readings – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Category Archives: readings

October 13, 2009 – 12:42 pm

places at design observer

The architecture/urbanism/landscape journal Places has recently taken up residency at Design Observer; notable new articles include a review of The Infrastructural City by Chris Stooss (with attached slideshow of Lane Barden’s wonderful photographs from that book), an article on the relationship between landscape architecture and ecology (excerpted from a new book on Michael Van Valkenburgh, [...]

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October 9, 2009 – 12:32 pm

translators for the networked city

Adam Greenfield, as usual critically interrogating the potential of the networked city, in the unedited version of a piece that’s running in this month’s Wired UK: …the complex technologies the networked city relies upon to produce its effects remain distressingly opaque, even to those exposed to them on a daily basis. In fact, it’s surpassingly [...]

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October 9, 2009 – 11:31 am

dan hill on the sentient city

City of Sound’s Dan Hill comments on the Architecture League’s exhibition “Toward the Sentient City”, at the Sentient City website. While he praises the intent and content of the exhibition, he wonders if it doesn’t go far enough in several ways. The last of these, “the positioning of architecture itself”, is particularly relevant to themes [...]

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September 10, 2009 – 1:41 pm

class, inequality, social media, and the public sphere

A fascinating talk by Danah Boyd, transcribed at alternet, first presenting the evidence of class divisions in social media, and then addressing what the implications of that presence are: How many of you currently use Facebook? [90 percent-plus of the audience raises their hands.] How many of you currently use MySpace? [A few lone figures [...]

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July 22, 2009 – 12:06 pm

readings: on water

1. Good Magazine’s Water Issue discusses clean water technologies for the developing world, the current and historical contamination of American tap water, fully recycled tap water, how the control of water is becoming central to the conflict between India and Pakistan and interviews Robert Glennon, author of the new book Unquenchable, which explores America’s water [...]

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June 25, 2009 – 1:57 pm

readings (3)

1. Fantastic Journal’s post Lines of Defense, which I would cheapen if I summarized it.  More nostalgia, I suppose. 2. The NYTimes on Brussels, “traumatized” by the “dreadful architecture” of the European Union headquarters, and how planners hope to rectify the rift between bureaucrats and residents.  What a direct metaphor for the conflict between the [...]

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June 17, 2009 – 9:53 am

readings (2)

1. BLDGBLOG on the singing ruins of our suburban fever dream. 2. Lewism links Nokia’s plans for mobile phones that would recharge themselves by harvesting electromagnetic radiation out of the air with Nikola Tesla’s derelict tower. 3. Worldchanging reviews the film Garbage Dreams, which tells the story of the Zabbaleen, a community composed primarily of [...]

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