When the famous Bauhaus school of architecture and design first opened in Weimar, Germany in 1919, the majority of students were women. That wasn’t by design, though founder Water Gropius took the unusual stance of declaring equality among genders; it was simply that more women than men applied the first year. The school’s focus on ushering the world into a new era attracted all manner of radicals, which would later make it a target of the Nazis.

Talk about the Bauhaus movement tends to focus on its most famous figures – Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Wassily Kandinsky. But women like Marianne Brandt, Anni Albers, Florence Henri and Ilse Fehling played key roles in Bauhaus, too, roles that don’t get enough attention. A new film called “Lotte am Bauhaus” fictionalizes their stories, focusing on a character named Lotte Brendel who draws inspiration from Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.

“Although their names were condemned to a footnote, the Bauhaus also trained women. In the hundredth anniversary of its foundation, this historical drama roams the Staatliche Bauhaus classrooms from the point of view of one of its artists, Lotte Brendel, character inspired by the great Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.”

For now, at least, the German-language film appears to only be streaming on the European service Film-in, and translations into English don’t seem to be available. Directed by Gregor Schnitzler, Lotte am Bauhaus premiered in Germany this year and stars Alicia von Rittberg.

You can learn more of the stories of the Women of Bauhaus, including sculptor Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, in a detailed profile at Curbed.

From the wicker chairs of the 1920s, the evolution of airplane seats has rapidly diverged in two different directions — toward luxurious full-sized beds on first class international flights and the increasingly tiny torture devices in economy. Clearly, what’s happening in the air parallels growing class schisms on the ground, but what makes air travel unique (and often, uniquely rage-inducing) is the juxtaposition of these elements within the same confined space, all set against a backdrop of general travel stress and anxiety.

Designers for Boeing and manufacturers of interior airplane components like seats will tell you that most planes have become safer and more comfortable over time, pointing to the earliest days of random furniture scattered around low-ceilinged spaces and turbulent flights that took many times longer than they do now. But when most contemporary travelers think about how flying experiences have changed, our points of reference are much more recent, recalling the “golden age of air travel” between the 1950s and 1970s.

We can either summon our own memories or view photographs of guests enjoying meals of wine and lobster (with real forks and knives) or swiveling around in wingback chairs to enjoy the performance of a live pianist – all on an economy class ticket. Some planes were even decked out in designs by Alexander Girard and Emilio Pucci, outfitted with murals, live plants and spacious dressing rooms.

Now, for those who must wait until last to board and then march through business class trying not to look directly at all the personal space, cocktails and warm towels awaiting deeper-pocketed passengers, the cattle car endurance challenge of economy can be demoralizing. Going through invasive TSA screening and cramming yourself into increasingly tight seats with your knees pressed into your chest, only to find upon landing that your luggage has been lost, doesn’t exactly promote a cheerful atmosphere. But hey, at least people can no longer smoke cigarettes in the air.

The problem with the 3-5-3 A380 layout, as demonstrated by @AirlineFlyer. #paxex #AIX15 pic.twitter.com/iXkvbKpGM2

— John Walton • @thatjohn.bsky.social (@thatjohn) April 14, 2015

Advances in technology have offered airlines jets with ever lighter and more aerodynamic qualities, reducing fuel consumption and delivering lower operating costs, yet they’re pushed to their absolute limits to pack as many passengers in as they can. The pitch of seats – which is the distance between the front of one seat and the back of the seat in front of it – once measured 34 to 35 inches, but has since shrunk to an average of 30, with some measuring just 28 inches. Meanwhile, seat widths have narrowed to as little as 17 inches across. The FAA has declined to place limits on just how low they can go. Many passengers find that there’s no way to avoid their bodies overlapping with those of their neighbors.

These measurements don’t reflect the realities of human bodies, let alone minimum requirements for comfort when you’re stuck in one position for hours at a time. Airlines are eliminating amenities, raising fees and constantly trying to pack more rows of seating onto the same planes, and some are even considering seat designs that require passengers to lean rather than sit or doing away with seats altogether, creating a whole new class of tickets that offer standing room only. And, as interior space grows more scarce, carry-on baggage compartments and bathrooms are shrinking as well. To get a few extra inches of space, you have to pay for yet another class of ticket, typically referred to as Economy Plus or Economy Comfort, or use a controversial brawl-inciting product like the Knee Defender that keeps the person in front of you from reclining into your lap.

Meanwhile, in first class, airlines are competing to offer the types of amenities typically seen on private jets, like Singapore Airlines’ new A380 suites offering plush full-sized beds. 180-degree lie-flat seats, four-course meals by Michelin chefs served on china, wardrobes, desks and in-flight showers aren’t uncommon, albeit coming at a cost of up to five times as much as an economy ticket. Business class seats enjoy a width of up to 34 inches, with as much as 87 inches of pitch.

The Ticket to Diminishing Expectations

How’d we get here? Some answers to that question are obvious. Airlines, like most businesses in our current economic system, have a primary goal of pushing profits as high as they can. And even in a time of record profits, thanks in part to cheap fuel, they’re working to cut costs. With most planes flying at full capacity, airlines simply don’t have to work very hard to buy the loyalty of passengers who want to pay as little as possible to travel. Plus, back in the days of luxurious amenities in so-called economy class, flights were priced high enough that only certain strata of society could afford them at all. President Carter’s 1978 Airline Deregulation Act helped democratize air travel, making it more accessible than ever, and today, fares are at historic lows – but clearly, we pay for it in other ways.

We live in a world that’s crammed full of people and more traversable than ever, so the question is, how low can the base level standard of service go? Even as air travel grows more affordable, our roads and bridges are crumbling and high speed rail projects never manage to materialize, giving us few alternatives. It’s also worth remembering that even on the cheapest tickets, air travel is still a considerable expense for many people in the United States, where almost a third of the population lives at or near the poverty line.

Judging by airport design alone, the future of air travel looks high tech and glitzy. But if air travel trends continue along their current trajectories, it’ll be interesting to see just how much more segregated the experience becomes for travelers of varying classes. With the middle class shrinking, the number of people who can pay thousands of extra dollars to sit in the front of the plane will likely remain as small and exclusive as ever, leading everyone else to wonder whether getting a bargain requires giving up even the most minimal comforts. Will the rear ends of planes someday look like the notoriously crammed subways of Tokyo?

With our expectations of air travel experiences diminishing, perhaps renewed pushes for better transportation on the ground will emerge – which might be for the best, anyway, given the massive effect all those flights have on the climate.

Whether you love it or hate it, the divisive architectural style taking over the Bolivian city of El Alto is certainly a departure from the norm, injecting bold shapes and colors into an otherwise average cityscape. Local architect Freddy Mamani, who has spent the last 18 years developing the signature style he calls “Nuevo Andino” (“New Andean”), felt that El Alto was too “monochrome.” Each of his buildings is like a unique sculptural work of art aiming to enliven the city and pay homage to ancient indigenous motifs of the area.

To understand and appreciate Mamani’s daring design decisions, it helps to know a little about the area’s history. El Alto is a the second-largest city in Bolivia outside the capital city of La Paz, and one of its fastest-growing urban centers. As millions of people have moved in from rural areas, El Alto has rapidly developed architecture and infrastructure to accommodate them. Most of the city’s residents are Amerindian, identifying as Aymara, an indigenous nation in the Andes and Altiplano regions whose ancestors lived in the area long before becoming subjects of the Inca in the 15th century and later the Spanish in the 16th century.

Centuries of colonization can wreak havoc on indigenous cultures, suppressing them (often violently) in the name of assimilation. The colors and forms of the Aymara spring back to life in a way that simply can’t be ignored through Mamani’s work. Locally, the buildings he has erected – as well as those inspired by his work – are referred to as “cholets,” reclaiming a derisive word combining “chalet” and “cholo” often used to dismiss the indigenous population in Latin American countries.

Each of these “cholets” has commercial space on the ground floor for shops, restaurants and services, while the second floor hosts a gathering space, the third offers apartments and the fourth contains the residence of the building’s owner. They all feature exaggerated geometries, asymmetrical proportions and the lines and motifs found in the ruins of the ancient Aymara city of Tiwanaku, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located about 37 miles away. Mamani has completed about 70 of these buildings in El Alto and 100 more across Bolivia.

While observers from around the world have sometimes derided the buildings with words like “ugly,” “rotten” and “gruel,” Mamani’s cholets simply weren’t made for them and don’t require their approval. Brash design choices may not be for everyone, but as many cities continue to homogenize and lose their cultural identities, some fight back against bland one-size-fits-all trends. And in El Alto, that has meant drawing in travelers who come just to take in the uniqueness of the city.

Dezeen has more information on this fascinating architectural style, including an interview with Freddy Mamani.

Photography by Yuri Segalerba

Why do so many houses in Vermont have these strange crooked windows tucked under their eaves? The fact that they’re called ‘witch windows’ should tell you a little something about their origins. The site of only one witch trial in its day, Vermont wasn’t an epicenter of witchcraft hysteria like Massachusetts, but fears of supernatural trickery were strong enough to influence an architectural trend that carries on into the 21st century.

if you just see one of them and don’t know about the phenomenon, you may think you’ve spotted a bizarre renovation fail, but they’re set this way on purpose. Made with conventional portrait-style windows, they’re simply set into the wall at a diagonal. The reasoning? According to legend, witches can’t fly in on their broomsticks when the window isn’t straight. Hoping not to scare off potential buyers, realtors in the state have taken to calling them ‘Vermont Windows.’

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As URBO notes, an employee of Vermont’s Division of Historic Preservation made a salient point: why not angle all of the windows? If the builders who first included ‘witch windows’ in Vermont houses really believed the superstition, why would they think witches bent on entering the homes of strangers wouldn’t just pick a different window? The answer may be that nobody ever truly bought that witches were a real problem in the first place, and the anomaly caught on simply because it’s a fun local tradition.

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You can get an idea of just how prevalent this trend is in Vermont by checking out the #witchwindow tag on Instagram.

Not every pub in London has a spying room complete with binoculars so patrons can gaze into the windows of the British Intelligence Service across the street – nor does just any old pub have a historic basement so creepy and rife with strange activity that the owners have set up a CCTV system just to keep an eye on it. The Morpeth Arms is definitely one of a kind, used as a prison and transfer facility for inmates waiting to be shipped off to Australia before its conversion into a business.

If you think this sounds like a publicity schtick to get more tourists to spend fists full of quid on burgers and ale, you’re not far off, but there’s a layer of fascinating history beneath the hype. Built in 1845, this public house at 58 Millbank in London’s Pimlico district was originally established as a deportation facility. A tunnel system running beneath the city streets carried convicts from the old Millbank prison to a holding area beneath the pub, while they waited for transportation to whisk them away. The prison itself, which featured six wings attached to a central chapel like the petals of a flower, closed in 1890 and was ultimately demolished.

The basement isn’t open to the public, but customers can see into it via a live feed on a prominently placed monitor, over a sign reading ‘Can you see the haunted prisoner?’ According to Atlas Obscura, employees have reported glimpses of inexplicable movement, items going missing and a general sense of unease. The beer barrels are kept in the area beside the former cells, which are just dank, mildewy rooms off the arched brick tunnels.

The tongue-in-cheek spying room, meanwhile, really does look in on MI6. It has its own bar, a Mata Hair theme and is, unsurprisingly, often packed full of actual spies from across the street, who sometimes bring members of the FBI with them. So, fair warning, if you’re running from the Feds, find ye another pub on Millbank to patronize.