Essay: On Tesla Powerwall, and the skirmish between Moore’s law and physical laws
My latest column for Dezeen explores the urban implications of Tesla's Powerwall battery storage product. Here's the original edit: — The product launch of the early 21st century is a well-honed little drama. It’s become as streamlined and archetypal as the automobile launches of the mid-1950s, half-dressed girls running their fingers down the fins of […]
Essay: The Garage of Small Things; nanotechnology, biomimicry and design practice (Annex)
What follows is a slightly different edit of my article for Artek’s new magazine, 'Annex', as part of their science and technology-themed issue. It explores some of the possibilities in and around advanced material research, based on a conversation between researcher Olli Ikkala, Artek design director Ville Kokkonen, and me, at Aalto University’s “Nanotalo” (nano-house). […]
Essays: Interfaces for the unlimited dream of flying
Flying from Singapore to Helsinki. We’re flying over an apparently endless landscape of dark forests and snow-covered hills, presumably Russia, rendered indigo in the velvety pre-dawn light. Settlements are picked out by clusters of yellowy-orange lights, connected by a vast web of white lines, roads and rail cutting through the trees and rock. Most landscapes […]
Journal: ‘Bullitt’, ‘Drive’ and walking the LA River
I’m in a hotel room in Adelaide watching Bullitt on Fox Classics. I flipped channel to find myself right at the start of the famous car chase scene. I must have seen this scene around 50 times. I had this movie on VHS, when one had such things, and used to know the exact time to […]
Journal: Alppila at Salmisaari, black soots in Ruoholahti
I swear I can still taste the coal dust in my mouth, nine hours later. Marco had noticed the soot in the snow first. Looking down from our vantage point on the 14th floor of our tower in Ruoholahti, we get a good view of the Finnish-registered coail carrier, the Alppila, unloading its cargo into […]
Journal: Tetsuo Kondo’s suspended ramp, Tallinn
In Tallinn recently for a conference, I took a chance to go for a long walk from the old medieval city centre to an ancient forest to the east. I took a meandering route to Kadriorg Forest, along the oversized roads and undistinguished housing blocks that are the typical stains left by Soviet-era planning guidelines; […]
World Design Congress 2009, Beijing: Day One
As is often the case, I wrote the following notes at the time, just after the event – in this case, the ICOGRADA World Design Congress in Beijing, October 2009 – and have polished a little since, but then neglected to post until now. However, inspired by a recent trip to Shanghai, here are a […]
Sketchbook: The CLOUD
Finally, an urban informatics project I worked on that I can talk about here, even if it’s currently still ‘paper architecture’ (pixel architecture?). The nature of urban development is such that I can’t yet say much about recent design work on projects (including Masdar (with LAVA), Helsinki (with Sauerbruch Hutton/Experientia), and just yesterday Seoul (with […]
Journal: Sensing the immaterial-material city
I've been meaning to post more on this theme for a while – it's partly one of those entries that is really a 'note to self'. But when Timo Arnall and Jack Schulze posted their fascinating research into visualising the (otherwise invisible) characteristics of RFID last night, it prompted me to hit 'publish'. Their research piece Immaterials […]
Essays: Towards a new architect: an interview with Carlo Ratti
I’ve just finished working with Carlo Ratti and various cohorts on a great little project, which I hope might see the light of day here before too long (update: here it is.) In the meantime, I thought I’d post this discussion I had with Carlo late last year, which was recently published in Architectural Review […]