Category: Journal

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 […]

Journal: Roberto Saviano at Fabrica

Roberto Saviano's speech at Fabrica, 21 May 2013, after a brief introduction by me, and Enrico Bossan. Beware: it features my pitiable attempts in Italiano, which you may wish to skip. We were honoured to have Roberto Saviano speaking at Fabrica yesterday evening [Update: you can now watch his speech (in Italian) above, or at […]

Journal: Watch Dogs and world creation

It seems to me that there are around three hundred interesting things about these clips from the forthcoming game Watch Dogs. None of those things particularly concern the plot, characterisation, narrative, but rather the creation of worlds, especially urban worlds. I would love to stretch out into a post here about "world creation", but there's […]

Journal: Fabrica

I’m writing this flying over the Alps, on BA579 from Venice to London. It’s a big blue sky lit by hazy sunshine, and the Alps look unreal. We just flew a few metres over a contrail, a perpendicular arc into the sunlight, hundreds of kilometres long, a surprisingly distinct temporary structure of curly vapour. Best […]

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, […]

Journal: Fulcrum, the Architectural Association’s free weekly newspaper

This is a fantastic idea: "Fulcrum is a weekly architectural publication printed on Bedford Press at the Architectural Association. It was founded in January 2011 by Graham Baldwin, Aram Mooradian & Jack Self."  As I'm posting this, the current issue (#51), edited by Baldwin and Self, happens to convey some of the thinking behind the publication, […]

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 […]

Journal: Annex, by Artek

‘Annex’ is a new magazine from Artek, the legendary Finnish design firm set up nearly 70 years ago by Alvar and Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl.  A while ago, I mentioned the “prototype”, the 'Manifest' publication commissioned by Artek for World Design Capital Helsinki, to which I contributed a short article on street […]

Journal: Open Kitchen is open for business

A picture is worth 1000 words. Which I think means I now have to write 1000 words, right? This is my favourite picture from the last Ravintolapäivä pop-up restaurant day (I've written about Ravintolapäivä before) As someone commented on Instagram, "I wish I could open 10000 Instagram accounts so I could like this photo that […]