Few texts reflect the partnership of architecture and columns than the above lyrics of the Spanish electronic-music duo Las Bistecs. Though vilified by modernity, columns are a fundamental part of history. And beyond their unavoidable structural function, they have served great emperors in commemorating their triumphs, illustrious treatise writers in defining their classical canons, and architects in materializing their most provocative works.

With similar humor and lack of bias of the performing twosome, Carmelo Rodríguez has spent over a decade inquiring into the communicative capacity of these supports and posting the most daring designs on his social networks. With this tribute to the controverial American critic Charles Jencks he rescues from oblivion those projects that propose a freestyle new order, which have been marginalized by the 20th century’s predominant rationalist narratives.

In nineteen episodes, with the help of brief essays and some characteristic illustrations, this huge digital collection now comes to us on paper with the aim of putting in order fascinating examples of the formal exuberance and functional transformations of these building elements. There are colossal columns and ethereal ones, columns to be lived in or to furnish spaces, and even columns that are just nuisances. But all of them demonstrate the human determination to build them, and are true to the adjective ‘bizarre’ because they are courageous, lucid, and extravagant.