Alexander Luckmann
LightNews LightNews
banner
aluckmann.bsky.social
Alexander Luckmann
@aluckmann.bsky.social
5.1K followers 980 following 3.5K posts
PhD candidate, German & US modern architecture @ UCSB | religion, preservation, environment | he/him views mine

With jazz and conversation
From the foot of Mount Belzoni
Posts Replies Media Videos
aluckmann.bsky.social
Ordering from a Japanese place that has normal descriptions of all their dishes and then the curry rice just says "Can't make it without onion"
November 25, 2025 at 10:12 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Lionel Messi photo with quote: “Because of my age, the most logical thing is that I won’t make it.”
November 25, 2025 at 2:10 AM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Pleasure reading thread 2025 #28: László Krasznahorkai, “Der Gefangene von Urga”

Didn’t love this. It’s about a trip to Mongolia and China, and has some lovely passages, but felt more moan-ey than profound. Still hope to pick up “Spadework for a Palace” while I’m in the US
László Krasznahorkai, “Der Gefangene von Urga”
November 24, 2025 at 10:13 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Tonight we let HER do the talking
A wine called HER
November 23, 2025 at 2:46 AM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Louis Hamilton under a banner reading “not going to k*ll myself”
November 23, 2025 at 2:31 AM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Pleasure reading thread 2025 #27: Robert Menasse, Die Hauptstadt

This was fun. For a novel with thriller aspects the threads never came together, but it’s compelling. Also *interesting* to read a novel about European politics/EU from a decade ago. It reads remarkably astute in hindsight
November 20, 2025 at 9:07 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Gute Musik um anzuhören, wenn der DB Regio 1.5 Stunden Verspätung hat
Sir Roland Hanna with George Mraz and Ben Riley, “This must be love”
November 20, 2025 at 7:21 AM
aluckmann.bsky.social
basketball screen that says “tim hard away Jr. Stats are down but he played great”
November 19, 2025 at 8:15 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
#170: Peter Rieck, St. Anna, St. Augustin-Hangelar (1970-72)
A precast concrete church. The cocnrete consists of large visible panels. The worship space is to the left, with a metal roof that diagonally slices off the top of a rectangle; there is a large stained-glass window immediately below it that follows the same diagonal. To tht eirght is the church tower, which also narrows as it rises. Photo via Katholisch St. Augustin, https://katholisch-sankt-augustin.de/gottesdienstekirchen/kirchen/pfarrkirche-st-anna/ A church interior. Four rows of pews approach the raised altar. The rear wall is of brick, the ceiling is faced in stucco (?). To the left is a mezzanine holding an organ. The floor is stone; to the right and left of the altar are large windows. Photo by Erich Pötz via Rheinische Anzeigeblätter, https://www.rheinische-anzeigenblaetter.de/sankt-augustin/c-nachrichten/kirchenfuehrung-durch-sankt-anna-hangelar_a352785#gallery=null A stained-glass triptych showing Christ on the cross in the center; to left and right geometric patterns in blue and green. Photo via Forschungsstelle Glasmalerei des 20. Jahrhunderts, https://www.glasmalerei-ev-web.de/pages/b6652/b6652.shtml A plan showing the broken, distended rectangle of the church. Via https://www.glasmalerei-ev-web.de/pages/b6652/b6652.shtml
November 19, 2025 at 6:11 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Very excited for "Chapels: the Practices and Politics of Small Spaces," a panel @lisaby.bsky.social and I co-organized at #aarsbl2025! We have a great group of scholars to approach the (increasing?) role of chapels in religious practice. Sunday 9-11 AM, Marriott Copley Place, Tufts room
Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Marriott Copley Place, Tufts (Third... • Roundtable Session Session ID: A23-133 Hosted by: Space, Place, and Religion Unit Theme: Chapels: the Practices and Politics of Small Spaces Babak Manouchehrhifar, presiding What is a chapel? Despite the ubiquity of chapels worldwide, there has been comparatively little scholarly effort to study chapels as a type or uncover their spatial politics. Often small in scale and built by "laypeople" outside of the purview of religious hierarchies, chapels and other small sacred spaces offer scholars a way of reading religious architectural history from the bottom up. Chapels uplift underrepresented subjectivities of lived religion and bring religious architecture's entanglements with race, gender, and class to the forefront of study. Chapels exist at the nexus of the individual and the collective, the local site and global mobilities and networks, the singular structure and the complex. This roundtable will be structured around a series of chapels, each discussant presenting one case study. These presentations will be followed by a conversation about what a "chapel studies" based around this collection of sites might look like. Panelist • Alexander Luckmann • Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra • Eziaku Nwokocha, Rice University • Laura Snell • Michael Yorke • Michelle Apotsos, Williams College
November 18, 2025 at 9:52 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
The outdoor seating and sliding glass is a faint German echo of Neutra's Crystal Cathedral drive-in church in Orange County, which @ericara.bsky.social has written/is writing about. I wonder if it was a reference
November 18, 2025 at 5:14 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
#169: Bernd Kruth, St. Anna, Haltern am See (1967-70). The church complements a pilgrimage chapel where mass had previously been celebrated outdoors; note the benches outside the sliding glass window to allow simultaneous indoor/outdoor mass
Two buildings in the forest. To the right in the background is a chapel from 1674; to the left a modern church. In front of the church are two sets of venches which allow pilgrims to celebrate mass outside in good weather. The church has a slate roof that slopes to the left, yellowish brick facing, and a sliding glass window that slopes slightly to the right, counterbalancing the roof's slope. Photo by Dietmar Rabich via WIkimedia Commons. A church with three rows of pews angled in toward an altar. The walls are white and the ceiling is of wood. Photo by Dr. W. Strickling/subbass via Wikimedia Commons. A view back toward the back of the church. The walls are of green-grey tiles, the ceiling is gabled and made of wood, and there is a large rhomboid stained-glass window in the rear wall with an abstract (rose?) pattern in lots of red. Photo by Dr. W. Strickling via Wikimedia Commons. The rear of the church, showing that the roof is actually gabled. The slate fascia grows wider above the rear entrance, just above the stained-glass window, whose concrete linework one can see from outside. Photo by Dietmar Rabich via Wikimedia Commons.
November 18, 2025 at 5:09 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Steve Jobs wore Issey Miyake. Now it’s time for your iPhone
a photo of steve jobs that reads “Steve Jobs wore Issey Miyake. Now it’s time for your iphone”
November 18, 2025 at 1:30 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Manchmal lächeln die Götter
Zug der um 7.16 ankommen wollte kommt um 7.24 an, aber Verbindungszug, der um 7.24 abfahren sollte, fährt um 7.33 ab
November 17, 2025 at 6:28 AM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Heutige Neueingänge
Max Frisch, Stiller Carl Amery, hg, “Die Provinz. Kritik einer Lebensform”
November 15, 2025 at 7:06 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Pleasure reading thread 2035 #26: Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]

This is the best book I’ve read all year. Heartbreaking, gorgeous. Everyone needs to read it
Geoff Dyer, but beautiful [A Book About Jazz]
November 14, 2025 at 8:46 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Pleasure reading thread 2025 #25: Helmut Lethen, Der Sommer des Grossinquisitors

This was a fun tracing of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor across European intellectual history. Not near the brilliance of his “Verhaltenslehre der Kälte,” but it reminded me that I need to read The Brothers Karamazov
Helmut Lethen, Der Sommer des Grossinquisitors
November 13, 2025 at 9:08 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
this fish one too
November 13, 2025 at 7:31 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Forgot I wrote about this in college on the East Coast when I was desperately missing the Bay Area. Very much the writing of a 20-year-old but there's some good stuff
The image is skillfully arranged. The check of Isaak’s shirt attracts the attention first; the eye then moves across, from the car to the pole to the white house. The low, broad horizontal of the green hood balances the verticals of Isaak and the pole. The eye is pulled back through the picture, both by the layering of the objects – Isaak nestles in the indentation of the grille, the pole is just behind the rear view mirror – and by the telephone wires. There is a second pole, in fact, almost exactly in the middle of the cover and precisely above the line down the center of the grille. The wires connecting the two poles disappear into the fog, which bleaches the sky as it recedes into the distance. Isaak is a San Francisco singer. One of his biggest hits, San Francisco Nights, is, after all, named for the city. So relating Isaak to San Francisco isn’t terribly difficult. But I think it’s the fog in the cover that really does it. Nowhere other than in the Bay Area have I seen fog in such a bright blue sky. The verb associated with the fog is “rolling in.” This cliché is surprisingly literal. It’s less present in Berkeley, where I’m from, but if you live out in the avenues of the Sunset or Richmond Districts, the westernmost areas of San Francisco, the fog changes the feeling of the outdoors. It creates a tension in the streets out there and, when it is coming in or burning off, a near-daily drama. It’s a constant reminder of the immensity of the nearby ocean. The album cover captures the moment when the fog just starts to come in, when you don’t know whether to be warm from the sun and cool from the fog breeze. It’s a surprisingly pleasant sensation, and it is unique to San Francisco; it’s one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of the city, which I do often.
November 13, 2025 at 5:22 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
This is the coolest a man has ever looked
chris isaak wearing jeans, white t shirt, flannel shirt and shades. He’s leaning on the hood of a Cadillac (?) as the fog rolls in in the Sunset in San Francisco
November 13, 2025 at 4:49 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Gorgeous details here
A red stucco apartment house, four stories, from 1966. Each balcony has an animal detail scorpion and date (1966) bird lamb with trees
November 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
A moment for this cover of Sedaris's "When You are Engulfed in Flames"
the cover of David Sedaris's "When You are engulfed in flames" showing a humanoid crawling out of a sand desert under a death-star like hologram
November 12, 2025 at 9:00 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Roommate got a very serene portrait of me in a very loud and crowded bar yesterday lol
me in a bar wearing a blue OCBD with a mustache
November 12, 2025 at 2:58 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
This book is extraordinary
cover of “but beautiful [A Book About Jazz]” by Geoff Dyer Out in the street again burnt-out buildings reared up like a tidal wave of masonry. Shadows coiled around him. He caught a glimpse of himself in the red and silver lights of a store. Wondering if he were made of glass, he kicked at the window, saw his reflection shiver and frost until there was a slow drizzle of glass and his face lay in pieces on the floor. Rain began to fall and soon a storm was raging silently around him. Hail drilled the noiseless streets. He saw the welcome lights of a liquor store, the yellow rain of taxis gliding down the street, quieter than a silent movie where every frame is filled with the din of chase. New York was probably the noisiest place on earth and he could hear nothing. He saw a car slide quietly into the back of another, saw the two drivers get out and dance silently in front of each other, aping the gestures of rage.
November 12, 2025 at 2:18 PM
aluckmann.bsky.social
Ted Lasso 🫡🫡🫡
November 11, 2025 at 9:00 PM