Introduction to Multimedia Reviews

Abstract

One of the most difficult but perhaps most important tasks of the architectural historian is to analyze environments, temporary spaces that lie just beyond the traditional limits of architecture. Multimedia spaces can be decisive even if they are ultimately ephemeral. The reviews in this issue focus on two types of ephemeral space, all from the 1930s: the Berlin radio broadcasts of Walter Benjamin, Walter Pick's London broadcast, and the unrealized project of a multimedia room by László Moholy Nagy and Alexander Dorner. The inherent fragility of the media spaces is reinforced by the fact that the records have been slowly recovered and have only recently become the subject of study through acts of reconstruction. Two major historiographic issues are raised: the meaning of the original media events relative to classic definitions of architecture and the city, and the meaning of reconstructions from archives.