Kosmograd

Mark magazine

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:48:00 -0400

Jonathan at Things on Mark magazine:

“In these publications, architecture is reduced to being little more than the generator of the layouts, not a series of three dimensional spaces but a 2D form that inspires print design, rather than spatial interaction. MARK and A10 differ from late C20 eclectics like Nest through their fatal attraction to novelty, a fascination with the sheen of what is apparently innovation, but is more usually the blurred hinterland between render and photograph, the point at which the computer-generated becomes indistinguishable from reality. Ladel on the increasingly clip art-like imagery found on art, architecture and illustration aggregators, and you end up with design that is simultaneously timeless and utterly of its time. “

On Brutalism

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:51:19 -0400

The impeccable Jonathan Meades, in his eloquent obituary to Rodney Gordon, the Howard Roark to Owen Luder’s Peter Keating.

“Then came the Tricorn. Nairn again: “At last there is something to shout about in Portsmouth.” He was of course right. But Portsmouth did not see it that way. And nor did a sinister constituency of philistine tricoteuses. Over and again the Tricorn was adjudged the ugliest building in Britain in crass polls organised by populists seeking favour with “the people” who would, no doubt, given the chance, equally deem Ulysses unreadable, the Second Vienna School unlistenable and Resnais unwatchable. The Trident Centre in Gateshead was a similarly magnificent structure, even more outrageously expressionistic at street level and exhilaratingly primitivist when seen from across the Tyne.”

I’m totally in love with Tara McPherson

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:41:03 -0400

I’m totally in love with Tara McPherson

"above the fifth floor of all housing in England and Wales a minority of children are white. Most..."

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:09:29 -0400

“above the fifth floor of all housing in England and Wales a minority of children are white. Most children growing up in the tower blocks of London and Birmingham - the majority of children ‘living in the sky’ in Britain - are black.”

- Prof Danny Dorling, Observer, September 25 2005

"Trident, rather than a thriving British electronics industry producing Ekco mobile phones, Marconi..."

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:04:30 -0400

““Trident, rather than a thriving British electronics industry producing Ekco mobile phones, Marconi Playstations and PyePods, is the real legacy of the Dare generation, a bloated, useless monster, rooted in the fantasy that Britain is still a world power. We could have used our brains to produce Braun, but instead we ended up with antisocial welfare cases like BAE Systems and BNFL. Grant Morrison’s 1990 satire of Dan Dare, in which an aged and bitter Dare sees his legacy betrayed by a Thatcher-analogue prime minister called Gloria Munday, was spot on.””

- Review of Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain, at Science Museum, by William Wiles, from Icon Eye

Thames Gateway

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:30:39 -0400

From http://www.chora.org/2005/?page_id=44

“The Thames Gateway is a complex urban field. It is 9 times the size of Barcelona, has the same population as Berlin and the equivalent density to Los Angeles. It is replete with polluted industrial sites interspersed within its unique marshland ecology.”

Fascinating recontextualisation by Chora.

London: a Life in Maps

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:31:04 -0400

London: a Life in Maps

Skyline review

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:26:58 -0400

Skyline review:

An overview of the Phoenix Tower market.

One day, all cities will have these sort of data, dynamically mapping the strata of office letting.

Mapping the city vertically, as well as horizontally.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy adventure game

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:26:00 -0400

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy adventure game: Original HHGTTG adventure game, playable online. Recently discovered is some of the source code of the proposed follow-up, Milliways.

Remapping London

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:59:54 -0400

Instead of mapping the physicalities of London, we should map it’s processes.

We should map it’s flows and patterns, it’s trajectories and vectors. We should trace the movement of people, the ebb of capital, the flow of information.

The map will define the territory.

WeWorkForThem™

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:20:15 -0500

WeWorkForThem™: Great stuff over at WWFT, as usual

"I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say."

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:06:40 -0500

“I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say.”

- Oscar Niemeyer