The Biggest Mistakes in Mapmaking History

As we all know by now, every world map is wrong. But some world maps are more wrong than oth­ers, and the ear­li­est world maps togeth­er con­sti­tute an enter­tain­ing fes­ti­val of geo­graph­i­cal mis­takes and mis­per­cep­tions. Like so many pur­suits, map­mak­ing has util­i­tar­i­an roots. For mil­len­nia, as Kay­la Wolf explains in the Ted-Ed les­son above, our ances­tors all over the world made “func­tion­al maps, show­ing trade routes, set­tle­ments, topog­ra­phy, water sources, the shapes of coast­lines, or writ­ten direc­tions.” But some also made “what are known as cos­mo­gra­phies, illus­trat­ing the Earth and its posi­tion in the cos­mos, often includ­ing con­stel­la­tions, gods, and myth­ic loca­tions.”

Cre­ators of ear­ly world maps tend­ed to mix their func­tion­al­i­ty with their cos­mog­ra­phy. Com­mis­sioned in Eura­sia and North Africa from the Mid­dle Ages into the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, their map­pae mun­di were “meant to depict the world’s geog­ra­phy, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly to be use­ful for nav­i­ga­tion. And giv­en their maker’s incom­plete knowl­edge of the world they were real­ly hypothe­ses — some of which have been glar­ing­ly dis­proven.”

Take, for exam­ple, the Span­ish maps that for more than a cen­tu­ry “depict­ed the ‘Island of Cal­i­for­nia’ detached from the rest of the con­ti­nent” (one exam­ple of which still hangs today in the New York Pub­lic Library).

Even Ger­ar­dus Mer­ca­tor, the car­tog­ra­ph­er respon­si­ble for the “Mer­ca­tor pro­jec­tion” still used in world maps today, “spec­u­lat­ed that the North Pole promi­nent­ly fea­tured the ‘Rupes Nigra,’ a giant mag­net­ic rock sur­round­ed by a whirlpool that explained why all com­pass­es point north.” But all knowl­edge begins as spec­u­la­tion, in geog­ra­phy and car­tog­ra­phy as any­where else. We must also main­tain an aware­ness of what we don’t know, which medieval map­mak­ers famous­ly did with fan­tas­ti­cal beasts: “a tiny cop­per globe cre­at­ed in the ear­ly 1500s,” for exam­ple, labels south­east Asia with the famous warn­ing “Here be drag­ons.” And “as late as 1657, Eng­lish schol­ar Peter Heylin lumped Aus­tralia togeth­er with Utopia.” The land down under is per­haps the “lucky coun­try,” but Utopia is sure­ly push­ing it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of the World Map: An Inven­tive Info­graph­ic Shows How Our Pic­ture of the World Changed Over 1,800 Years

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Why Every World Map Is Wrong

The “True Size” Maps Shows You the Real Size of Every Coun­try (and Will Change Your Men­tal Pic­ture of the World)

Japan­ese Design­ers May Have Cre­at­ed the Most Accu­rate Map of Our World: See the Autha­Graph

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, “the Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever Under­tak­en,” Is Free Online

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.

Doctors in Brussels Can Now Prescribe Museum Visits as Treatments for Stress, Anxiety & Depression

Image by Tomás Fano, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When COVID-19 was fast spread­ing across the world, we fea­tured ways to vis­it a vari­ety of cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions with­out leav­ing home here on Open Cul­ture. Lo those two and a half years ago, online muse­um-going seemed like the health­i­est option. Now, with pan­dem­ic-relat­ed restric­tions being loos­ened and even scrapped all over the world, the time has come to get back out there, or rather in there, spend­ing time at one’s favorite cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. Indeed, a trip to the muse­um is just what the doc­tor ordered — in Brus­sels, lit­er­al­ly.

“Start­ing this month, doc­tors at the Brug­mann Hos­pi­tal, one of Brus­sels’ largest health cen­ters, are able to pre­scribe their patients vis­its to a num­ber of cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions man­aged by the city” as part of treat­ments for “stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion.” So reports Smithsonian.com’s Mol­ly Enk­ing, adding that “those with a pre­scrip­tion for free entrance can tour ancient under­ground path­ways in the Sew­er Muse­um, check out tex­tiles from the 1500s at the Fash­ion and Lace Muse­um, or stroll through the gal­leries at the CENTRALE con­tem­po­rary art cen­ter, among oth­er activ­i­ties.”

They can also enjoy the Man­neken Pis Wardrobe, a muse­um show­cas­ing the thou­sand dif­fer­ent out­fits of the epony­mous uri­nat­ing stat­ue, a sym­bol of Brus­sels for cen­turies now. See­ing as Man­neken Pis “has brought a smile to the face of count­less tourists from around the world,” writes Politi­co’s Ana Fota, it makes sense to see if he can do the same for those most in need of it. As Fota quotes Brug­mann Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal psy­chi­a­trist Vin­cent Lusty­gi­er as say­ing when asked how a place like the Sew­er Muse­um can help the depressed, “Why not try? We are going to test it and see.”

The eval­u­a­tion should come in six months, the declared peri­od of this “pilot pro­gram” that has grant­ed muse­um vis­its the sta­tus of psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ments. Inspired by a sim­i­lar pol­i­cy imple­ment­ed in Mon­tre­al back in 2018, it does have a fair bit of research behind it. As the Guardian’s Jen­nifer Rankin reports, “a review by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion in 2019 con­clud­ed that arts could help peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal ill­ness­es and urged greater col­lab­o­ra­tion between cul­ture and pub­lic health pro­fes­sion­als.” The def­i­n­i­tion of cul­ture here could expand well beyond muse­ums: sure­ly there’s also research to do on, say, the unde­ni­able ther­a­peu­tic val­ue of a good plate of moules-frites.

Relat­ed con­tent:

British Doc­tors To Pre­scribe Arts & Cul­ture to Patients: “The Arts Are Essen­tial to our Health and Well­be­ing”

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Why Med Schools Are Requir­ing Stu­dents to Take Art Class­es, and How It Makes Med Stu­dents Bet­ter Doc­tors

Your Brain on Art: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence of Neu­roaes­thet­ics Probes What Art Does to Our Brains

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

How the World Trade Center Was Rebuilt: A Visual Exploration of a 20-Year Project

The World Trade Cen­ter was not at first a beloved work of archi­tec­ture, but over time it set­tled into its place on the New York sky­line, gain­ing wide accep­tance as an icon of the city. Its destruc­tion on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 great­ly inten­si­fied that sym­bol­ic pow­er, espe­cial­ly as expressed by the image of Minoru Yamasak­i’s Twin Tow­ers. But as long­time New York­ers (or at least long­time Low­er Man­hat­tan­ites) remem­ber, the WTC con­sist­ed of more than a pair of sky­scrap­ers. Dat­ing from Amer­i­ca’s era of “urban renew­al,” with its ambi­tions of build­ing cities with­in cities, it also incor­po­rat­ed sev­er­al short­er office build­ings, a hotel, and an under­ground shop­ping mall.

In oth­er words, the WTC was a com­plex — which also hap­pens to be just the adjec­tive to describe the prop­er­ty-rights sit­u­a­tion in the wake of its dev­as­ta­tion. Talk of the imper­a­tive to rebuild began very soon indeed after Sep­tem­ber 11, but orga­niz­ing a rise from the ash­es was, pre­dictably, eas­i­er said than done. As explained in “How the World Trade Cen­ter Was Rebuilt,” the video essay above from Youtube chan­nel Neo, the Port Author­i­ty of New York and New Jer­sey first had to re-acquire the leas­es from all the dif­fer­ent major ten­ants involved. And then there was the task of nego­ti­at­ing with Lar­ry Sil­ver­stein.

Hav­ing devel­oped the orig­i­nal 7 World Trade Cen­ter build­ing in 1980, Sil­ver­stein long had his eye on the whole she­bang. He final­ly man­aged to sign a 99-year lease-pur­chase agree­ment on the com­plex on July 24, 2001 — sure­ly one of this cen­tu­ry’s sig­nal cas­es of bad tim­ing. But he did jump into the task of rebuild­ing as soon as pos­si­ble, com­plet­ing the new 7 World Trade Cen­ter just five years lat­er. Accord­ing to the sto­ry told in the video, it would hard­ly be an exag­ger­a­tion to char­ac­ter­ize the project of rede­vel­op­ing the WTC site as a grudge match between Sil­ver­stein and the Port Author­i­ty, with their duel­ing visions of the prop­er way to fill that high­ly-charged space.

That project con­tin­ues still today, just over two decades after the ter­ror­ist attacks that brought the Twin Tow­ers down. David Childs’ 1776-foot-tall “twist­ing glass mono­lith” One World Trade Cen­ter opened in 2014, but the much-delayed Ronald O. Perel­man Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter at the World Trade Cen­ter is still under con­struc­tion, as is the new 2 World Trade Cen­ter. With its recent com­ple­tion, San­ti­a­go Cala­trava’s St. Nicholas Greek Ortho­dox Church joins his exist­ing World Trade Cen­ter Trans­porta­tion Hub. Topped by a struc­ture called the Ocu­lus, designed (if not flaw­less­ly) to open to the sky once a year on Sep­tem­ber 11, that strik­ing tran­sit com­plex also includes an expan­sive West­field shop­ping mall: a jux­ta­po­si­tion of mem­o­ry and com­merce with pow­er of its own as a sym­bol of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Com­plete­ly Unsafe, Ver­ti­go-Induc­ing Footage of Work­ers Build­ing New York’s Icon­ic Sky­scrap­ers

Watch a Time­lapse Video Show­ing the Cre­ation of New York City’s Sky­line: 1500 to Present

When The Who Saved New York City After 9/11: Watch Their Cathar­tic Madi­son Square Gar­den Set (Octo­ber 20, 2001)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Why Mapmakers Once Thought California Was an Island

In the open­ing of John Car­pen­ter’s Escape from L.A., an earth­quake sep­a­rates Los Ange­les from the main­land, and the city is repur­posed into “the depor­ta­tion point for all peo­ple found unde­sir­able or unfit to live in a new, moral Amer­i­ca.” The film’s premise (like that of Escape from New York, which it fol­lows) taps into a deeply held sen­ti­ment about its set­ting. Los Ange­les has long been seen as an absurd con­cen­tra­tion of all the qual­i­ties that make Cal­i­for­nia unlike the rest of the Unit­ed States. Cal­i­for­nia remains a state apart in a metaphor­i­cal sense, but there was a time when it was also thought to be a state apart, lit­er­al­ly: that is to say, an island.

The word Cal­i­for­nia orig­i­nates in a nov­el, pub­lished in 1510, called Ser­gas de Esp­landián. In that book it refers to “an island pop­u­lat­ed by black women with­out any men exist­ing there. On the entire island, there was no met­al oth­er than gold.” Author Gar­ci Rodríguez de Mon­talvo’s tan­ta­liz­ing descrip­tion of Cal­i­for­nia — as well as of the “beau­ti­ful and robust bod­ies” of its women — got Span­ish sea­far­ers curi­ous about the extent to which it could have been based in real­i­ty.

(At that time, the mass-print­ed nov­el was still an enrap­tur­ing new devel­op­ment.) This account comes from Youtu­ber John­ny Har­ris’ video above, “The Biggest Map­ping Mis­take of All Time,” which con­nects this fan­tas­ti­cal lit­er­ary inven­tion to cen­turies of geo­graph­i­cal mis­con­cep­tion.

The con­quis­ta­dor Hernán Cortés seems to have been the first promi­nent fig­ure to feel the pull of Cal­i­for­nia. And he cer­tain­ly was­n’t the last, despite nev­er quite hav­ing man­aged to pin the place down. Spain’s most ardent Cal­i­for­nia enthu­si­asts held so fast to the notion of its being an island that it spread else­where in Europe, and even­tu­al­ly to Lon­don. With the per­cep­tion thus legit­imized, Cal­i­for­nia appeared dis­con­nect­ed from the North Amer­i­can coast on maps print­ed as far away as Japan. Har­ris cred­its Cal­i­for­ni­a’s “myth­i­cal pull,” then as now, with mak­ing it “a place where peo­ple go to dream big” — and often “to chase dreams that aren’t ground­ed in any sense of real­i­ty.” For­tu­nate­ly, he him­self lives in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where delu­sions are whol­ly unknown.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, the “Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever,” Now Free Online

The 38 States of Amer­i­ca: Geog­ra­phy Pro­fes­sor Cre­ates a Bold Mod­ern Map of Amer­i­ca (1973)

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Why Every World Map Is Wrong

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Art of Translating Hamilton into German: “So Kribbeln Schmetterlinge, Wenn Sie Starten”

The city of Hamburg’s nick­name is Tor zur Welt- the gate­way to the world.

If the Ger­man lan­guage pro­duc­tion of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s record break­ing hiphop musi­cal now in pre­views in that city’s St. Pauli The­ater is as warm­ly received as the Eng­lish orig­i­nal has been in Lon­don, Mel­bourne, and, of course, the US, it may earn itself with an addi­tion­al one — Hamil­ton­burg.

Excite­ment has been build­ing since ear­ly sum­mer, when a dual lan­guage video mashup of the open­ing num­ber placed the orig­i­nal Broad­way cast along­side their Ger­man lan­guage coun­ter­parts.

One need not speak Ger­man to appre­ci­ate the sim­i­lar­i­ties in atti­tude — in both per­for­mance, and inter­nal asso­nances, a lyri­cal aspect of hip hop that Miran­da was intent on pre­serv­ing.

Trans­la­tor Kevin Schroed­er quipped that he and co-trans­la­tor rap­per Sera Finale embraced the mot­to “as free as nec­es­sary, as close as pos­si­ble” in approach­ing the score, which at 46 num­bers and over 20,000 words, more than dou­bles the word count of any oth­er musi­cal:

At least we had all these syl­la­bles. It gave us room to play around.

Good thing, as the Ger­man lan­guage abounds with mul­ti­syl­lab­ic com­pound nouns, many of which have no direct Eng­lish equiv­a­lent.

Take schaden­freude which the cre­ators of the musi­cal Avenue Q summed up as “hap­pi­ness at the mis­for­tune of oth­ers.”

Or torschlusspanik — the sense of urgency to achieve or do some­thing before it’s too late.

Might that one speak to a trans­lat­ing team who’ve devot­ed close to four years of their lives to get­ting every­thing — words, syl­la­bles, meter, sound, flow, posi­tion, musi­cal­i­ty, mean­ing, and dou­ble mean­ings — right?

Before Schroed­er and Finale were entrust­ed with this her­culean task, they had to pass muster with Miranda’s wife’s Aus­tri­an cousin, who lis­tened to their sam­ples and pro­nounced them in keep­ing with the spir­it of the orig­i­nal.

As trans­la­tors have always done, Schroed­er and Finale had to take their audi­ence into account, swap­ping out ref­er­ences, metaphors and turns of phrase that could stump Ger­man the­ater­go­ers for ones with proven region­al res­o­nance.

In a round up demon­strat­ing the Ger­man team’s dex­ter­i­ty, the New York Times Michael Paul­son points to “Sat­is­fied,” a song where­in Hamilton’s prospec­tive sis­ter-in-law recalls their first encounter:

ORIGINAL

So this is what it feels like to match wits

With some­one at your lev­el! What the hell is the catch?

It’s the feel­ing of free­dom, of see­ing the light

It’s Ben Franklin with a key and a kite

You see it right?

 

GERMAN

So kribbeln Schmetter­linge, wenn sie starten

Wir bei­de voll auf einem Lev­el, offene Karten!

Das Herz in den Wolken, ich flieg’ aus der Bahn

Die Füße kom­men an den Boden nich’ ran

Mein lieber Schwan!

 

ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF GERMAN

So that’s how but­ter­flies tin­gle when they take off

We’re on the same lev­el, all cards on the table!

My heart in the clouds, I’m thrown off track

My feet don’t touch the floor

My dear swan!

Miran­da, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in shap­ing the Ger­man trans­la­tion using a 3 col­umn sys­tem remark­ably sim­i­lar to the com­pare and con­trast con­tent above, gives this change a glow­ing review:

That sec­tion sounds fan­tas­tic, and gives the same feel­ing of falling in love for the first time. The metaphor may be dif­fer­ent, but it keeps its propul­sive­ness.

And while few Ger­man the­ater­go­ers can be expect­ed to be con­ver­sant in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War era Amer­i­can his­to­ry, Ger­many’s size­able immi­grant pop­u­la­tion ensures that cer­tain of the musical’s themes will retain their cul­tur­al rel­e­vance.

The Ham­burg pro­duc­tion fea­tures play­ers from Liberia and Brazil. Oth­er cast mem­bers were born in Ger­many to par­ents hail­ing from Ghana, the Philip­pines, Aru­ba, Benin, Suriname…and the Unit­ed States.

For more of Michael Paulson’s insights into the chal­lenges of trans­lat­ing Hamil­ton, click here.

Hamil­ton is in pre­views at Hamburg’s St. Pauli The­ater, with open­ing night sched­uled for Octo­ber 6.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Revisit Louise Brooks’ Most Iconic Role in the Too-Sexy-for-Weimar Silent Film Pandora’s Box (1928)

“There is no Gar­bo, there is no Diet­rich, there is only Louise Brooks.” — Hen­ri Lan­glois

On this side of the 20th cen­tu­ry, it’s hard to imag­ine a time in cin­e­ma his­to­ry when Louise Brooks was­n’t an inter­na­tion­al silent icon, as revered as Diet­rich or Gar­bo. But the actress with the unmis­tak­able black hel­met of hair near­ly end­ed her career for­got­ten. She gave up the indus­try in 1938, after refus­ing the sex­u­al advances of Colum­bia Pic­tures boss, Har­ry Cohn. “Brooks left Hol­ly­wood for good in 1940,” Geof­frey Mac­nab writes at The Inde­pen­dent, “drift­ed back to Kansas where, as a fall­en Hol­ly­wood star, she was both envied for her suc­cess and despised for her fail­ure.”

She would move to New York, work briefly as a press agent, then on the sales floor at Saks Fifth Avenue, after which, as she wrote in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy Lulu in Hol­ly­wood, her New York friends “cut her off for­ev­er.”

Her two most leg­endary films, made in Berlin with Ger­man direc­tor G.W. Pab­st, were crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial fail­ures only screened in heav­i­ly-edit­ed ver­sions upon release. Most of her silent Hol­ly­wood “flap­per” come­dies were deemed (even by Brooks her­self) hard­ly wor­thy of preser­va­tion. It would take lat­er crit­ics and cinephiles like Ken­neth Tynan and Hen­ri Lan­glois, famed direc­tor of the Ciné­math­èque Française in 1950’s Paris, to res­ur­rect her.

By 1991, Brooks was famous enough (again) to war­rant a hit New Wave anthem by Orches­tral Maneu­vers in the Dark, who intro­duced a new, young audi­ence to Pan­do­ra’s Box in their video (top) cut togeth­er from scenes of Pab­st’s film. Pan­do­ra’s Box (see the trail­er above) com­bines two plays by Frank Wedekind in a con­tem­po­rary sto­ry about Berlin’s sex­u­al­ly free atmos­phere dur­ing the Weimar era. Brooks plays Lulu, a seduc­tress who lures men, and even­tu­al­ly her­self, to ruin. “In her Hol­ly­wood films,” writes Mac­nab, “Brooks had been used (in her own words) as a ‘pret­ty flib­ber­ti­gib­bet.’ With Pab­st as her direc­tor, she became an actress.”

As Brooks was redis­cov­ered (learn more about her in the doc­u­men­tary below) and achieved a sec­ond round of fame as an essay­ist and mem­oirist — so too were the films of Pab­st, who also direct­ed Brooks in Diary of a Lost Girl. Both films had been shown in trun­cat­ed ver­sions. Pan­do­ra’s Box, espe­cial­ly, caused a stir on its release, upset­ting even Weimar cen­sors. Ger­man crit­ics were unim­pressed and audi­ences object­ed to the cast­ing of the Amer­i­can Brooks. (Its Amer­i­can release sub­sti­tut­ed a hap­py end­ing for the film’s down­beat con­clu­sion, Mac­nab notes, “one of the strangest death sequences in cin­e­ma: creepy, erot­ic and with a per­verse ten­der­ness.”)

Accord­ing to Charles Sil­ver, film cura­tor at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, “audi­ences of 1928 were not ready for the film’s bold­ness and frank­ness, even in few-holds-barred Weimar Berlin,” a city Brooks described with her usu­al can­dor:

… the café bar was lined with the high­er-priced trol­lops. The econ­o­my girls walked the street out­side. On the cor­ner stood the girls in boots, adver­tis­ing fla­gel­la­tion. Actor’s agents pimped for the ladies in lux­u­ry apart­ments in the Bavar­i­an Quar­ter. Race-track touts at the Hoppe­garten arranged orgies for groups of sports­men. The night­club Eldo­ra­do dis­played an entic­ing line of homo­sex­u­als dressed as women. At the Maly, there was a choice of fem­i­nine or col­lar-and-tie les­bians. Col­lec­tive lust roared unashamed at the the­atre. In the revue Choco­late Kid­dies, when Josephine Bak­er appeared naked except for a gir­dle of bananas, it was pre­cise­ly as Lulu’s stage entrance was described by Wedekind: ‘They rage there as in a menagerie when the meat appears at the cage.’

Despite the film’s ini­tial fail­ure, in Berlin and in the char­ac­ter of Lulu, Brooks had found her­self. “It was clever of Pab­st to know,” she wrote, “that I pos­sessed the tramp essence of Lulu.” A fierce­ly inde­pen­dent artist to the end, she reject­ed the opin­ions of crit­ics and audi­ences, and heaped praise upon Pab­st and “his truth­ful pic­ture of this world of plea­sure… when Berlin reject­ed its real­i­ty… and sex was the busi­ness of the town.”

You can pur­chase a copy of Pan­do­ra’s Box on DVD, cour­tesy of Cri­te­ri­on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Extreme­ly Rare Tech­ni­col­or Film Footage from the 1920s Dis­cov­ered: Fea­tures Louise Brooks Danc­ing in Her First Fea­ture Film

10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Nos­fer­atu to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Enjoy the Great­est Silent Films Ever Made in Our Col­lec­tion of 101 Free Silent Films Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Goodbye to the Nakagin Capsule Tower, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopian Apartment Building

On many of my trips to Japan I’ve stayed at the Cap­sule Inn Osa­ka, which is exact­ly where and what it sounds like. To any for­eign­er the place would be an intrigu­ing nov­el­ty, but to those inter­est­ed in Japan­ese archi­tec­ture it also has great his­tor­i­cal val­ue. Designed by archi­tect Kurokawa Kisho, the Cap­sule Inn Osa­ka opened in 1979 as the world’s first cap­sule hotel, a form of lodg­ing now wide­ly regard­ed as no less quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese than the ryokan. At that point Kurokawa had already been advanc­ing cap­sule as an archi­tec­tur­al unit for years, con­tribut­ing a “cap­sule house” and cap­sule-based cor­po­rate pavil­ions to the Osa­ka World Expo 1970, and even build­ing a curi­ous mas­ter­work of the genre in Toky­o’s Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er.

The oth­er archi­tects involved in Expo ’70 includ­ed Tange Ken­zo, Kawa­zoe Noboru, Maki Fumi­hiko, Kiku­take Kiy­onori, and Isoza­ki Ara­ta — all asso­ci­at­ed to one degree or anoth­er with Metab­o­lism, an archi­tec­tur­al move­ment inspired by the rapid eco­nom­ic growth, enor­mous urban expan­sion, and unprece­dent­ed tech­no­log­i­cal change then trans­form­ing post­war Japan. The Metabolists “approached the city as a liv­ing organ­ism con­sist­ing of ele­ments with dif­fer­ent meta­bol­ic cycles,” writes Lin Zhongjie in Ken­zo Tange and the Metabolist Move­ment: Urban Utopias of Mod­ern Japan. “To accom­mo­date a city’s growth and regen­er­a­tion, Metabolists advanced trans­formable tech­nolo­gies based on pre­fab­ri­cat­ed com­po­nents and the replace­ment of obso­lete parts accord­ing to vary­ing life cycles.”

When it opened in 1972, the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er did so as the first ful­ly real­ized Metabolist project. Abroad in Japan host Chris Broad intro­duces it as “not only my favorite build­ing in all of Tokyo, but in all of Japan.” He also con­tex­tu­al­izes it with­in a brief his­to­ry of Metab­o­lism, as well as of the post­war Japan­ese soci­ety that fired up its prac­ti­tion­ers’ aes­thet­i­cal­ly brazen, tech­no-Utopi­an ideals. Geared to the work-dom­i­nat­ed, peri­patet­ic lifestyle of what Kurokawa called “homo movens,” the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er actu­al­ly con­sist­ed of two con­crete cores onto which were bolt­ed 140 cap­sules (archi­tec­tur­al the­o­rist Charles Jencks likened their aspect to “super­im­posed wash­ing machines”), each a self-con­tained liv­ing space replete with cut­ting-edge ameni­ties up to and includ­ing a bath­tub ash­tray Sony reel-to-reel tape play­er.

Kurokawa envi­sioned the cap­sules being replaced every 25 years over a life­time of cen­turies. Alas, the dif­fi­cul­ty of such an oper­a­tion meant that the orig­i­nals were sim­ply left in, and by the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry many had bad­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed. “Iron­i­cal­ly,” writes Lin, “Tokyo is grow­ing and trans­form­ing itself so rapid­ly that it even out­paces the ‘metab­o­lism’ that the Metabolists envi­sioned, and requires renewals on the scale of entire build­ings instead of indi­vid­ual cap­sules.” First announced in 2007, the year of Kurokawa’s death, the build­ing’s demo­li­tion began this past April, and it has occa­sioned such trib­utes as Stu­dio Ito’s ele­giac ani­ma­tion just above. The Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er stood for half a cen­tu­ry, long out­liv­ing Metab­o­lism itself, but its cap­sules will now scat­ter across the world, sug­gest­ing that there was some­thing to the bio­log­i­cal metaphor all along.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Build­ing With­out Nails: The Genius of Japan­ese Car­pen­try

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Never Too Small: Architects Give Tours of Tiny Homes in Paris, Melbourne, Milan, Hong Kong & Beyond

There was a time when few had a taste for tiny homes — indeed, a time when mil­lions of us tuned in to tele­vi­sion shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous express­ly to rev­el in res­i­den­tial expanse and opu­lence. This is not to say that such straight­for­ward “real estate porn” has van­ished: like all twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry media, it’s just tak­en a vari­ety of new forms. In its more than twen­ty-year run, HGTV’s House Hunters and its many spin-offs have catered to view­ers who slaver over man­sions, but also to those whose tastes run from house­boats and trop­i­cal islands to recre­ation­al vehi­cles and off-the-grid com­pounds. The inevitable debut of Tiny House Hunters came in 2014.

For a vari­ety of rea­sons, many mem­bers of the last cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions have come of age with­out the desire — and often, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, with­out the means — for a large liv­ing space. Over the past fif­teen years or so, pop­u­lar cul­ture has metab­o­lized this con­di­tion into an enthu­si­asm, and for some an obses­sion.

The die-hard tiny-home enthu­si­ast watch­es Youtube chan­nels like Nev­er Too Small: since its launch five years ago, it has uploaded more than a hun­dred videos so far, each of which offers a brief guid­ed tour of a dif­fer­ent tiny home led by the archi­tect who designed it. These include diminu­tive res­i­dences in cities the world over, from Paris and Ams­ter­dam to Hong Kong and Tokyo to Mel­bourne and Syd­ney.

Based in Aus­tralia, Nev­er Too Small has pro­duced a great many episodes in that coun­try — a coun­try known, iron­i­cal­ly, for its vast tracts of unde­vel­oped land. But there, as every­where else, space in major cities comes at a pre­mi­um, and it falls to the tiny-house archi­tect to employ and artic­u­late that space with an absolute max­i­mum of effi­cien­cy. (They also face the same basic chal­lenge in the occa­sion­al rur­al set­ting, build­ing “tiny cab­ins” and repur­pos­ing ship­ping con­tain­ers.) The details may vary, but watch enough episodes in a row and you tend to notice that, locat­ed though they may be in New York, Buenos Aires, Antwerp, or Milan, these apart­ments have much in com­mon aes­thet­i­cal­ly.

No mat­ter their own cul­tur­al ori­gins, most of these archi­tects have evi­dent­ly looked for inspi­ra­tion to Japan, whose tra­di­tions of res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture have long devel­oped with­in small plots of land. They also tend to make lib­er­al use of light wood and white paint, which make these spaces look more expan­sive than they are, as well as at once mod­ern and organ­ic. (These choic­es car­ry a degree of retro appeal as well, hark­ing back as they do to the design trends of the mid-six­ties.) The best of Nev­er Too Smal­l­’s videos pro­vide a clear view of its sub­jec­t’s con­text, whether it be a hip old urban neigh­bor­hood or a hill­side in the wilder­ness. There are many rea­sons to want a tiny home, none based on want­i­ng to stay inside it all the time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Tiny Trans­form­ing Apart­ment: 8 Rooms in 420 Square Feet

An 18-Year-Old Spends a Year Alone Build­ing a Log Cab­in in the Swedish Wilder­ness: Watch from Start to Fin­ish

Vis­it the Homes That Great Archi­tects Designed for Them­selves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor­busier, Wal­ter Gropius & Frank Gehry

The First House Pow­ered by Cof­fee

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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