Between 711 and 1492, much of the Iber­ian Penin­su­la, includ­ing mod­ern-day Spain, was under Mus­lim rule. Not that it was easy to hold on to the place for that length of time: after the fall of Tole­do in 1085, Al-Andalus, as the ter­ri­to­ry was called, con­tin­ued to lose cities over the sub­se­quent cen­turies. Cór­do­ba and Seville were recon­quered prac­ti­cal­ly one right after the oth­er, in 1236 and 1248, respec­tive­ly, and you can see the inva­sion of the first city ani­mat­ed in the open­ing scene of the Pri­mal Space video above. “All over the land, Mus­lim cities were being con­quered and tak­en over by the Chris­tians,” says the com­pan­ion arti­cle at Pri­mal Neb­u­la. “But amidst all of this, one city remained uncon­quered, Grana­da.”

“Thanks to its strate­gic posi­tion and the enor­mous Alham­bra Palace, the city was pro­tect­ed,” and there the Alham­bra remains today. A “thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry pala­tial com­plex that’s one of the world’s most icon­ic exam­ples of Moor­ish archi­tec­ture,” writes BBC.com’s Esme Fox, it’s also a land­mark feat of engi­neer­ing, boast­ing “one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed hydraulic net­works in the world, able to defy grav­i­ty and raise water from the riv­er near­ly a kilo­me­ter below.”

The jew­el in the crown of these elab­o­rate water­works is a white mar­ble foun­tain that “con­sists of a large dish held up by twelve white myth­i­cal lions. Each beast spurts water from its mouth, feed­ing four chan­nels in the patio’s mar­ble floor that rep­re­sent the four rivers of par­adise, and then run­ning through­out the palace to cool the rooms.”

The fuente de los Leones also tells time: the num­ber of lions cur­rent­ly indi­cates the hour. This works thanks to an inge­nious design explained both ver­bal­ly and visu­al­ly in the video. Any­one vis­it­ing the Alham­bra today can admire this and oth­er exam­ples of medieval opu­lence, but trav­el­ers with an engi­neer’s cast of mind will appre­ci­ate even more how the palace’s builders got the water there at all. “The hill was around 200 meters above Granada’s main riv­er,” says the nar­ra­tor, which entailed an ambi­tious project of damming and redi­rec­tion, to say noth­ing of the pool above the palace designed to keep the whole hydraulic sys­tem pres­sur­ized. The Alham­bra’s heat­ed baths and well-irri­gat­ed gar­dens rep­re­sent the lux­u­ri­ous height of Moor­ish civ­i­liza­tion, but they also remind us that, then as now, beneath every lux­u­ry lies an impres­sive feat of tech­nol­o­gy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Bril­liant Engi­neer­ing That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

How Toi­lets Worked in Ancient Rome and Medieval Eng­land

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of Roman Baths

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

His­toric Spain in Time Lapse Film

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

You can’t go on a walk with a seri­ous enthu­si­ast of New York his­to­ry with­out hear­ing the sto­ries behind at least a few notable, beau­ti­ful, or down­right strange build­ings. Yet most long­time New York­ers, famed for tun­ing out their sur­round­ings to bet­ter strive for their goals of the day, tend not even to acknowl­edge the struc­tures liable to catch the atten­tion of out-of-town­ers. Take 58 Jorale­mon Street in Brook­lyn Heights: “From the out­side, it looks like your typ­i­cal town­house,” says urban explor­er Cash Jor­dan in his video above — but then you notice its blacked-out win­dows, bunker-like met­al cladding, and appar­ent­ly un-open­able door.

Though it was indeed a town­house when first built in 1847, 58 Jorale­mon Street was hol­lowed out and con­vert­ed into one sub­way-sys­tem vent back in 1907. But the build­ings right on either side remain res­i­dences, one of which, as Jor­dan finds, sold not long ago for $6 mil­lion.

In a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, more iso­lat­ed con­text stands the Streck­er Memo­r­i­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry on Roo­sevelt Island. Built in 1892 as a lab­o­ra­to­ry for City Hos­pi­tal, it opened as “the first insti­tu­tion in the nation for patho­log­i­cal and bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal research,” an activ­i­ty it makes sense to keep apart from a dense urban envi­ron­ment. Aban­doned in the nine­teen-fifties, it lat­er became anoth­er sub­way facil­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly a pow­er con­ver­sion sub­sta­tion.

Jor­dan also vis­its a fake build­ing well out on Pier 34, and one that also pro­vides a func­tion essen­tial to New York tran­sit: ven­ti­lat­ing the smoke and exhaust out of the Hol­land Tun­nel. Owned and oper­at­ed by pub­lic agen­cies, these struc­tures per­form well-doc­u­ment­ed and entire­ly non-secret func­tions. The same can’t be said of the last and most strik­ing fake build­ing Jor­dan intro­duces, a win­dow­less Bru­tal­ist tow­er con­struct­ed in 1969 at 33 Thomas Street in Low­er Man­hat­tan. Owned by AT&T, it seems once to have been a tele­phone switch­ing sta­tion, but has late­ly been rumored to be a “huge dooms­day bunker.” That’s one the­o­ry, any­way, and the build­ing’s sin­is­ter appear­ance could inspire count­less oth­ers. Not that many locals are imag­in­ing them, obey­ing as they do one of the cen­tral com­mand­ments of Man­hat­tan: don’t look up.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Flat­iron Build­ing, “New York’s Strangest Tow­er”

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

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

The Old­est House in New York City: Meet the Wyck­off House (1652)

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

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

Every now and again on social media, the obser­va­tion cir­cu­lates that Amer­i­cans look back so fond­ly on their col­lege years because nev­er again do they get to live in a well-designed walk­a­ble com­mu­ni­ty. The orga­ni­za­tion of col­lege cam­pus­es does much to shape that expe­ri­ence, but so do the build­ings them­selves. “Peo­ple often say that col­lege is the best four years of your life,” says archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er in the new Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, “but it was also like­ly that it was some of the best archi­tec­ture you’ve been around as well.” He goes on to iden­ti­fy, explain, and con­tex­tu­al­ize the five build­ing styles most com­mon­ly seen on Amer­i­can col­lege cam­pus­es: colo­nial, Col­le­giate Goth­ic, mod­ernism, bru­tal­ism, and post­mod­ernism.

For exam­ples of colo­nial cam­pus archi­tec­ture, look no fur­ther than the Ivy League, only one of whose schools was built after the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence — whose author, Thomas Jef­fer­son, lat­er designed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, draw­ing much inspi­ra­tion (if not always first-hand) from ancient Greece and Rome. “Iron­i­cal­ly, after the US declared inde­pen­dence, new­er schools want­ed to look old­er,” says Wyet­zn­er, a desire that spawned the endur­ing Col­le­giate Goth­ic style. Con­struct­ed out of mason­ry and brick, its ear­li­est build­ings tend to pick and choose fea­tures of gen­uine Goth­ic archi­tec­ture while mix­ing and match­ing them with the design lan­guages of oth­er times and places. More recent exam­ples have been stren­u­ous­ly faith­ful by com­par­i­son, incor­po­rat­ing gar­goyles and all.

When they arise, archi­tec­tur­al styles tend to align them­selves with the old or the new, and it was the lat­ter that over­took col­lege cam­pus­es after the Sec­ond World War. Take the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, which was designed whole by no less a Bauhaus-cre­den­tialed mod­ernist than Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe. Mod­u­lar, flat-roofed, and built with plen­ty of exposed brick, glass, and steel, its build­ings proved influ­en­tial enough that “near­ly every high school in the Unit­ed States that was built in the fifties and six­ties” was designed in more or less the same way — albeit with­out the ear­ly utopi­an mod­ernist spir­it, which by that point had devolved into an indus­tri­al empha­sis on “ratio­nal­ism, func­tion­al­i­ty, and hygiene.”

After mod­ernism came bru­tal­ism, the style of the least-beloved build­ings on many a cam­pus today. Coined by Le Cor­busier, the style’s name comes from béton brut, or raw con­crete, vast quan­ti­ties of which were used to shape its hulk­ing and, depend­ing on how you feel about them, either drea­ry or awe-inspir­ing struc­tures. The aes­thet­i­cal­ly promis­cu­ous post­mod­ernist build­ings that began appear­ing in the six­ties and mul­ti­plied in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies were more play­ful and his­tor­i­cal­ly aware — or all too play­ful and his­tor­i­cal­ly aware, as their detrac­tors would put it. If you think back to your own col­lege days, you can prob­a­bly remem­ber spend­ing time in, or around, at least one exam­ple of each of these styles, because large US col­lege cam­pus­es have, over time, become rich antholo­gies of archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry. Would that most Amer­i­cans could say the same about the places they live after grad­u­a­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Peo­ple Hate Bru­tal­ist Build­ings on Amer­i­can Col­lege Cam­pus­es

Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Icon­ic New York City Muse­ums: the Met, MoMA, Guggen­heim & Frick