Category: History
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Journal: Moscow, December 2014; Narkomfin Building; Melnikov House
Melnikov House, Moscow In Moscow, for two days, for Moscow Urban Forum, and various meetings. I recall photos my father showed me of a school trip he led there in 1968, from the American International School of Zürich where he was teaching, to Red Square and more besides, all saturated Kodachrome, sharp clobber and fresh…
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Journal: Old and New Finnish Grammar
I’ve been learning Finnish for over a year now, and am getting nowhere fast. Finnish is a notoriously difficult language to learn—certainly amongst European languages—and so perhaps this is to be expected. But as an Englishman, one starts from the position of all other languages being a bit of an unnecessary hassle anyway. Kidding. However,…
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Journal: 20th century gestures / Supplement to the Italian Dictionary
By chance, after posting the 21st century gestures series a few weeks ago, I discovered Bruno Munari’s 1963 book “Supplemento al dizionario italiano”. This is a delicious project, which starts with a collection of gestures collated in the 19th century, published in 1832 in Naples, collated by Canon Andrea de Jorio under the title “The…
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Journal: A walk in Schöneberg, Berlin: energy policy, gentrification, protest, and the humble joys of communal flower beds
I didn't think that a humble flower bed could have quite this effect. The verges – for they are numerous, every few metres – turned out to be the key feature of the streets of Schöneberg, Berlin, where I was walking with my colleagues on Friday morning. We were being given a tour by Dr…
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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…
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Journal: Passport Control to Pimlico
1500 Around John Islip Street, Pimlico, London, 30 November 2011. Notes written on Finnair. I arrived in London on the day of the national general strike, the scale of which no-one could seem to agree on: it was somehow both the largest strike since the 1970s “winter of discontent” as well being as “a damp…
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More than “a mere building”: Kwinter on Beaubourg
After that entry on Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Beijing—and thanks for the feedback—I happened to be by chance reading Sanford Kwinter's Requiem for the City at the End of the Millennium (Actar, 2010). A beautiful little book in every sense, Kwinter writes wonderfully and perceptively about the city, and architecture and urbanism, and particularly its relationship…
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798 Art Zone/Dashanzi, Beijing
(Continued from World Design Congress 2009: Day three. Written at the time, last October.) 798 Art District was arguably the first creative cluster in Beijing, and with M50 in Shanghai, perhaps the most well-known in China. For someone who studies and works with creative clusters, then, it was a near-essential visit. I was in town for the…
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Utopia London
Via the director Tom Cordell, news of his new documentary Utopia London: "The film observes the method and practise of the Modernist architects who rebuilt London after World War Two. It shows how they revolutionised life in the city in the wake of destruction from war and the poor living conditions inherited from the Industrial…
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‘Nairn’s London’ by Ian Nairn (1966)
(A half-written entry on Ian Nairn's book 'Nairn's London' had been lying dormant for almost a year. However, a conversation on Twitter last night between myself, Kieran Long (of the Evening Standard), Justin McGuirk (of The Guardian), Charles Holland (of FAT), and Owen Hatherley (of Owen Hatherley and more besides) prompted me to finish off the sentences and…