Inhabiting Television

Abstract

Television emerged between the advent of radio and the internet, challenging architecture to redefine itself. Pioneers like Ivan Leonidov and Buckminster Fuller envisioned television not merely as a medium but as an integral component of architecture, dissolving traditional urban forms into planetary interconnectivity. Fuller’s 4D house, a polemically autonomous, transportable dwelling with integrated broadcasting-receiving units, exemplified the shift from physical to electronic connections, predicting the end of static architecture and centralized education. Television, Fuller argued, transformed buildings into active participants in a global information system, incubating a new post-political social order. While Fuller saw television as a democratizing force, Reyner Banham cautioned against its potential to reinforce elitism. Fuller’s optimism extended to concepts like the Geoscope, a global spherical TV screen visualizing real-time planetary data for collective decision-making. Television, for Fuller, was not the future but an extension of humanity’s intrinsic ability to process and project information, akin to the brain’s omnidirectional “TV set.”
This paper traces the evolving role of television in architectural thought, from its utopian promise to its eventual obsolescence in the cellphone age. By examining these historic visions, it highlights how television reshaped architecture, dissolving boundaries and positioning itself as the foundation for a new, interconnected world.