Comment by wms on Great Books of Failure · 2009-04-19T05:27:09.972Z · LW · GW

Albert Speer's autobiography, Inside the Third Reich.

Under Hitler's guidance, Speer pioneered the "ruin value" ideology in architecture - thus in a way focusing his trade on the question of how to fail with magnificence.

His attempts to build in a Berlin of the distant future an exponential replication of the ruins of the Roman empire was either never actualized or bulldozed by the allies. Today all that remains of his attempt to harness failure is a row of lampposts on a side street in Berlin.