By Alfredo Thiermann Riesco

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 Radio-Activities: Architecture and Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin, Alfredo Thiermann Riesco investigates this spatial conflict as he interrogates the political, technological, and environmental dimensions of architecture at a time when buildings began to interact with the remote transmission of information. A timely and fascinating study, Radio-Activities brilliantly interrogates the status and agency of buildings during a period—not unlike today's—of increasingly hyperconnected, ubiquitous, and invisible modes of coexistence.