An Architectural Tour of Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Audacious Cathedral That’s Been Under Construction for 142 Years

In less than a year and a half, the cen­te­nary of Antoni Gaudí’s death will be here. Faced with this fact, espe­cial­ly ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­asts of Cata­lan archi­tec­ture may already be plan­ning their fes­tiv­i­ties. But we can be sure where the real pres­sure is felt: the Basíli­ca i Tem­ple Expi­a­tori de la Sagra­da Família, Gaudí’s most famous build­ing, which — as of tomor­row — has been under con­struc­tion for 142 years. When it first broke ground in 1882, Gaudí was­n’t involved at all, but when he took over the project the fol­low­ing year, he re-envi­sioned it in a dis­tinc­tive com­bi­na­tion of the Goth­ic and Art Nou­veau styles. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry: a trou­bled, unpre­dictable his­to­ry con­tin­u­ing to this day, explained by archi­tec­ture-and-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo in the video above.

Though it isn’t yet com­plete, you can vis­it Sagra­da Família; indeed, it’s long been the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion in Barcelona. The expe­ri­ence of mar­veling at the cathe­dral’s aston­ish­ing degree of detail and not-quite-of-this-Earth struc­ture is worth the price of admis­sion, which has helped to fund its ongo­ing con­struc­tion. But you’ll appre­ci­ate it on a high­er lev­el if you go with some­one who can explain its many unusu­al fea­tures, both archi­tec­tur­al and reli­gious — some­one with as much knowl­edge ad enthu­si­asm as Bra­vo, whom we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his videos on Pom­peii, Venice, the Great Pyra­mids of Giza, and the Duo­mo di Firen­ze.

With Sagra­da Famíli­a’s pyra­mi­dal shape, Bra­vo explains, Gaudí “hoped to sug­gest a con­nec­tion between the human and the divine.” Its three façades are ded­i­cat­ed to the birth, death, and eter­nal life of Jesus Christ, to whom the cen­tral and tallest of its planned eigh­teen tow­ers will be ded­i­cat­ed. The cathe­dral’s exte­ri­or alone con­sti­tutes an “authen­tic Bible of stone,” but it can hard­ly pre­pare you to step into the inte­ri­or, with its “beau­ti­ful play of space, light, and col­or.” As Bra­vo puts it, “the pro­tag­o­nist here is the space itself,” envi­sioned by Gaudí as “a huge for­est” involv­ing no un-nature-like straight lines. All of it show­cas­es “the com­bi­na­tion of aes­thet­ics and effi­cien­cy” that defines the archi­tec­t’s work.

Bravo’s video runs a bit over twen­ty min­utes, but you could spend much, much longer appre­ci­at­ing every aspect of Sagra­da Família, those com­plet­ed in Gaudí’s life­time as well as those com­plet­ed by the many devot­ed arti­sans who have con­tin­ued his work for almost 100 years now. The archi­tect “knew quite well that he would not live to see the tem­ple com­plet­ed,” says Bra­vo, hence his hav­ing “left behind so many mod­els and draw­ings” for his suc­ces­sors to go on. They’re work­ing on a 2026 dead­line, but as Bra­vo notes, giv­en the inter­rup­tions inflict­ed by COVID-19, “that date seems unlike­ly.” But then, has there ever been as unlike­ly a build­ing as Sagra­da Família?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Incred­i­ble Engi­neer­ing of Anto­nio Gaudí’s Sagra­da Famil­ia, the 137 Year Con­struc­tion Project

The Japan­ese Sculp­tor Who Ded­i­cat­ed His Life to Fin­ish­ing Gaudí’s Mag­num Opus, the Sagra­da Família

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

Take a High Def, Guid­ed Tour of Pom­peii

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

What the Great Pyra­mids of Giza Orig­i­nal­ly Looked Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animated Introduction to the Rosetta Stone, and How It Unlocked Our Understanding of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

In 1799, Napoleon’s army encoun­tered a curi­ous arti­fact in Egypt, a black stone that fea­tured writ­ing in three dif­fer­ent lan­guages: Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs, Demot­ic Egypt­ian, and Ancient Greek. Before long, Eng­lish troops cap­tured the stone and brought it to the British Muse­um in 1802—where it remains today. The ani­mat­ed video above, cre­at­ed by Egyp­tol­o­gist Franziska Naether, explains “how schol­ars decod­ed the ancient mes­sage of the Roset­ta Stone,” a painstak­ing process that took decades to com­plete. By the 1850s, philol­o­gists had unlocked the mean­ing of Egypt­ian hiero­glyphs and, with them, the secrets of ancient Egypt­ian civ­i­liza­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What the Roset­ta Stone Actu­al­ly Says

How to Read Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs: A British Muse­um Cura­tor Explains

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

An Introduction to the Astrolabe, the Medieval Smartphone

Image by Anders Sand­berg, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Asked to imag­ine the char­ac­ter of every­day life in the Mid­dle Ages, a young stu­dent in the twen­ty-twen­ties might well reply, before get­ting around to any oth­er details, that it involved no smart­phones. But even the flashiest new tech­nolo­gies have long evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ries, and, in cer­tain notable respects, even the smart­phone has a medieval ances­tor. That would be the astro­labe, an espe­cial­ly fas­ci­nat­ing eleventh-cen­tu­ry exam­ple of which was recent­ly dis­cov­ered at the Fon­dazione Museo Minis­calchi-Eriz­zo in Verona. It was iden­ti­fied by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge his­to­ri­an Fed­er­i­ca Gigante, who’s been mak­ing the media rounds to explain the con­text and func­tion of this strik­ing and his­toric device.

“It’s basi­cal­ly the world’s ear­li­est smart­phone,” Gigante says in an NPR All Things Con­sid­ered seg­ment. “With one sim­ple cal­cu­la­tion, you can tell the time, but you can also do all sorts of oth­er things.” In a visu­al New York Times fea­ture, Franz Lidz and Clara Van­nuc­ci add that astro­labes, which resem­bled “large, old-fash­ioned vest pock­et watch­es,” also allowed their users to deter­mine “dis­tances, heights, lat­i­tudes and even (with a horo­scope) the future.”

Gigante tells them that, when she got the chance to pay the Minis­calchi-Eriz­zo astro­labe clos­er scruti­ny, she could iden­ti­fy Ara­bic inscrip­tions, “faint Hebrew mark­ings,” and West­ern numer­als, which made this par­tic­u­lar arti­fact “a pow­er­ful record of sci­en­tif­ic exchange between Mus­lims, Jews and Chris­tians over near­ly a mil­len­ni­um.”

In the video above, Seb Falk, author of The Light Ages: The Sur­pris­ing Sto­ry of Medieval Sci­ence, demon­strates how to use an astro­labe to cal­cu­late the time. It is, admit­ted­ly, a more com­pli­cat­ed affair than glanc­ing at the screen of your phone, analo­gies to which have become irre­sistible in these dis­cus­sions. “Like the smart­phone, the astro­labe came into being dur­ing times of eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty — in that case, like­ly dur­ing the height of the Roman Empire,” writes Smith­son­ian ‘s Lau­ra Pop­pick. Though func­tion­al astro­labes were made of ordi­nary wood or met­als, the sur­viv­ing exam­ples tend to be ornate­ly engraved brass, which pro­vid­ed sta­tus val­ue to the high-end mar­ket. In that respect, too, the astro­labe resem­bles the “con­cep­tu­al ances­tor to the iPhone 7” — a device that, in the eyes of technophiles here in 2024, now looks fair­ly medieval itself.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks Invent­ed the First Com­put­er: An Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (Cir­ca 87 BC)

Watch an Accu­rate Recon­struc­tion of the World’s Old­est Com­put­er, the 2,200 Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism, from Start to Fin­ish

Behold the Astro­nom­icum Cae­sareum, “Per­haps the Most Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Book Ever Print­ed” (1540)

The Ancient Astron­o­my of Stone­henge Decod­ed

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vin­tage Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Book of Colour Concepts: A New 800-Page Celebration of Color Theory, Including Works by Newton, Goethe, and Hilma af Klint

The Book of Colour Con­cepts will soon be pub­lished by Taschen in a mul­ti­lin­gual edi­tion, con­tain­ing text in Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, and Span­ish. This choice makes its abun­dance of explana­to­ry schol­ar­ship wide­ly acces­si­ble at a stroke, but even those who read none of those four lan­guages can enjoy the book. For it takes a deep dive — with Taschen’s char­ac­ter­is­tic visu­al lav­ish­ness — into one of the tru­ly uni­ver­sal lan­guages: that of col­or. Through­out its two vol­umes, The Book of Colour Con­cepts presents more than 1000 images drawn from four cen­turies’ worth of “rare books and man­u­scripts from a wealth of insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the most dis­tin­guished col­or col­lec­tions world­wide.”

Repro­duced with­in are selec­tions from more than 65 books and man­u­scripts, includ­ing such “sem­i­nal works of col­or the­o­ry” as Isaac Newton’s Opticks and Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe’s Zur Far­ben­lehre, as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Kate Moth­es at Colos­sal adds that “read­ers will also find stud­ies from Col­or Prob­lems, the ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry hand­book by Emi­ly Noyes Van­der­poel, which described the­o­ries that would trend in sub­se­quent decades in design and art, like Joseph Albers’s series Homage to the Square.” In The Book of Colour Con­cepts’ 800 pages also appear a vari­ety of works that don’t belong, strict­ly speak­ing, to the field of col­or the­o­ry, such as a botan­i­cal note­book by the spir­i­tu­al­ist and ear­ly abstract artist Hilma af Klint.

Co-authors Sarah Lowen­gard and Alexan­dra Loske bring seri­ous cre­den­tials to this endeav­or: Lowen­gard is a his­to­ri­an of tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence with more than 40 years’ expe­ri­ence as an “arti­san col­or-mak­er,” and Loske is an art his­to­ri­an and cura­tor who spe­cial­izes in “the role of women in the his­to­ry of col­or.” Both would no doubt agree on the spe­cial val­ue of revis­it­ing the his­to­ry of this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject here in the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with all its dis­course about the dis­ap­pear­ance of col­or from our every­day lives. It’s wor­ri­some enough that spo­ken and writ­ten lan­guages out­side the Eng­lish-French-Ger­man-Span­ish league seem to be declin­ing; rel­e­gat­ing our­selves to an ever-nar­row­ing vocab­u­lary of col­or would be an even graver loss indeed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Goethe’s Col­or­ful & Abstract Illus­tra­tions for His 1810 Trea­tise The­o­ry of Col­ors: Scans of the First Edi­tion

A 900-Page Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete High-Res­o­lu­tion Dig­i­tal Scan

William Blake’s 102 Illus­tra­tions of The Divine Com­e­dy Col­lect­ed in a Beau­ti­ful Book from Taschen

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

The Woman Who The­o­rized Col­or: An Intro­duc­tion to Mary Gartside’s New The­o­ry of Colours (1808)

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Founder of the Red Cross Creates a Diagram of the Apocalypse (1887)

His­to­ry remem­bers Hen­ry Dunant (1828–1910) for two things–being the co-founder of the Red Cross move­ment and win­ning the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

Less well known is his dia­gram of the Apoc­a­lypse. Between 1877 and 1890, notes the Red Cross Muse­um web­site, Hen­ry Dunant “pro­duced a series of dia­grams reflect­ing his dis­tinc­tive under­stand­ing of humanity’s past and future. Inspired by Chris­t­ian revival­ism, the draw­ings depict a time­line from the Flood of Noah to what Dunant believed was an impend­ing Apoc­a­lypse. The dia­grams fuse mys­ti­cal ref­er­ences with bib­li­cal, his­toric and sci­en­tif­ic events, while also set­ting up a clear oppo­si­tion between Gene­va, as the cen­tre of the Ref­or­ma­tion, and the Catholic Church.”

The image above is the first draw­ing out of a series of four, made with col­ored pen­cils, ink, India ink, wax crayons, and water­col­ors. Writes Messy Nessy, Dunant “spent con­sid­er­able time on the draw­ings, organ­is­ing the sym­bol­ic ele­ments accord­ing to a strict log­ic, mak­ing prepara­to­ry sketch­es and painstak­ing­ly incor­po­rat­ing draw­ings and colour­ings into his chronol­o­gy.” All along, he was dri­ven by the belief that the Apoc­a­lypse was in the off­ing, just a short time way.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

It’s the End of the World as We Know It: The Apoc­a­lypse Gets Visu­al­ized in an Inven­tive Map from 1486

6,000 Years of History Visualized in a 23-Foot-Long Timeline of World History, Created in 1871

adam and eve map

A beau­ti­ful ear­ly exam­ple of visu­al­iz­ing the flow of his­to­ry, Sebas­t­ian C. Adams’ Syn­chrono­log­i­cal Chart of Uni­ver­sal His­to­ry out­lines the evo­lu­tion of mankind from Adam and Eve to 1871, the year of its first edi­tion.

A recre­ation can be found and close­ly exam­ined at the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion, which allows you to zoom in on any part of the orig­i­nal time­line, which stretched to 23 feet in length and was designed for school­hous­es as a one-stop shop for all of his­to­ry.

jesus map

As Daniel Rosen­berg and Antho­ny Grafton describe it in their book Car­togra­phies of Time:

The Syn­chrono­log­i­cal Chart is a great work of out­sider think­ing and a tem­plate for auto­di­dact study; it attempts to rise above the sta­tion of a mere his­tor­i­cal sum­ma­ry and to draw a pic­ture of his­to­ry rich enough to serve as a text­book in itself.

Adams was a vora­cious read­er and a good Chris­t­ian, and in the top half of the chart he attempts to untan­gle the spaghet­ti-like geneal­o­gy of Adam and Eve’s chil­dren from Abel (“The First Mar­tyr”) through to Solomon (whose tem­ple looks very Goth­ic), all the way through to Jesus and beyond.

At the same time he presents a detailed descrip­tion of archae­o­log­i­cal his­to­ry “after the flood,” from Stone Age tools through the ear­li­est civ­i­liza­tions, men­tion­ing major bat­tles, inven­tions, philoso­phers, and advances in sci­ence. Adams’ start­ing date of all his­to­ry comes from the Irish Arch­bish­op James Ussh­er, who, in 1654 declared, after years of study, that the earth was cre­at­ed on “night­fall on 22 Octo­ber 4004 BC.” (Now that’s cer­tain­ty!)

egypt map

The map is col­or­ful and filled with beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions from the self-taught Adams, from a draw­ing of Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream to the cur­rent world lead­ers and a list of Unit­ed States Pres­i­dents up to James Garfield. There’s even a sec­tion at the far end for “Emi­nent Men not else­where men­tioned on the Chart,” the sign of a true com­pletist (except for the part where he leaves out women).

rome map

Adams lived far from the epi­cen­ters of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion. He grew up in a Pres­by­ter­ian fam­i­ly in Ohio, and, when he showed a skill for teach­ing lat­er in life, he made the trek out west, near­ly dying on the Ore­gon Trail. He set­tled in Salem, Ore­gon and began teach­ing while also work­ing on his chart. When it was ready to print, he trav­eled back to Cincin­nati to hire the esteemed lith­o­g­ra­phers Stro­bridge & Co., who pub­lished Civ­il War scenes, maps, and cir­cus posters. Ini­tial­ly he sold the chart him­self, but its pop­u­lar­i­ty led to sev­er­al Amer­i­can and British print­ers pro­duc­ing copies into the 20th cen­tu­ry. Even Hor­ror writer H.P. Love­craft owned a copy.

presidents map

It remains a riotous work of art, his­to­ry, reli­gion, and self-deter­mi­na­tion, and fac­sim­i­les can still be pur­chased online. Adams lat­er left teach­ing to become pres­i­dent of an insur­ance com­pa­ny, and died of “la grippe” (i.e. the flu) in 1898.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Oculi Mun­di: A Beau­ti­ful Online Archive of 130 Ancient Maps, Atlases & Globes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

How Engineers Straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa

?si=WxyK2XAukThVTpa7

Con­struc­tion on the Tow­er of Pisa first began in the year 1173. By 1178, the archi­tects knew they had a prob­lem on their hands. Built on an unsteady foun­da­tion, the tow­er began to sink under its own weight and soon start­ed to lean. Medieval archi­tects tried to address the tilt. How­ev­er, it per­sist­ed and incre­men­tal­ly wors­ened over the next eight cen­turies. Then, in 1990, Ital­ian author­i­ties closed the tow­er to the pub­lic, fear­ing it might col­lapse. For the next 11 years, engi­neers worked to sta­bi­lize the struc­ture. How did they put the tow­er on a bet­ter foot­ing, as it were, while still pre­serv­ing some of its icon­ic lean? That’s the sub­ject of this intrigu­ing video by the YouTube chan­nel Prac­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing. Watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Behold a 21st-Cen­tu­ry Medieval Cas­tle Being Built with Only Tools & Mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle Ages

The Age of Cathe­drals: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

How Humanity Got Hooked on Coffee: An Animated History

Few of us grow up drink­ing cof­fee, but once we start drink­ing it, even few­er of us ever stop. Accord­ing to leg­end, the ear­li­est such case was a ninth-cen­tu­ry Ethiopi­an goatherd named Kal­di, who noticed how much ener­gy his rumi­nant charges seemed to draw from eat­ing par­tic­u­lar red berries. After chew­ing a few of them him­self, he expe­ri­enced the first caf­feine buzz in human his­to­ry. Despite almost cer­tain­ly nev­er hav­ing exist­ed, Kal­di now lends his name to a vari­ety of cof­fee shops around the world, every­where from Addis Aba­ba to Seoul, where I live.

His sto­ry also opens the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, “How Human­i­ty Got Hooked on Cof­fee.” We do know, explains its nar­ra­tor, that “at some point before the four­teen-hun­dreds, in what’s now Ethiopia, peo­ple began for­ag­ing for wild cof­fee in the for­est under­growth.” Ear­ly on, peo­ple con­sumed cof­fee plants by drink­ing tea made with their leaves, eat­ing their berries with but­ter and salt, and — in what proved to be the most endur­ing method — “dry­ing, roast­ing, and sim­mer­ing its cher­ries into an ener­giz­ing elixir.” Over the years, demand for this elixir spread through­out the Ottoman Empire, and in the full­ness of time made its way out­ward to both Asia and Europe.

In no Euro­pean city did cof­fee catch on as aggres­sive­ly as it did in Lon­don, whose cof­fee hous­es pro­lif­er­at­ed in the mid-sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry and became “social and intel­lec­tu­al hotbeds.” Lat­er, “Paris’ cof­fee hous­es host­ed Enlight­en­ment fig­ures like Diderot and Voltaire, who alleged­ly drank 50 cups of cof­fee a day.” (In fair­ness, it was a lot weak­er back then.) Pro­duc­ing and trans­port­ing the ever-increas­ing amounts of cof­fee imbibed in these and oth­er cen­ters of human civ­i­liza­tion required world-span­ning impe­r­i­al oper­a­tions, which were com­mand­ed with just the degree of cau­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty one might imag­ine.

The world’s first com­mer­cial espres­so machine was show­cased in Milan in 1906, a sig­nal moment in the indus­tri­al­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion of the cof­fee expe­ri­ence. By the mid-nine­teen-fifties, “about 60 per­cent of U.S. fac­to­ries incor­po­rat­ed cof­fee breaks.” More recent trends have empha­sized “spe­cial­ty cof­fees with an empha­sis on qual­i­ty beans and brew­ing meth­ods,” as well as cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for cof­fee pro­duc­tion using “min­i­mum wage and sus­tain­able farm­ing.” What­ev­er our con­sid­er­a­tions when buy­ing cof­fee, many of us have made it an irre­place­able ele­ment of our rit­u­als both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al. Not to say what we’re addict­ed: this is the 3,170th Open Cul­ture post I’ve writ­ten, but only the 3,150th or so that I’ve writ­ten while drink­ing cof­fee.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

How Caf­feine Fueled the Enlight­en­ment, Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion & the Mod­ern World: An Intro­duc­tion by Michael Pol­lan

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.