Radio-Activities: Book Launch with Pier Vittorio Aureli and Sarah Nichols / Neighbours Vol. 4 by TPOD, THEMA, HITAM

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 dialogue with Pier Vittorio Aureli and Sarah Nichols, Alfredo Thiermann will present Radio-Activities (MIT Press, 2024), a book in which he investigates 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. In doing so, the book interrogates the status and agency of buildings during a period—not unlike today’s—of increasingly hyperconnected, ubiquitous, and apparently invisible modes of coexistence.


Alfredo Thiermann Riesco is an architect and Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Istanbul Design Biennial, gta exhibitions in Zurich, and Venice Art Biennale, among other institutions. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize awarded by the German Academy in Rome.