Journal: Three essays from last summer; networked urbanism
“The secret, I think, of the future is not doing too much”—Frei Otto Around this time last year, at the family home in Brisbane, in the jetlagged early hours of what was ostensibly a holiday, I wrote a set of articles for three architecture-oriented publications—a magazine, a journal and a book—all concerning the dynamics of […]
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. […]
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 […]
Journal: Films about Ian Nairn, and by Reyner Banham
I've been meaning to write about Gillian Darley and David McKie's book about Ian Nairn for ages now. Entitled 'Ian Nairn: Words in Place', it's a wonderful read about one of the most important characters in post-war British architecture and planning—albeit a character on the edge in more ways than one. (See an earlier post on 'Nairn's […]
PaperLater
PaperLater is a new service from Newspaper Club (see previous entry on newspapers, and Newspaper Club.) As with Newspaper Club, it ingeniously wrangles the dynamics of both newsprint and the internet into something entirely new. In short, PaperLater enables you to save articles off the internet to read later, via a little click of a […]
Journal: Future Cities Catapult
A follow-up note to explain what I’ve been up to, work-wise. (And note, if you want to skip to the end, we're hiring.) At the beginning of February, I joined the Future Cities Catapult as Executive Director for Futures and Best Practice, as part of a new leadership team. The Future Cities Catapult is a […]
Journal: London, again
It’s been a busy year so far. So busy I haven’t found time to write about returning to the UK in January, after seven years living and working overseas in Australia, Finland and Italy. Nor even to write about taking up a position as an Executive Director at the Future Cities Catapult—but more about that […]
Journal: Back “Hyper-Reality: A New Vision of the Future” by Keiichi Matsuda
Production drawings by Keiichi Matsuda An uncharacteristically brief post just to point you at Keiichi Matsuda's Kickstarter campaign, launched today, for his ambitious new films about the modern city, set in Medellin, Colombia. Matsuda's previous work is quite brilliant—I've mentioned it before—and the premise of this new series is even more promising: "It will be […]
Journal: PayPal, and the word “Iranian”
This was going to be a post about our new Fabrica publication, "Iranian Living Room", and in a way it still is. "Iranian Living Room" is a new photojournalism project we've produced and self-published. Enrico Bossan, our brilliant head of photography, sought out 15 young Iranian photographers to take pictures of "interior life" in Iran […]
Journal: Fabrica Lectures
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 […]