invisible-cities – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Tag Archives: invisible-cities

February 15, 2012 – 9:00 pm

urbnfutr interview with liam young

In an interview with URBNFUTR, Liam Young describes how he sees the relationship between his training as an architect and his current work as the head of “urban futures think tank” Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today: As architects we span the gulf between the cultural and the technological, we are in a unique position to synthesize complex […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, the-expanded-field | Also tagged , | Comments (2) | Permalink
November 23, 2011 – 12:00 pm

the network as industry

[“Interior components of the cooling system” at a Facebook data center in Palo Alto; image via Alexis Madrigal’s report for Domus on Facebook’s Open Computer Project, which “describes in detail how to construct an energy-efficient data centre”.] “Secret Servers”, an article by James Bridle originally published in issue 099 of Icon magazine, looks at the […]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, futures, infrastructure, the-expanded-field, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (1) | Permalink
May 31, 2011 – 5:38 pm

visualizar ’11

[Nerea Calvillo’s “In the Air” — “a visualization project which aims to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents of Madrid´s air” — Visualizar ’08] A brief interruption to the flood-blogging (which will resume shortly, with more on 1927 and crevasses) to note that I’ll be speaking in Madrid at Visualizar ’11 “Understanding Infrastructures”.  The […]

By rholmes | Posted in events, infrastructure, landscape | Also tagged , , | Comments (4) | Permalink
February 16, 2011 – 7:00 pm

switches and access points

[Inside Terremark’s “NCR NAP” facility in Northern Virginia, a key data center; photographed by flickr user nlaudermilch.] Alexis Madrigal points out an article in the New York Times this morning which starts to uncover some of the specifics of how the Egyptian government unplugged the internet.  Quoting from that article: Because the Internet’s legendary robustness […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure | Also tagged | Comments Off on switches and access points | Permalink
October 28, 2010 – 6:00 am

dead website archive

[David Garcia Studio‘s “Dead Website Archive”, from MAP-003 “Archive”; read about the Dead Website Archive at DPR-Barcelona.]

By rholmes | Posted in architecture, asides, speculative-architecture | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (5) | Permalink
August 16, 2010 – 7:00 am

“cheap land, abundant power, and accessible fiber optic lines”

[Google’s data center in The Dalles, Oregon; photographed by flickr user The Impression That I Get] In A Preliminary Atlas of Gizmo Landscapes, mammoth briefly described the Google data center in The Dalles; in an excellent recent article, local The Dalles Chronicle reporter Theodoric Meyer investigates the relationship between Google and local public officials, the […]

By rholmes | Posted in asides, infrastructure, landscape | Also tagged , | Comments (4) | Permalink
January 11, 2010 – 9:54 pm

the blind watchmaker

[A manhole near Halifax marks the Canadian arrival point for one of the eleven major cable lines carrying the bulk of trans-Atlantic Internet traffic; photographed by Randall Mesdon; from this excellent Wired slideshow on the physical infrastructure of the internet; the text accompanying that show is by Andrew Blum, whose forthcoming book on said infrastructure […]

By rholmes | Posted in the-expanded-field, urbanism | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (2) | Permalink