Walk-in: 11 AM to 4 PM
Join us to view a video created and presented by Ludovico Centis (Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation, Italian Academy)
The U.S.A. did 1,054 nuclear tests from 1945 to 1992. The test names were drawn from the "Able Baker alphabet" (the phonetic system used in Army and Navy radio communications). After 1952, the Able Baker alphabet was dropped—to avoid repeating test names. This led to a seemingly random sequence of names.
This 15-minute video has an abstract soundtrack produced by Michele Marchetti/STRA. It was developed as part of the classwork for “Monument, Testimony, Protest” (Prof. Krzysztof Wodiczko, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation).
Ludovico Centis spent the Spring term at the Italian Academy as a Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation.
He is an architect, founder of the firm The Empire, and co-founder and editor of the architecture magazine San Rocco. He received a PhD in Urbanism from Università IUAV di Venezia.
During his stay at the Italian Academy, Centis engaged with the material and immaterial legacy of the Manhattan Project, and in particular with the joint development by Columbia University and the University of Chicago of the first atomic pile—the Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1). Under the guidance of Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, CP-1 went critical on December 2, 1942: the birth date (some say) of the Atomic Age.
Co-Sponsor
The Sidney J. Weinberg Jr. Foundation
Image: Bravo Test, Operation Castle, Mar/node/29ch 1, 1954. Courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory