhibition) of 1957 was a bold attempt to not only rebuild but also re-modernize Hansaviertel, the bulb-shaped section of Berlin-Tiergarten that had been devastated by Allied bombs during the war. Designed by a team of modernist architects including Le Corbusier, Oskar Niemeyer, and Walter Gropius, the project presented its angular, geometric, and frequently colorful designs as a Western counterpoint to the grandiose neoclassical rebuild of Karl-Marx-Allee in the Soviet Quarter.
- [TOSHI OMAGARI DISCUSSES "ARCADE GAME TYPOGRAPHY"](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/arcade-game-typography/) - IN-GAME TYPOGRAPHY of the arcade age played a role similar to that of neon signs in decades prior: to grab the attention of passersby, define brands and products, and above all make a unique aesthetic statement within the limits of its technology. Arcade games had to not only stand out in dark rooms and corridors, they had to compete side-by-side against other games, and along with eye-catching cabinet designs and sound blaring through speakers, a game's onscreen display – called "attract mode" – was its primary means of drawing in paying customers. Typography played an essential role in drawing in players and convincing them to spend that first quarter – and after they had done so, in displaying essential information, providing encouragement, and keeping score. For those with enough skills, the experience of entering one's initials on a semi-permanent High Score screen provided the ultimate type-based endorphin rush.
- [INTERVIEW: CIARÁN FAHEY OF ABANDONED BERLIN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/interview-ciaran-fahey-abandoned-berlin/) - FOR THE PAST decade, journalist Ciarán Fahey has been documenting Berlin’s abandoned places: factories, train stations, hospitals, power stations, shuttered embassies, decaying villas, and everything in between. On his website Abandoned Berlin he documents these disappearing places in photos and words, focusing on the stories hidden behind crumbling walls and boarded-up windows. The human side of these modern ruins lies at the heart of his project: as the site’s welcome message says, “every crumbling building, creaking floorboard, fluttering curtain and flaking piece of paint has a tale begging to be told.”
- [INTERVIEW: DARMON RICHTER](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/interview-darmon-richter/) - CHERNOBYL: A STALKER’S GUIDE, new from Darmon Richter and FUEL Publishing, is an impressive hybrid: part travelogue, part memoir, part essay. The book weaves together numerous strands of history, mythology, and ecology that intersect at Chernobyl, ranging from Prometheus as an atomic Marxist saint to pop-cultural references like the Fallout games and HBO’s Chernobyl to mushrooms as a potential solution nuclear waste solution. Richter, who has spent decades exploring and writing about what he calls “ideological architecture” (which often, but by no means always, focuses on Communist-era buildings) does an impressive job of unifying these numerous trajectories, resulting in a highly focused and immensely readable study of a fundamentally misunderstood place.
- [INTERVIEW: KONSTANTINOS DIMOPOULOS DISCUSSES "VIRTUAL CITIES"](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/konstantinos-dimopoulos-discusses-virtual-cities/) - IN THE ERA before the world was fully mapped onto its current grid, creators of atlases had creative license to fill in gaps in the collective knowledge however they saw fit, with sensationalized descriptions of new lands, people, and creatures being the norm rather than the exception. With every corner of the world mapped and measured, what atlases and travel writing have gained in knowledge and accuracy they have lost, at least to some degree, in wonder and creativity.
- [INTERVIEW: JAMES J. CONWAY OF RIXDORF EDITIONS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/rixdorf-editions/) - FOUNDED IN BERLIN in 2017, Rixdorf Editions is an independent press dedicated to publishing neglected German texts of the late 19th and early 20th century in new English translations. In focusing on previously untranslated works of the pre-Weimar "Wilhelmine" era, the press sheds light on a literary era that is often overlooked, despite having produced writing as startlingly creative and groundbreaking – if not more so – than the more famous movements that would follow.
- [URBEX IN DUBLIN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/urbex-in-dublin/) - When it comes to urban exploration, Dublin's abandoned places offer an experience both unique and universal.
- [INTERVIEW: AARON A. REED DISCUSSES "50 YEARS OF TEXT GAMES"](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/50-years-text-games/) - Like the earliest examples of books and film, the earliest computer games were defined by the limits of their technology. Games such as Tennis for Two (eventually re-envisioned as Pong) and Spacewar! used monochrome sprites that could be modulated via console-style controls; when graphics had to make the jump to home-based consoles, they became blocky and pixelated, recognizable only by the game’s title and box art.
- [LONDON ESTATES: BRUTAL BEAUTIES](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/london-estates/) - London-based publisher FUEL's books on Modernist and Brutalist architecture have generally focused on Russia and Central Asia, in a growing series of titles with a landscape-hardcover format. With London Estates, they bring the project to their own doorstep, documenting council housing across the capital. The buildings within date from the 40s to the 80s, with
- [EINDHOVEN MODERN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/eindhoven-modern/) - Like many urban centers in the Netherlands, Eindhoven experienced massive devastation of its architecture and infrastructure during WWII.
- [THE YEAR UNDER THE MACHINE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/the-year-under-the-machine/) - The Year Under the Machine, by Swedish author Peter Danielsson, occupies a place somewhere between art book, artist's book, and illustrated novel. Story-wise, it is a sci-fi / horror novel told in brief chapters, which are often minimalist to the point that they border on poetry. The book relates a year-long visitation by a vast
- [BRUTALIST ITALY](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/brutalist-italy/) - New from the prolific FUEL Publishing, Brutalist Italy is a photographic tour of the monumental concrete churches, apartment towers, and civic structures of Italy. Photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego, authors of the previous FUEL volume Soviet Asia, here turn their lenses to their homeland, documenting a multifaceted and wildly varied collection of structures that
- [A BRIEF GUIDE TO SILENT FILM IN BERLIN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/silent-film-in-berlin/) - FROM THE VERY earliest days of film, Berlin has made essential contributions to the medium, as both a center of production and a filming location. One of the most legendary silent films of all time, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was made in Weißensee in 1920, part of a golden age when hundreds of films were produced in Berlin's "Little Hollywood".
- [EAST GERMAN MODERN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/east-german-modern/) - DURING ITS FOUR-plus decades of existence, the GDR was a unique geopolitical paradox. Its place at the heart of the Cold War conflict belied the simple, day-to-day lives of the vast majority of its citizens. This paradox manifests itself visibly in the architecture of the former GDR, where often-cosmic abstract and geometric tendencies exist alongside the drab and mundane.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: PAIMIO SANATORIUM](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-paimio-sanatorium/) - Paimio Sanatorium, located among the pine forests of southwestern Finland, is both a modernist marvel and a leading example of human-centered architecture. Completed in 1933, and based on a contest-winning design by the young husband-and-wife team of Alvar and Aino Aalto, the building was designed from the ground up as a place of healing, rest, and tranquility. Set among the pine forests east of Paimio, a small town about thirty kilometers east of Turku, the building is surrounded by green space on all sides...
- [RETROTOPIA: DESIGN FOR SOCIALIST SPACES](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/retrotopia-design-for-socialist-spaces/) - Now open at Berlin's Kunstgewerbemuseum, Retrotopia: Design for Socialist Spaces is "a collaborative exhibition project that looks at the role and influence of design in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc and former Yugoslavia between the 1950s and the 1980s." The exhibit features photographs, objects, and recreations of designed spaces from throughout the Soviet bloc, and includes many designs that never made it past the concepting and drafting phases. Now open at Berlin's Kunstgewerbemuseum, Retrotopia: Design for Socialist Spaces is "a collaborative exhibition project that looks at the role and influence of design in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc and former Yugoslavia between the 1950s and the 1980s." The exhibit features photographs, objects, and recreations of designed spaces from throughout the Soviet
- [INVENTING GREENLAND](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/inventing-greenland/) - WITH A TOTAL population of 56,000 spread across a landmass twice the size of all other Nordic countries combined, Greenland’s overall density hovers at just over zero. The precursors to Greenland’s modern-day inhabitants were settlers both indigenous and European, dating back millennia and including the Saqqaq, Independence I-II, and Dorset cultures, as well as the Greenlandic Vikings who settled in the far south in 982 (led by Erik the Red). All these prior cultures and settlements, however, disappeared, leaving only archaeological records.
- [HUNDERTWASSER FOR FUTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/hundertwasser-for-future/) - FRIEDENSREICH HUNDERTWASSER (1928-2000) WAS an artist, architect, and activist known for his holistic, all-encompassing embrace of nature and ecology in both his life and work. While on the surface his artistic and personal style would seem to place him squarely in the freewheeling hippie milieu of the late 60s, he also possessed a rigorousness and discipline that made him more monk than hedonist.
- [NES/FAMICOM: A VISUAL COMPENDIUM](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/nes-famicom-visual-compendium/) - CLOCKING IN AT 536 pages, NES/Famicom: A Visual Compendium offers a wealth of retro goodness for die-hard gamers, nostalgia seekers, and pixel-art fans alike. In addition to its eye-popping visuals, the book includes features on major developers like Konami and Capcom, extensive box art, interviews with developers from both Japan and the west, and fan tributes both written and visual.
- [SOVIET ASIA](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/soviet-asia/) - TOWERING CONCRETE SCULPTURES inlaid with bright tiles, Brutalist housing blocks adorned with intricate patterns: the structures of post-Soviet Central Asia are a study in east-west contrasts, and include some of the stranger relics of the Cold War era.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: LES CHOUX DE CRÉTEIL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-les-choux-de-creteil/) - Les Choux de Créteil ("The Cabbages of Créteil") is a grouping of fifteen of housing towers in the Paris suburb of Créteil. The buildings, designed by architect Gérard Grandval, were completed in 1974, and remain fully occupied. In recent years, approximately 25% of the project's overall rooms have been reallocated as student housing.
- [HONG KONG MODERN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/hong-kong-modern/) - FOR STUDENTS AND aficionados of architecture, Hong Kong offers a dizzying array of building types, with starkly different styles juxtaposed side-by-side or even within single buildings. While such diversity of architectural typologies is not surprising given Hong Kong's unique history of competing influences, it is nonetheless unique among world cities in the sheer magnitude at which it has attempted to scale its building projects to an ever-growing population. With the largest of the city's ubiquitous residential towers housing in excess of 10,000 people, and combined multitower estates holding hundreds of thousands in all, there are few other cities in the world that can match it in terms of sheer verticality and density.
- [TOUCH WOOD: LIVES AND AFTERLIVES OF TREES](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/touch-wood/) - AS THE CURRENT century plays out and the need for sustainability in architecture becomes more urgent, it is increasingly important to take the full life cycles of buildings into account. It is not enough for a building's post-construction existence to meet base levels of energy efficiency; the materials and processes used to build it, as well as the source of those materials, must be sustainable as well. As resources go, wood is unrivaled its potential to either dramatically raise or drastically lower the carbon footprint of buildings, both before and after they are completed.
- [ROBOTIC LANDSCAPES: DESIGNING THE UNFINISHED](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/robotic-landscapes/) - AT OUR CURRENT moment in third decade of the 21st century, the relationship between technology and conservation could generously be described as uneasy: decades of greenwashing have seen the goodwill behind formerly sound words like “eco”, “organic”, and “autonomous” erode like so much sand. Current technological advances, from electric / autonomous vehicles to drones to the self-perpetuating slurry of metaverse and NFT content, pay occasional lip service to the impending wave of climate catastrophes, while rarely working to counteract it, and in some cases even accelerating it.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: GROßER HEINEBERG](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-grosser-heineberg/) - The Großer Heineberg is a 56-meter hill in Potsdam-Bornim (peak at 52.435010, 12.988588, map below). After WWII it was used as a dump for building materials, and while the vegetation has generally made a comeback the soil is still filled with pieces of brick, tile, and glass, with larger piles of rubble appearing frequently.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: GAME ON EXHIBITION, TOKYO](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/game-on-exhibition-tokyo-bkrs8/) - GAME ON IS A massive exhibition spanning the entire history of videogames, from Tennis for Two to home consoles, and from massive arcade cabinets to VR headsets. Originally curated by the Barbican Centre, the exhibition came to Tokyo's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Spring 2016.
- [EASTERN BLOCKS: CONCRETE LANDSCAPES OF THE FORMER EASTERN BLOC](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/eastern-blocks-concrete-landscapes/) - BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE IS experiencing something of a renaissance - or at the very least, a zombified second coming. With the opening of formerly sequestered countries in the Eastern Bloc and the ease of taking and sharing digital photos, hulking tower flats and concrete curiosities have emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. In the words of the authors, “The Iron Curtain was understood in the West as The Concrete Curtain. Everything behind it was perceived as mass produced and grey.”
- [MEETING MARZAHN: FROM PLATTENBAUEN TO THE GÄRTEN DER WELT](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/meeting-marzahn-plattenbauen-gaerten-der-welt/) - Marzahn, in the far northeast of Berlin, isn’t exactly a standard Berlin hotspot. You could spend a lifetime in Berlin without ever setting foot in this former GDR suburb, and while it’s easy enough to reach by train or tram, it’s not exactly on the way to any notable destinations, and lies past other eastern attractions like the Tierpark and the Muggelsee. But as Marzahn resident Bertie Alexander writes, “There’s a secret pleasure in not being caught up in the incessant hype and stereotypical lifestyles of Berlin,” which is a sentiment that rings true for many of us who live in the city’s less-hyped outlying districts. (You can read his excellent piece in its entirety here.)Aesthetically, Marzahn is something of a time-capsule of the former east, particularly in its housing: as examples of Berlin Plattenbauen go, Marzahn is the ne plus ultra in both quantity and quality. Plattenbauen (“panel buildings”, roughly)—the endlessly-reproducible housing towers that could be stacked indefinitely like brutalist Legos—were one of the trademarks of the former East Germany, along with many other communist countries. These towers of white or gray concrete, accented with whimsically-colored balconies, were megalithic kitsch, sky-high projections of dark whimsicality built to offset crises of overpopulation (particularly, in the case of Marzahn, stemming from immigration from Eastern Bloc countries from the 1960s onward).
- [POCKET KINGDOMS: REIMAGINING MOBILE GAMES](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/pocket-kingdoms-reimagining-mobile-games/) - FOR SUCH A new medium, mobile games have already gathered quite the set of negative connotations. At best, they’re regarded as the EPs of the gaming world, tiding players over until the LP comes out, or released simultaneously as bonus material (Fallout Shelter is an example of the former, the GTAV app of the latter). At worst, the commentariat derides new mobile ventures as a cynical cash-grab, particularly when they’re tied to a pre-existing series. Between the two extremes, they tend to be viewed as a necessary industry-wide evil to which even revered giants like Nintendo must pay tribute if they hope to survive.
- [ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: MARCOS WEISS / SOCY](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/artist-spotlight-marcos-weiss/) - Marcos Weiss, AKA Socy, is a freelance concept artist who has lived in Brazil, Germany, and the U.S., and currently lives and works in Berlin. His most recent project is the forthcoming 9Lives Arena from Touchhour Games, due out on Steam later this year.
- [PHANTOM ARCHITECTURE: THE GHOST THEATERS OF TURMSTRAßE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/phantom-architecture-ghosts-theaters-turmstrasse/) - Phantom Architecture is a series focusing on vanished buildings, both in Berlin and further afield.Like so many Berlin locations, the corner of Turmstraße and Stromstraße in Moabit saw multiple buildings rise and fall over not centuries, but decades. The first, the Ufa-Palast, was built in 1925 by the state-sponsored Universum Films AG. Designed by the architect Fritz Wilms (who specialized in theaters), it was a massive, 1700-seat cinema, complete with a classical, columned facade, a lavish foyer with its own phone booth, and a restaurant (the somewhat alarmingly named Café Vaterland) in a separate building just east of the theater.
- [INFECTED GAZE: THE AFTERLIFE OF THE WITNESS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/infected-gaze-the-afterlife-of-the-witness-l4225/) - I'VE BEEN WANTING to write about The Witness for several months now, but kept getting hung up on how to address the elephant in the room (or in this case, on the island): namely, how difficult the game is, both in the classic hard-to-solve sense and in how much it asks of players conceptually. There's no question the game's hundreds of puzzles are exceedingly difficult, and require an iron stoicism to complete without rage-Googling. But the second layer of difficulty runs deeper, and is more open to debate: assuming one plays the game "right", i.e. avoids any and all online discussions of the game (and only requires assistance from one's spouse or partner on—I don't know, let's say 10-20% of the puzzles), and somehow, through perseverance, luck, page after page of maniacal scribbling, and the aforementioned pre-internet Genuine Human Interaction factor, manages to complete the game—is it worth it?
- [THE SUNDRY SIGNS OF MOABIT](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/sundry-signs-of-moabit/) - Like most of Berlin, our adopted neighborhood of Moabit has its share of signs ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, including many that have outlived the stores whose names they bear. This far-from-complete roundup features some of the neighborhood's most colorful signage.
- [PHANTOM ARCHITECTURE OF PALM SPRINGS: THE CANYON HOTEL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/phantom-architecture-of-palm-springs-1/) - Phantom Architecture is a series focusing on vanished buildings, both in Berlin and further afield. In this special Palm Springs edition, guest contributor Jesse Simon chronicles the vanished buildings of Palm Springs, the Southern California vacation/retirement enclave that, despite its wealth, must occasionally give a structure back to the surrounding desert.AT FIRST I didn't realise the hotel was abandoned. It caught my eye while I was driving down South Palm Canyon, just another example of desert modernism. I decided to stop for a few pictures. It was only after I got out of the car that I realised there were chains across the driveway, and thick curtains covering the floor to ceiling windows of the main lobby.
- [FLASH GALLERY: JELLYFISH AT THE BERLIN AQUARIUM](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/flash-gallery-jellyfish-berlin-aquarium/) - Tiny dancers at the Berlin Aquarium, Summer 2016.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: SCHLOSS DAMMSMÜHLE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-schloss-dammsmuhle/) - EVEN IN A city strewn with such a wealth of abandoned architectural oddities, Schloß Dammsmühle stands out as remarkable—both for its age (the main building is nearly 250 years old) and the remarkable (and infamous) pedigrees of some of its 20th-century owners. Built in 1768, it was alternately improved and abandoned through the Weimar era before being commandeered by the Nazis, and in 1940, Himmler made it his base of operations.
- [ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: BEN CATMULL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/artist-spotlight-ben-catmull/) - BEN CATMULL IS an Oakland artist who works in various combinations of ink, watercolor, and scratchboard. He is currently branching out into metal plate intaglio printmaking and combining handmade miniatures with filmmaking (no, not stop motion). His letterpress prints (including the moth image below) started as simple pen-and-ink drawings and were printed by Volta press. Ben's published works are Ghosts and Ruins (2013) and Monster Parade (2006), both from Fantagraphics, and Paper Theater (2001, Xeric Grant). Physical copies of Monster Parade are sold out, but it can be read online here.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: KRAFTWERK CHARLOTTENBURG](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-kraftwerk-charlottenburg/) - Built at the turn of the 20th century, when Charlottenburg was still independent from Berlin, the Kraftwerk Charlottenburg sought to meet the robust electrical needs of the wealthy, growing city. Large pipes transported most of the power across the Spree, which built into the structure of an elaborately-ornamented stone-and-metal footbridge, the Siemens-Steg. Over the following century, its output expanded to include hot water and natural gas, and was able to emerge relatively unscathed from the Second World War.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: YOYOGI STADIUM, TOKYO](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-yoyogi-stadium/) - IN THE SUMMER of 2020, Yoyogi Stadium (also known as the Yoyogi National Gymnasium) will come full circle, playing host to the Olympics for the second time in half a century. Built for the 1964 Tokyo games, the stadium's striking combination of viking-ship roof and brutalist concrete is the work of acclaimed architect Kenzo Tange, who also designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
- [PHANTOM ARCHITECTURE OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: GHOSTS OF THE NATIONAL TRAIL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/phantom-architecture-ghosts-national-trail/) - THE STRETCH OF road between Goffs and Amboy, California, has been around for over a hundred years, and in that time it has been known by many names. It initially formed a part of the National Old Trails Road, a primitive, mostly unpaved cross-country route that predated the establishment of the US highway system. In the late 1920s it was incorporated into Route 66 and under this designation it served for decades as the main thoroughfare through the Mojave desert.
- [EASTERN SAXONY: WEIßWASSER TO THE RAKOTZBRÜCKE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/eastern-saxony-weisswasser-rakotzbrucke/) - The forests of eastern Saxony take on a dreamlike, glowing cast in late summer. The relentlessly verdant region is dotted with small, idyllic lakes that range in color from deep blue to turquoise to a deep, irridescent green, and the woods are still and silent, as if saving their energy for fall.At the state's far eastern edge, just a few kilometers from the Polish border, stands a 150-year-old curiosity: a perfectly semicircular bridge called the Rakotzbrücke. The bridge, along with other equally curious stone artifacts, was built in the 1860s by the local count, and spans a small, eerie lake that is little more than a pond. That it still stands today is a testament as much to its inconvenience as its quality: though crossable on foot, it's tricky in the best of weather, and downright treacherous in winter (to say nothing of the nearby signs that prohibit crossing it at all). Though technically located in the village of Kromlau, if you're coming from Berlin by train, the closest station is Weißwasser to the south. Sleepy on the busiest of days, and a veritable ghost town on Sundays, the area around the station is dotted with fenced-off village homes and colony-style gardens, interspersed (as is so much of the former East) with crumbling, ruined buildings, complete with trees and other vegetation growing through collapsed floors and open roofs.
- [THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BERLIN TYPOGRAPHY](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/wonderful-world-berlin-typography/) - Berlin Typography is a project dedicated to celebrating the incredible range of sign-based type that proliferates throughout the German capital. It reveals an astounding range of typefaces, ranging from traditional blackletter to midcentury sans-serifs to a bewildering spread of outliers (with a particular soft spot for cursive neon, a signature Berlin aesthetic if there ever was one). The project's tagline, "Words and the City", evokes the corporeal nature of urban signage, with numerous pictures revealing the particular detail given to punctuation, umlauts, and the uniquely German Eszett (ß).
- [THE ART OF ATARI](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/the-art-of-atari/) - GROWING UP, I had a closer-than-usual relationship with Atari's games: with a close family member who worked at the then-young Silicon Valley company, I had access to dozens of games, sometimes even in pre-release builds. With most of the games I played existing only on floppy disks, this mind-bending cover art (not to mention any sort of packaging, background info, or instruction manual) was totally absent from the experience. This meant contending not only with the games' built-in learning curves, but also figuring out the frequently bizarre lore and background stories of the games only through their totemic, rudimentary pixel art.
- [PHANTOM ARCHITECTURE OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST: ONLY THE SIGNS REMAIN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/phantom-architecture-only-the-signs-remain/) - Now I know why they call Main Street a drag– Jeremy Gluck, Sorrow DriveCIVILISATIONS ARE JUDGED by what they leave behind. Sometime around the beginning of the automobile age – that period in the post-war years when car ownership became not merely affordable but essential – it was determined that there existed a proportional relationship between the speed of travel and the size a sign needed to be in order to convey its information to the traveller. Simply put, as roads grew wider and faster, the signs grew larger.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: EASTERN SPRING](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-eastern-spring/) - THAT SPECIAL TIME of year... when the pastels of the DDR Plattenbauten match the budding flowers.
- [THE INDUSTRIAL CATHEDRALS OF PETER BEHRENS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/industrial-cathedrals-peter-behrens/) - CONSIDERED BY SOME to be the world’s first industrial designer, Peter Behrens (1868-1940) is also one of the giants of modern German architecture. His legacy looms especially large in Berlin, where two massive building complexes—the Turbinenfabrik in Moabit and the AEG Humboldthain campus in Wedding—tower monumentally over their respective neighborhoods.
- [PHANTOM ARCHITECTURE: THE ORANGE MONSTER OF HANSAVIERTEL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/phantom-architecture-orange-monster-of-hansaviertel/) - Among the many buildings currently or formerly owned by Berlin's Technische Universität (TU) are several colorful curiosities, including the Schiffbau, which rises above the Landwehrkanal at the Tiergarten's western edge (and had a brief cameo in the cult film The Apple) and the 60s-era megaliths surrounding Ernst-Reuter-Platz, spanning blocks apiece and often covered in monochrome metal siding. For decades, a lesser-known (but equally colorful) structure sat somewhat north of the campus' gravitational center, at the far northern end of Englische Strasse on the banks of the Spree.TU sold the eponymously-named 20 Englische Strasse to the Irish investment group Cannon Kirk, who announced its demolition to make way for a housing development called Englische Gärten. After the sale, though, it sat empty for several years, and was eventually occupied by activists in late 2015, who demanded it be used to house the increasing numbers of homeless refugees in Berlin (article here, in German). On September 10th, police evicted all protesters, and soon after, demolition of the building began in earnest.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: NATIONALPARK JASMUND, RÜGEN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-jasmund-rugen/) - RÜGEN, GERMANY'S LARGEST island, lies where the eastern Ostsee opens up into the Baltic. Closer to both Sweden and Denmark than to Hamburg, the island has remained remarkably untouched over centuries of changing rule...
- [HORIZON ZERO DAWN: COLLECTOR'S EDITION GUIDE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-collectors-edition/) - GAME GUIDES OCCUPY a unique space in the present-day videogame universe. As with the guidebook industry as a whole (including everything from travel guides and maps to cookbooks, legal guides, and repair manuals), the option to simply consult an online forum is nearly always present. The result is a greater pressure on printed guides to offer beauty and substance, and to exist as complementary projects that stand on their own.
- [DRAGON SKULLS AND CABBAGE SOUP: PLAYING SKYRIM IN 2017](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/dragon-skulls-cabbage-soup-skyrim/) - AMONG ALL THE games I’ve played over the past decade, Skyrim holds a special place. I’ve probably spent longer talking to Belethor, the smarmy but conveniently-placed Whiterun merchant, than I have playing many other titles from start to finish in their entirety. I’ve quested for hours to win the favor of a lone companion for the sole purpose of having someone to help carry my unwieldy piles of stuff – an apt if depressing analogy for real-world relationships.
- [CCCP: COSMIC COMMUNIST CONSTRUCTIONS PHOTOGRAPHED](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/cccp-cosmic-communist-constructions-photographed/) - DURING THE FINAL decades of the Soviet Union, architects found themselves freer to create unconventional structures than at any point in the country's history. This was particularly true in the republics outside Russia, where, while cursory tributes still had to be paid to overarching socialist ideals, the structures themselves took on a dizzying array of forms.
- [THIS BRUTAL WORLD](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/this-brutal-world/) - THIS BRUTAL WORLD, a catalog of worldwide Brutalist architecture, presents its starkly beautiful black-and-white photos as both a treatise and a love letter. The book’s author, Peter Chadwick, falls resolutely and joyously on the side of Brutalism as an egalitarian, economically progressive, and fundamentally global movement.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: PFAUENINSEL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-pfaueninsel/) - PFAUENINSEL ("PEACOCK ISLAND"), A 100-HECTARE island of forests and meadows on the Havel river, is a singular Berlin curiosity. Its origin as a game preserve dates back to Friedrich Wilhelm I, though it was his great-nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II that first populated the island with the eponymous birds. The island's current peacock population, descendants of the originals, roam the island freely alongside human visitors (and the occasional pack of grazing sheep), and their distinctive hair-raising calls, which can be heard kilometers away, add to the surreal and otherworldly atmosphere.
- [ART WITHOUT DEATH: RUSSIAN COSMISM](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/art-without-death-russian-cosmism/) - THE ROOTS OF Russian Cosmism lie in the transcendental utopian writings of the 19th-century philosopher Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, who advocated for, among other things, the exploration of space and a literal overcoming of death. Inextricably tied to the Russian Revolution and the rise of the USSR, Cosmism promoted broad ideals that mirrored the heart of Communism: that humanity should collectively strive to transcend the petty, temporary, and mundane.
- [PHANTOM ARCHITECTURE: THE SCHÖNEBERG GASOMETER](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/phantom-architecture-schoeneberg-gasometer/) - BUILT BETWEEN 1908 and 1910, the former Schöneberg gas storage and supply tank – better known as the Gasometer – remained in active use for over 8 decades. Finally decommissioned in 1995, its skeletal frame still looms over central Schöneberg.
- [HOLIDAYS IN SOVIET SANATORIUMS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/holidays-in-soviet-sanatoriums/) - AT THE CENTER of the Venn Diagram of Brutalist architecture, spa culture and Communist kitsch lies the Soviet sanatorium. In its heyday, the USSR had a network of hundreds of such centers across dozens of territories, from Estonia to Kazakhstan to the Russian Far East. Though their roots lie in the Russian tradition of curative baths, the sanatoriums of the 20th century shoehorned nicely into Soviet ideals of health and responsible rejuvenation, with workers encouraged to check themselves in yearly for a tune-up of their corporal machinery.
- [WATCHING TARKOVSKY IN THE WITNESS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/watching-tarkovsky-in-the-witness/) - THERE IS A vast openness – visually, thematically, atmospherically – to any given Tarkovsky film that feels easy to attribute to the monumental scale of Russia, both in its history and its sheer physical size. But this too-easy association belittles an artist who brought immense visions to life as much in spite of his homeland as because of it.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: CINEMAS OF THE BERLINALE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-cinemas-of-the-berlinale/) - All photos taken during Berlinale 2018, 15-25 February 2018.
- [HANAMI IN BERIN: TV-ASAHI-KIRSCHBLÜTENALLEE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/hanami-in-berlin-tv-asahi-kirschbluetenallee/) - EACH SPRING, BERLIN emerges from the frozen temperatures of Central-European winter with an incredible show of color: thousands of cherry trees blooming all across the city.
- [SAMOROST: SPACE IS THE PLACE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/samorost-space-is-the-place/) - THE UNIVERSE IN which the three Samorost games takes place is a heady blend of psychedelia, space-based sci-fi, and charming (if often dark) fable-like stories. Aesthetically, the games are like modernist Czech film posters come to life, pairing strange, twisted landscapes with archetypal, folkloric characters, all backgrounded by the blackness of space.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: HELSINKI NEON AND SIGNAGE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-helsinki-neon/) - HELSINKI, WITH ITS months-long stretches containing more darkness than light, is a natural fit for neon lighting. For businesses operating in the dark winter months, neon serves as a beacon that invites customers in from the cold. In contrast to other cities, where neon often takes on splashier forms, much of Helsinki's neon is set in orderly sans-serifs, though here and there bursts of cursive and other stylized types still break through.
- [BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE OF TALLINN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/brutalist-architecture-of-tallinn/) - THE COMMUNIST GOVERNMENTS in both the Baltics and Yugoslavia went on a spree of monument-building in the decades after WWII, which, when the ruling paradigms collapsed in the early 1990s, became fraught symbols of a tangled past in the power vacuum of the present. While some of the monuments in these regions were destroyed and others were moved or built around, most have been simply left to age themselves into obsolescence. When the material is concrete, however, the aging-out game can be a long one.
- [SPOMENIK MONUMENT DATABASE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/spomenik-monument-database/) - SPOMENIK MONUMENT DATABASE, out this week from FUEL Publishing, chronicles the massive, brutalist war memorials spread across the former Yugoslavia. While “spomenik” simply means “memorial” in Serbo-Croatian, the word has come to be associated with the particular form these monuments took from the 1960s to the 1980s: wildly asymmetrical abstract constructions of concrete, stone and metal, often placed incongruously in remote, pastoral settings.
- [THE ART OF POINT-AND-CLICK ADVENTURE GAMES](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/the-art-of-point-and-click-adventure-games/) - THE UK-BASED Bitmap Books is steadily becoming one of the foremost chroniclers of everything that falls under the umbrella of “retro gaming”. Their exhaustive, full-color volumes trace various threads running through the history of videogames, and while the majority of their titles are dedicated to a specific console, other volumes cover everything from vintage arcade cabinets to the lost world of game box art.
- [RUMMU ASH HILLS AND SUNKEN QUARRY](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/rummu-ash-hills-and-sunken-quarry/) - THE VILLAGE OF Rummu, in northern Estonia, is home to a geographical oddity: a lake with several offshore buildings that are partially or completely submerged, skirted by pale white hills that taper down to a gentle, beach-like incline. The lake is in fact a former limestone and marble quarry, now shut down and flooded. The site teems with plant and animal life, particularly in the summer, making it a striking blend of the idyllic and creepy – particularly given that one of the sunken buildings is a former prison that once housed the quarry’s involuntary labor source.
- [DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS ART AND ARCANA: A VISUAL HISTORY](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/dungeons-and-dragons-art-and-arcana/) - WHEN IT COMES to truly iconic touchstones of fantasy and sci-fi, Dungeons and Dragons is in a plane of its own. After four-plus decades of existence, the cultural significance of its universe is rivaled by only a small handful of other heavy hitters like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Its early design and aesthetics borrowed liberally from Robert E. Howard’s Conan series, pulp novels and comics, and of course Tolkien, but its DNA – its “source code” – were the rigorous rulesets of the strategic wargaming community, which preceded it by decades.
- [BRUTAL LICHTERFELDE: THE MÄUSEBUNKER AND THE IHU](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/brutal-lichterfelde/) - WHILE THE PRIMARY campus of Berlin’s Freie Universität is in Dahlem, just west of the Botanischer Garten and just south of the US embassy’s imposing Dahlem location, the university also includes other satellite campuses in the former West Berlin. One of these is the Benjamin Franklin campus, located several kilometers southeast of Dahlem on the Spree.
- [WHEELS OF INDUSTRY: THE SIEMENSBAHN ABANDONED RAILROAD](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/wheels-of-industry-siemensbahn-abandoned-railroad/) - SIEMENS, MUCH LIKE AEG and Daimler, is a present-day German company with roots stretching back to the 19th century. Founded in an office on Kreuzberg’s Schöneberger Straße in 1847, by the time of founder Werner von Siemens’ death in 1892 the company had offices in 13 countries.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: FUNKY FUJI](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-funky-fuji/) - Shots of the ring road around Kawaguchiko (Lake Kawaguchi, Fuji Five Lakes Area) in springtime. The lake and surrounding areas are a wildly varied mix of posh resorts, working-class restaurants, dilapidated former-glory hotels, modernist developments, and empty lakeside parks, reminiscent of South Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border and countless other mountain resort towns.
- [PRINTING POST-APOCALYPSE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/printing-post-apocalypse/) - IN THE RETRO-futuristic, post-apocalyptic world of the Fallout series, legible printed matter is a rare and valuable commodity. Finding an intact magazine or comic book gives valuable stats and perks, from increased know-how with machines to improved conversation skills to unlockable tattoos. Presumably, most books and magazines were far too delicate to survive the nuclear apocalypse, appearing as the junk-class items "burnt book" and "burnt trade magazine" (though the high-Nordic-fantasy world of Skyrim, also from Bethesda, certainly has its share of “Ruined Books” as well).
- [THE CRPG BOOK](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/the-crpg-book/) - THE CRPG BOOK, from the UK’s Bitmap Books, is the culmination of years of work by over a hundred contributors. It’s one of the most comprehensive histories of CRPGs ever written, and features in-depth review-style writeups of over 400 games, along with essays on the ancient history of role-playing games (going all the way back to the Prussian Empire), the early days of MUDs (multi-user dungeons, the earliest online games), the archaic but impressive PLATO computer system, and the importance of paper manuals and hand-drawn maps.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: SIEMENSSTADT ABANDONED STATION](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-siemensstadt-abandoned-station/) - THE SIEMENSBAHN WAS a short, “spur”-style urban railroad that served Berlin’s northwestern district of Siemsstadt from 1929 until 1980. Consisting of only three stations, it originated at Jungfernheide (a still-active station on the present-day Ringbahn), crossing the Spree and passing through the Wernerwerk and Siemensstadt stations before ending at Gartenfeld.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: RÜMMLER'S U7](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-ruemmlers-u7/) - THE U7 IN its current form was largely a product of Cold War-era West Berlin, and is arguably the most “West Berlin” of all U-Bahn lines. Despite being Berlin’s longest U-Bahn line (as well as one of the longest underground urban rail lines in all of Europe at 31.8 kilometers), every single one of its stations, from Rudow in the southeast to Rathaus Spandau in the northwest, falls within the borders of the former West Berlin.
- [VIDEO/ART: THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/video-art-first-fifty-years/) - BARBARA LONDON’S VIDEO/ART: The First Fifty Years is both a personal memoir and a history of an artistic medium from its genesis to the present. The effortlessness with which these two undertakings coexist is a testament to London’s lifelong commitment to her subject matter: as the founder of NY MOMA’s video programs, she was instrumental in bringing a once-underground art form into the broader establishment.New York in the 1970s was arguably the global epicenter of the fledgling new art form, with artists such as Nam June Paik, Beryl Korot, and Mary Lucier at the forefront.
- [GOROGOA: WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/gorogoa-wheels-within-wheels/) - AS THE LINE between mobile and non-mobile gaming becomes increasingly blurred, there's a tendency to qualify games that exist in both realms as being primarily part of the former, and only secondarily part of the latter.
- [STATISTA: TOWARDS A STATECRAFT OF THE FUTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/statista-towards-a-statecraft-of-the-future/) - IMMEDIATELY UPON ITS completion in 1970, Berlin’s Haus der Statistik (which stood north of Alexanderplatz in the shadow of the just-built Fernsehturm) took its place as one of the central organs of the GDR state apparatus. With the collection of data and statistics for all of East Germany as its goal, the eleven-story complex housed numerous bureaucratic units, including several floors of Stasi offices. Its street-level businesses were the ultimate in urbane GDR style, hosting two lounges (Jagdklause and the fabulously named Mocca-Eck), a hunting/fishing shop, and Natascha, a boutique offering the latest Soviet imports.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: MOUNT MISEN, MIYAJIMA, JAPAN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/photo-gallery-mount-misen/) - Mount Misen is the highest peak on Miyajima, a small semi-tropical island located a short ferry ride from Hiroshima. The island is sparsely populated, and deer roam freely through the forests and streets at lower altitudes. The particular latitude of the island gives it a unique biome in which coniferous trees coexist with lush jungle plants and wildlife, including monkeys and poisonous snakes.
- [CONCRETE SIBERIA](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/concrete-siberia/) - THE POZNAŃ-BASED publisher Zupagrafika documents Brutalist, prefab, and other concrete structures throughout Europe, focusing on their minimalist patterns and colorful flourishes. Their newest volume, Concrete Siberia, is a companion to last year’s Eastern Blocks (see our review here), focusing on Russia’s vast far north.
- [ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION: SOVIET SIGNS AND STREET RELICS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/soviet-signs-and-street-relics/) - IN THE MONTHS and years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, countless Communist-era monuments and statues have been toppled, dynamited, or otherwise destroyed. The process continues today, and is particularly accelerated in former Soviet states such as Ukraine, where clashes between pro-Russian activists and Ukranian nationalists often center around (literal) concrete representations of the country’s former occupier.
- [ANTON'S BERLIN: ANGELS UNDERGROUND](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/antons-berlin-angels-underground/) - FOR ACCLAIMED FASHION photographer Kristian Schuller, his recent return to Berlin is a homecoming in the truest sense. Born in Halchiu, Romania, Schuller emigrated to Berlin with his parents as a child, where his university years at UdK saw him studying fashion design with Vivienne Westwood and photography with F.C. Gundlach. From there an international trajectory of increasing recognition took him from London to Paris to New York, where he became one of the fashion world’s most sought-after photographers, shooting international celebrities for some of the world’s biggest style magazines.
- [UKRAINIAN RAILROAD LADIES: A TRIP THROUGH THE PAST](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/ukrainian-railroad-ladies-trip-through-the-past/) - IN UKRAINIAN RAILROAD LADIES, photographer Sasha Maslov documents the female workers of Ukraine’s national railway system in photographs that are both exquisitely arranged and highly personal. While brightly-colored uniforms serve as the initial focus, offering a vivid palette of Soviet-era contrasting pastels, the women themselves shine through as the true subjects, standing proudly against an equally-colorful array of backdrops.
- [PYONGYANG ARCHITECTURE MAP](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/pyongyang-architecture-map/) - EVEN IN YEARS without worldwide pandemics, visiting Pyongyang is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for most of the world’s population. But it could be argued that the Pyongyang Architectural Map, the newest such guide from the UK’s Blue Crow Media, is the perfect map for 2020: with travel being such a fraught prospect for the foreseeable future, the role of travel literature (including physical maps) has shifted from supplementing actual journeys to partially or fully supplanting them.
- [TREASURE HUNTING IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/treasure-hunting-concrete-jungle/) - BLUE CROW MEDIA IS a London-based publisher of maps, specializing in modernist and brutalist architecture worldwide. The maps are beautifully designed in a classic-modernist aesthetic, and take particular care in their choice of typefaces. The latter point is especially evident in the numerous bilingual maps, many of which use non-Latin scripts including Cyrillic, Georgian, and Hangul. In these maps, both languages get equal space in the layout, sending a clear message that they are intended for locals as well as tourists.
- [UNFINISHED METROPOLIS: ONCE AND FUTURE BERLIN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/unfinished-metropolis-once-and-future-berlin/) - THE GENESIS OF Berlin as we know it today happened just over a century ago, when, on October 1, 1920, the modern city of Greater Berlin (“Groß-Berlin”) was formed from eight adjacent cities and dozens of outlying districts. The formation of this new super-city doubled Berlin’s population from 1.9 million to what was, at the time, a staggering 3.9 million people, making it the world’s fifth-largest city after Tokyo.
- [SOVIET SEASONS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/soviet-seasons/) - PHOTOGRAPHER ARSENIY KOTOV takes a hands-on, boots-on-the-ground approach to photographing his home country. His new book, Soviet Seasons, is the result of traveling vast distances across Russia and the former USSR, with the goal of showing “how beautiful and diverse are the cities and nature of this vast region at different times of the year.” For those outside the former Soviet Union, who could perhaps be forgiven for reducing its seasons to either “snow” or “not snow” with each spanning about half the year, the book reveals wonderful gradients of weather, vegetation, and daylight that accompany seasonal change in various regions.
- [TXL: BERLIN'S HEXAGONAL HEART](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/txl-berlins-hexagonal-heart/) - BY THE TIME Tegel Airport officially opened in 1974, Berlin had already seen more than its share of aviation history. Half a century earlier, Otto Lilienthal launched his innovative gliders from a hilltop in Lichterfelde, and throughout the Weimar years and into WWII and the Cold War airfields sprung up all over the city.
- [CONCRETE WOUNDS: UKRAINE'S SOVIET ARCHITECTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/concrete-wounds-ukraines-soviet-architecture/) - THERE ARE FEW European architectural legacies more fraught than that of Soviet-era structures in the former USSR, and few places where this legacy is more divisive than Ukraine. In the decades since the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine’s Soviet past – which, even apart from the devastation wrought by the Nazis, includes tragedies such as Stalin’s genocidal holodomor and the Chernobyl disaster – has remained a wound that refuses to heal. More recently, Russia’s 2014 annexation/occupation of Crimea and Donbass further inflamed tensions between Kiev and Moscow, and ensured the debate over the Soviet legacy in Ukraine would be poisoned for years to come.
- [HOLIDAYS IN THE SUN: DDR VACATION ARCHITECTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/holidays-in-the-sun-ddr-vacation-architecture/) - Urlaubs(t)räume des Sozialismus, new from Wasmuth & Zohlen, explores the unique architectural history of East Germany’s vacation centers. The book starts by framing the concept of “vacation” in the DDR as being something fundamentally different from what it was in the West: in the latter, vacations were seen as an escape, a chance to “get away” from everyday routines and problems; in the former, they were an integral part of life, built into the yearly rhythm alongside work, school, and sick leave. The idea that regular vacation time was a right of every family was declared with the founding of the DDR in 1949, and throughout its four-decade history, the government created a vast infrastructure designed to bring industrial efficiency and simplicity to the process of planning one’s holidays.
- [BUNKERS IN THE SKY: THE BRUTALIST BERLIN MAP](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/bunkers-sky-brutalist-berlin-map/) - WE’VE COVERED BLUE Crow Media’s collection of Modernist Maps in the past, including an overview of the series and a look at their remarkable Pyongyang Architecture Map. Their newest addition, the Brutalist Berlin Map, joins London, Paris, Sydney, Boston and Washington in their sub-series on Brutalism, and serves as a fitting companion to 2016’s Modern Berlin Map. This newest map repeats some of the structures from its Modernist counterpart, which is to be expected given the implied Venn diagram that maps the ever-shifting overlap of Brutalism and Modernism: the Mäusebunker, Corbusierhaus, Akademie der Künste, the Czech Embassy, among others. Ultimately, while each map has more than enough unique entries to act as a standalone guide, the combination of the two offers even greater opportunities for exploration, as well as a perfect jumping-off point for further discussion.
- [BEAUTY AND THE EAST: NEW CHINESE ARCHITECTURE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/beauty-and-the-east-new-chinese-architecture/) - ALTHOUGH BY NEARLY any measure the explosive growth of China's cities in recent decades has been unprecedented in world history, the real growth has not yet even begun: by some estimates, nearly half of all construction worldwide in the next decade will happen in China. But while the sheer scale of the country's population and infrastructure will necessarily remain part of the discussion, there are signs that the true story of China's cities in the 21st century will lie in smaller details. Beauty and the East: New Chinese Architecture, out now in Germany from gestalten (with a worldwide release on March 30), focuses on the country's comparatively smaller-scale architectural projects such as museums, cultural centers, monasteries, and private residences. On the whole, the projects selected for the book represent the nascent Chinese Modernism that has emerged over the past two decades, with features such as raw concrete, whitewashed walls, and floor-to-ceiling windows standing alongside much older structures and forms.
- [ARCHITECTURE OF CHECHNYA AND THE NORTH CAUCASUS](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/architecture-of-chechnya-and-the-north-caucasus/) - THE FIRST GUIDE of its kind, Chechnya and North Caucasus: An Architectural Guidebook explores the diverse architecture of one of the former Soviet Union’s least-explored regions. The seven independent republics and two Russian territories that make up the relatively small North Caucasus region represent an incredible array of languages, cultures, religions, and traditions, and offer a correspondingly broad range of architectural highlights, from modernism and brutalism to traditional and Islamic-inspired hybrids.
- [OLD IS NEW: ARCHITECTURAL WORKS BY NEW MATERIAL RESEARCH LABORATORY](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/old-is-new/) - The architectural firm Shinsoken ("New Material Research Laboratory"), founded in 2008 by artist Hiroshi Sugimoto and architect Tomoyuki Sakakida, takes as its mission statement the paradox inherent in its name:Notwithstanding its name, New Material Research Laboratory examines materials from ancient and medieval times and focuses its activities on reinterpreting and reimagining the use of these materials in the present.Old is New, from Lars Müller Publishers, documents the studio's impressive body of work from the past 13 years. In texts arranged geometrically alongside a generous spread of interior and exterior photos, the studio's founders discuss their approach to architecture and design, giving particular attention to the use of old (or even ancient) materials and traditional techniques.
- [ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE JAPAN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/architectural-guide-japan/) - HISTORY, WHETHER THROUGH its presence or its absence, informs the architecture of modern Japan to a much greater degree than it does in many other countries. One one hand, the country’s millennia-long political, religious, and artistic history permeates its architectural culture to a tremendous degree, serving as an endless wellspring of inspiration and guidance for successive generations of architects and designers. On the other, Japanese architecture since 1868 (the beginning of the Meiji era that defines “modern” Japan) and especially since WWII has countless examples of structures that eschew homegrown traditions in favor of European and global styles, with some architects pursuing a specifically futurist and ahistorical aesthetic. The unprecedented building boom of the postwar period saw Japan emerge as a relentlessly forward-looking and technology-oriented society, with emerging megacities expanding at a breakneck pace.
- [ANTARCTIC RESOLUTION: DOCUMENTING A THAWING WORLD](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/antarctic-resolution/) - Antarctic Resolution, a monumental new "1000 page study of Antarctica's architectural, historical, ecological and climatic peculiarities" from Lars Müller Publishers, traces the history of the southernmost continent from the early "Heroic Age" explorers up through the present. The book sets out to map the world's least-known continent in numerous ways: cartographically, to be sure, but also chronologically (in both human and geological scales) and sociologically. Via dozens of essays and hundreds of maps and photos, the book creates a multidimensional model of Antarctica, with contributions from a diverse group of experts in science, history, ecology, architecture, and even art and literature. The essays are grouped into thematic chapters with unusually vivid and evocative names for a science-focused book ("Antarctic Pie", "Twenty-Six Quadrillion Tons of Ice", "The Ideological Use of Relics"), which serve more as prompts for creative thought than strictly organizational designations.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: SONAMBIENTE BERLIN TXL](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/sonambiente-berlin-txl/) - From August 12 - September 5, 2021, the sound festival Sonambiente took over Berlin's recently decommissioned Tegel Airport (TXL). Various sound-based installations took over the airports corridors, gates, and waiting rooms. As the airport saw its final flight in November 2020, and was fully decommissioned in May 2021, the building remained relatively intact, though informational signs and installed businesses (such as in-terminal restaurants) had been deconstructed, and some of the exterior facades had begun to show signs of wear.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: THE SUN MACHINE IS COMING DOWN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/sun-machine/) - The Sun Machine is Coming Down was a massive multimedia art installation that took over Berlin’s disused International Congress Center (ICC) from October 7-17, 2021.
- [ORTHODOX CHIC](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/orthodox-chic/) - The post-Soviet architecture of Ukraine is a complex and often fraught subject we’ve frequently explored on this site. Kyiv’s Osnovy Publishing is at the forefront of documenting the Soviet architectural legacy, as well as its newfound vernacular architecture, via numerous books that illustrate the patchwork approach to building and city planning in Ukraine since 1990. Its Chic series in particular – which began with 2019’s Balcony Chic, and now continues with Orthodox Chic – offers a deadpan view of the motley, often improvised constructions that define the modern Ukrainian cityscape.
- [SURVEY: ARCHITECTURE IN PEN AND INK](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/survey-book/) - Survey, the newest addition to Park Books’ ongoing Architecture Iconographies series, is an examination of architectural drawings, paintings, maps, and photographs from the last five centuries. Rather than attempting to showcase the full range of images from such an eventful and prolific epoch, the book chooses instead to present its subject via six essays, each of which focuses on a single architect or scholar. Through these essays – which mostly focus on 18th-19th century drawings of classical architecture, many of them from the UK’s Drawing Matter collection – the book makes the argument that surveys are not just visual renderings of buildings, but also an integral part of the way those buildings are perceived and understood.
- [ZACHELSBERG: POTSDAM'S ABANDONED SHOOTING RANGE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/zachelsberg-potsdam/) - THOUGH THERE ARE dozens of locations in greater Potsdam with “Berg” (literally “mountain”, though often applied to much more modest hills) in their names, the region is overwhelmingly rural, flat, and agrarian. Nonetheless, even among the sprawling corn and alfalfa fields and winding highways of Potsdam Nord, occasional clusters of hills reach high enough altitudes to be notable.
- [ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE: MOON](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/moon-architectural-guide/) - ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE: MOON, published to broadly coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first manned lunar mission, is a fascinating hybrid of various types of reference guide. From its first pages, the book fully commits to addressing the contradiction contained in its title: namely, how can one discuss the “architecture” of a place that is not just currently uninhabited, but could remain so indefinitely? While other entries in DOM’s Architectural Guide series are organized by region, the Moon guide is, understandably, instead chronological – after all, with most existing structures on the Moon having been built with little to no idea where they would eventually end up, the book can be forgiven for suspending the idea of architecture as a site-specific practice in this case.
- [JUNKSPACE IN PASTEL: GEORGE BYRNE'S "POST TRUTH"](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/post-truth/) - ORIGINALLY HAILING FROM Sydney, Australia, photographer George Byrne traveled extensively before finally settling in Los Angeles. The city became both his home and his subject (to the point of near-exclusivity, with rare exceptions made for Miami), and over the past decade he has developed a distinctive style and method, in which he digitally edits, alters, and blends photos into seamless, uncanny portmanteaus. The end result is a dreamlike series of bright, colorful locales that do not quite exist in the real world, appearing temporarily abandoned or forgotten, equal parts idyllic and abject.
- [OHRAI NORIYOSHI: GREEN UNIVERSE](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/green-universe/) - Noriyoshi Ohrai (1935-2015) was a Japanese poster artist and illustrator known for his vivid work that elevated mainstream sci-fi and action tropes into hallucinatory, richly detailed compositions. In addition to his well-known posters for Star Wars and Godzilla, he created promotional artwork for thousands of films from Japan and around the world.
- [DREAMING IN CONCRETE: CODY ELLINGHAM'S "DANCHI DREAMS"](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/dreaming-in-concrete-cody-ellingham/) - ORIGINALLY FROM NEW Zealand, photographer Cody Ellingham traveled to Tokyo on a scholarship in 2012. He ended up staying for six years, and while exploring the country’s staggeringly vivid and varied cityscapes he began photographing danchi, the massive public housing projects built in the aftermath of WWII. Like many such postwar projects in both the Soviet bloc and Western Europe, danchi took a core utopian vision and expanded it into vast, blocks-long megastructures capable of housing thousands. And, as is also often the case with utopian architecture, the decades since have not always been kind to the buildings themselves and those who depend on them.
- [WERNER DÜTTMANN: MAKING BERLIN MODERN](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/werner-duttmann-making-berlin-modern/) - MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE IN Berlin is, understandably, a subject heavy with the weight of history. The decades spent rebuilding from the devastation of WWII while split down the middle by two hostile powers meant that, for many building projects, aesthetics played a distant secondary role to functionality. Nonetheless, the severely limited building resources of both East and West did not stop the proliferation of bold, elegant Modernist constructions on both sides of the Wall. With entire neighborhoods in ruins and a postwar population in desperate need of housing and infrastructure, the buildings would be build regardless; the question for posterity was who could transcend the limited resources provided and make a lasting aesthetic impression on the cityscape.
- [TYPE IN TRANSIT: BERLIN'S WESTHAFEN STATION](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/type-in-transit-westhafen/) - Lying at the northern border of Berlin's Moabit district, just south of the Westhafenkanal on the U9 line, is U-Bahnhof Westhafen. In a city with so many strikingly varied train stations, Westhafen nonetheless stands as one of the most beautiful and unique: since 2000, the entire station has been home to a massive text-based art installation by artists Francoise Schein and Barbara Reiter, under the auspices of the multi-country Inscrire project.Westhafen is one of 27 stops on the Ringbahn, which means it's both a U-Bahn and S-Bahn station—but with the latter being a standard, ground-level outdoor station, the texts are limited just to the U-Bahn (i.e. underground) part of the complex and its connecting passages.
- [INFERNAL DOMESTIC: HR GIGER BY CAMILLE VIVIER](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/giger-vivier/) - HR Giger (1940–2014) is best known for the nightmarish creatures and environments of 1979’s Alien, and more broadly for his transgressive (yet deeply stylized and stylish) paintings on broadly “biomechanical” themes. Much of Giger’s work, which in addition to the paintings and drawings for which he was best known included sculpture, industrial art, and even furniture, was created in his Zurich home studio, which he transformed over the decades into a real-world embodiment of his aesthetic.
- [PHOTO GALLERY: Q BERLIN @ ICC](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/q-berlin/) - Q Berlin 2022, “the metropolitan conference for the immediate present”, took place at the International Congress Center in Westend on September 15-16, featuring a hybrid assortment of talks, performances, and other events. The massive, brutalist ICC was built in 1979 and closed in 2014, though it is occasionally used for one-off events.

## Pages

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- [France](https://degradedorbit.com/articles/category/france/)
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