Lecture by Alfredo Thiermann

e-flux Architecture presents “Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin,” a lecture by Alfredo Thiermann at e-flux on Tuesday, October 22 at 7pm.

In 1945, having occupied German territory, Soviet troops made two strategic moves: they dismantled the Deutschlandsender III radio transmission tower, the single tallest structure at the time in Europe, and they seized the Haus des Rundfunks in West Berlin, a monumental building designed by Hans Poelzig. These moves were crucial both symbolically and technically, as together they sparked what would become a veritable radio war between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War. In this talk, I will present Radio-Activities, my recently published book, in which I investigate this spatial conflict by interrogating the political, technological, and environmental dimensions of architecture at a time when buildings began to interact with the remote transmission of information.

By its very nature, the medium of radio promised to evaporate the intrinsic material aspect of architecture; in fact, it did no such thing. By way of trans-scalar analyses, in the book, I pay particular attention to Berlin’s buildings, walls, transmission towers, factories, research institutions, and territorial organizations during the Cold War period, which enabled the production, reproduction, and transmission of sonic-based content across the divide of the Iron Curtain. In doing so I reveal under-researched continuities between politics, technology, media, and architecture, reframing notions of national and transnational boundaries. In Radio-Activities I interrogate the status and agency of buildings during a period—not unlike today’s—of increasingly hyperconnected, ubiquitous, and apparently invisible modes of coexistence.

“Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin” is presented as part of e-flux Architecture Lectures, a monthly series inviting researchers and practitioners to discuss timely issues in contemporary architecture, theory, culture, and technology.

Alfredo Thiermann is an architect and Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the École polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne. Before EPFL, he taught at Harvard University and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Alfredo’s work has been published in Harvard Design Magazine, A+U, Revista ARQ, Revue Matières, Potlatch, Real Review, Thresholds, Archithese, GTA Papers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and BauNetz, and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, the Istanbul Design Biennial, gta exhibitions in Zurich, and the Venice Art Biennale. He has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and the Collegium Helveticum in Zurich, and is the author of Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin published by MIT Press. He lives, works, and takes care of Pedro Tristán and Juan Nataniel between Lausanne and Berlin.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.

Accessibility                    
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.         
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program [​at​] e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.                  
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.