F2025 Words, Cities, Atmospheres — Courses

Proseminar – Fall 2025

“Words, Cities, Atmospheres” is a seven-episode podcast series exploring the urban landscapes of cities through iconic novels. Each episode departs from a short excerpt, a few novel lines, and offers listeners a unique auditory journey. It weaves a new imaginary plot that reveals elements of social norms, atmospheres, and urban conditions, characteristic to each city.

Sludge G, postcard Berlin Rosenthaler Platz, photograph, Flickr, uploaded August 25, 2020, https://www.flickr.com/photos/sludgeulper/50268495111/

Luana Günthardt and Emilie Sauter, “The Neon Signs in the Berlin Cityscape of the 1920s,” Focus Work, Professorship for Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich, 2022, accessed January 20, 2026, https://stalder.arch.ethz.ch/die-leuchtreklame-im-berliner-stadtbild.html

José Leite, “Gare Marítima de Alcântara,” Restos de Colecção (blog), 14 de mayo de 2012, accessed October 21, 2026. https://restosdecoleccao.blogspot.com/2012/05/gare-maritima-de-alcantara. html

“Poster ‘Bairro Alto.’” A Vida Portuguesa. Accessed January 21, 2026. https://avidaportuguesa.com/en/store/poster-bairro-alto.

“Soldats allemands.’” Wikimedia Commons. Accessed January 21, 2026. https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soldats_allemands_Place_Rogier.jpg.

Bob Anderson, Aumale metro stationin Brussels, photograph, Discovering Belgium, uploaded November 21, 2021, https://www.discoveringbelgium.com/brussels-metro-stations/

1. A City Begins to Watch

“A City Begins to Watch” is set in 1920s Berlin, against the backdrop of a social crisis and the rise of private surveillance. Inspired by the montage style writing technique of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, the story follows Klaus, a patrolman for the “Watch and Safeguard Service,” as he navigates the brittle metropolis of Weimar Berlin. Through the intersecting perspectives of a wealthyman, a fugitive, a washerwoman and the city itself, this episode researches the role of private protective agencies acting as ‘human CCTVs’ in an era before electronic surveillance.

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2. The Journey of Healing

This episode is an imagined story inspired by the itinerary of streetcar No. 68 in Alfred D.blin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. The route points to the extensive public transportation network of the greater Berlin in the 1920s. This seemingly illogical itinerary connects four major medical complexes that raises questions about the relationship between public transportation and health system. How can these two seemingly unrelated themes merge into a single narrative? How do they shape the unique atmosphere of Weimar Berlin? Through conversations unfolding during the streetcar journey, the story reveals historical realities of the city’s medical crisis.

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3. Lisbon, the City of Many Silences

“Lisbon, the City of Many Silences” is a sound documentary and poetic essay narrated by the Port of Lisbon itself. Set in 1935 and inspired by Jos. Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, it unfolds through a series of distinct silences that shape the city’s atmosphere. Through layered soundscapes and historical references, the podcast explores, in seven parts, how silence reveals crisis, decay, control, and waiting. Yet, a city is never truly silent: its quiet speaks, conceals, and remembers

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4. Columns and Streets

Set in Lisbon in the 1930s, this podcast walks through the rain-soaked streets of Bairro Alto, where newspapers, silence, and truths collide. Inspired by Jose Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis it explores how the press became a tool of political propaganda under Salazar’s regime. Through a conversation between a woman and an imaginary newspaper, the episode exposes how censorship reshaped reality. While headlines praise order and authority, the city remembers what print erases.

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5. From Solid to Air

“From Solid into Air” is a scripted podcast episode set in Brussels’s Grand-Place, structured as a dialogue between Valia, an architect and tourist, and Alex, a long-time museum worker. The episode examines overtourism through the intersecting lenses of architecture, history, and political economy. Drawing on Robert Menasse’s The Capital and the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who lived and worked in Brussels, the episode compares military occupation with capitalist forms of domination and who overtourism operates through visibility, consumption, and attention, transforming urban space into spectacle. The Grand-Place emerges as a site where historical layers, labor, and social relations are obscured by image production and commodification.

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6. Manure Happens

This episode is inspired by the farmers’ protests in Brussels, described in Robert Menasse’s The Capital. It unfolds as a fictional live radio broadcast covering the events from the heart of the European Quarter. Through news reporting, on-the-ground correspondences, studio discussions, and satirical interruptions, the story explores the tension between European ideals and lived realities. The episode examines how public space, street names, and institutions become stages for political conflict.

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7. Beneath Brussels

“Beneath Brussels” explores the city’s underground emotional geography, contrasting the satirical and cynical atmosphere of Robert Menasse’s novel The Capital with the scientific research on suicide events centering Metro station. The episode investigates the metro as a lethal environment while celebrating humanity’s power to transform these mechanistic spaces through empathy. From broken escalators to life-saving conversations, it’s a sensory journey through the duality of tunnels where despair and hope travel in opposite directions every day.

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Participants

Eugenia Forte (IT)
Payal Merja (IN)
Devanshi Mittal (IN)
Dominga Natho (CL)
Zarin Tasnim (BD)
Valia Thoma (GR)
Xiaoran Zhang (CN)

Led by

Angeliki Sioli

Director of Studies

Salomon Frausto