Architects without architecture
Emerging models for a different kind of architecture due to different kinds of technology: transdisciplinary studios for 21st‐century challenges and ‘small pieces loosely-joined’ forms of urbanism Ed. In 2018, Mark Burry asked me to contribute to a special edition of Architectural Design journal that he was editing: AD: Urban Futures: Designing the Digitised City (Vol.90, Issue […]
Review: ‘Architects After Architecture’
A quick review of ‘Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice’ (2020), edited by Harriet Harriss, Rory Hyde, and Roberta Marcaccio Ed. The editors of this new collection, Architects After Architecture, kindly asked me to write a short endorsement for the dust jacket. Of course, I wrote a form of quick review instead, from which […]
If Apple is seriously considering producing a car, it is further evidence that Silicon Valley is…
If Apple is seriously considering producing a car, it is further evidence that Silicon Valley is interested only in capitalising on the last century’s ideas, rather than genuinely addressing the challenges of today and tomorrow. Apple has made a success of waiting until a linked bundle of technologies mature before producing their most polished incarnation—but […]
“This studio gave us the opportunity to bring to cross-laminated timber (CLT) what steel and…
“This studio gave us the opportunity to bring to cross-laminated timber (CLT) what steel and concrete already benefit from: boundlessness.” A good write-up of a spring 2020 Harvard GSD studio: “Mass Timber and the Scandinavian Effect,” exploring CLT within “questions of cultural instigation and identity alongside the material’s physical properties.” For me, not quite enough […]
This approach to small care homes could be yet more evidence to support the ‘small pieces loosely…
This approach to small care homes could be yet more evidence to support the ‘small pieces loosely joined’ design patterns. I featured these patterns in Slowdown Papers, amongst others, discussing other social infrastructure like schools, streets, galleries, farms, police stations etc. (Reject bigness, centralisation, and efficiency; embrace the resilience of connected small pieces, adopted and […]
This is wonderful: The Social Life of Plants, in the New York Times, profiling Suzanne Simard.
This is wonderful: The Social Life of Plants, in the New York Times, profiling Suzanne Simard. Following (and preceding) Wohlleben, The Overstory etc, and many echoes of the themes of interconnectedness of human and non-human life in the Slowdown Papers. More grist to the mill that cooperation and collaboration can define the systems around us, […]
My Spotify Top Songs 2020 for your listening pleasure.
My Spotify Top Songs 2020 for your listening pleasure. I’d love to know more about the specific algorithms here – there are some surprising choices and sequencing. But it’s often pleasing (Low into Strauss, Cat People into Little Fluffy Clouds…) Here’s a good piece on Spotify ML generally. I frequently suggest to colleagues in Swedish […]
A third batch of Slowdown Papers
Afternoon walk, Enskede 15 May 2020 Dear readers — Many thanks for subscribing to the Slowdown Papers. A few days ago I published a third batch of Papers, numbers 19–41. This third set was written over the last few months, starting in the long Swedish summer holiday through July. I then took a couple of months […]
41. The Slowdown is something to fight for, not to wait for.
Afternoon walk, Ljusterö 20 July 2020 Waiting it out will not deliver a just transition; Venice, Paris, Detroit and Melbourne as future cities; Slowdown cities can address social justice, health, and climate upstream and integrated “I have read that the period of upheaval that journalists have begun to refer to as ‘the Apocalypse’ or more commonly, […]
40. Slowdown landscapes: Meadow
Afternoon walk, Ljusterö 20 July 2020 How the tumbling meadow in Linda Tegg’s ‘Infield’ installation for ArkDes suggests reforesting cities, looser urban landscapes, and replanting meadows at home. At ArkDes, the Swedish national centre for architecture and design, the Australian artist Linda Tegg’s installation Infield creates a meadow in Exercisplan, the concrete car park outside the museum’s […]