Category: A Chair in a Room
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Essay: Shepherd, sheepdog; on people, robots and cities
My latest column for Dezeen addresses robotics and cities. I'd started writing this months ago, and some of the examples betray that. Still, it took me that long—usually on planes, trains but not yet autonomous automobiles—to find the time to edit it down. As usual, you can read the longer original cut below; the tighter Dezeen version is…
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Sketchbook: Noticing planning notices
7 minutes·
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The primary interface between the UK’s planning system and the people and places it serves is a piece of A4 paper tied to a lamppost in the rain. OK, not always rain. But rain often enough. The paper is a public notice describing a planning application for some kind of ‘development’ somewhere in the…
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Journal: Interaction Design Classics #4: The Melnikov House intercom system
(See previous entry on visiting the Melnikov House in Moscow.) Fourth in an occasional series, and this found in one of the true icons of 20th century architecture, designed and built between 1927 and 1929 by Konstantin Melnikov. One of the many quirky delights of the Melnikov House in Moscow is this internal intercom system.…
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Sketchbook: Cities Unlocked
1 minute·
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We (Future Cities Catapult) launched a major project today: Cities Unlocked. Phase one of a collaboration with Microsoft UK and Guide Dogs, it's a demonstrator of how wearables and 3D soundscapes could improve mobility and wayfinding in a beacon-enabled city. In other words, how might we get around cities in the near future? You can…
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Essay: ‘Dark Matter and Trojan Horses’ e-book now on-paper, on-demand
Print-on-demand version of 'Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary'' A consistent request over the last couple of years has been for a physical version of my e-book for Strelka Press, 'Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary' (Read the background to that book here.) Potential readers either wanted a physical version…
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Sketchbook: Connected Streets
2 minutes·
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Much of the work at the Catapult is about making more holistic, integrated urban projects happen. While this can include governance and investment pieces, we’ve also been exploring technology at the street level. For example our Sensing Cities project, which is deploying air quality sensors across Enfield, Brixton, Elephant & Castle and Hyde Park, and…
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Sketchbook: Fabrica 2013 Informal Annual Review: Code: “News Machine” & “Sadly By Your Side”
Code was something we had to rebuild a bit at Fabrica this year. Although there had been a strong code culture at Fabrica in the past, from the likes of Jonathan Harris, Oriel Ferrer Mesià, João Wilbert, Bethany Koby & Daniel Hirschmann and the late Andy Cameron of course, when I arrived the then Interaction department…
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Journal: Fabrica Lectures
4 minutes·
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Since I've been at Fabrica, one simple thing we've done is to increase the frequency of the lectures and workshops we host here. Fabrica had a long tradition of inviting people to come and talk, or run workshops—in the distant past we had everyone from Tomato to Issey Miyake, Ferran Adrià to Michael Nyman (sadly…
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Journal: Notes on “Ambient Commons”, by Malcolm McCullough
Malcolm McCullough is one the key thinkers and writers about the intersection of the network, digital media, and the urban and architectural—hence his work being of particular interest here. So I was delighted to oblige when he asked me to provide a testimonial for the back of his latest book, "Ambient Commons; Attention in the…
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Sketchbook: Announcing Sandbox, a collaboration between BERG and Fabrica
You will have heard a lot about smart cities and the Internet of Things. What you won't have seen is that many genuine products, services and projects in those areas. You will, of course, as there is immense potential after all, but these ideas are clearly something we have a sense of, a hunch about,…
City of Sound 