The calendars of the ancients and the bunkers of bad guys
It’s random blog pimping time again! This time, I’m going to suggest you go take a look at a post on Subtopia, which bills itself as ‘A Field Guide to Military Urbanism’. Don’t be put off - it’s not full of pictures of people who take Neighbourhood Watch too seriously. Instead, it’s about the incursion of military thinking and architecture into urban spaces.
The post you should go and see is all about bunker touring in Berlin, complete with photos from exploratory trips into the old Nazi bunkers under the German capital:
[Image copied from Subtopia post, in turn borrowed from Berlin Underworlds Assn. Please contact if you require take-down.]
“I wonder, how much volumetric space is taken up in underground bunkers, how much air capacity exists trapped in these concrete structures? I’ve asked this before, but could we estimate exactly how much real estate, or in this case, air space, is devoted around the world to the underground?”
There’s plenty more like that, too, plus lots of other fascinating material, all wrapped up speculative musings and philosophy that has a similar flavour to BLDGBLOG.
And talking of BLDGBLOG, I may as well give it another plug, because there’s a new post about the solar observatories of ancient cultures - a subject I’m a real sucker for, much like BLDGBLOG’s author:
“Meanwhile, I’m a genuine sucker for solar-alignment theories involving landscapes and architecture; in fact, I was just talking to someone about this the other day. Yet I’m even more of a sucker for unintentional examples of such things – like houses with pitched gable roofs that accidentally line-up with the sun every summer solstice…”
Good stuff. Take a break from the writer blogs for five minutes; you’ll not regret it.
