Architectures of the Air: Radio Buildings and the Urban Politics of Media Production in Germany, 1930-1938

During the early 1930s, a raft of high-profile radio buildings were unveiled to much critical acclaim, including the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London, and the Radio City Music Hall in New York. Building on recent discussions in media infrastructure studies, this chapter identifies how radio buildings emerged as key sites within the urban politics of media production and served as crucial infrastructural nodes in (trans)national media networks. It examines the significance of broadcast buildings for aesthetic developments within German radio broadcasting, which was subject to increasing state centralised control under both Weimar and National Socialist rule. Drawing on a historical collection of building plans, the analysis reveals various Nazi-era attempts to rework modernist design elements, and traces how sound recordings, their archival storage and playback increasingly inhabited a central place within the spatial layout and workflows of radio production. The chapter concludes with a critical evaluation of the durability and iconicity of radio buildings as media infrastructures, many of which—including the Haus des Rundfunks building in Berlin—continue to be used for radio production up to today.