About Dan Hill / City of Sound

This is the personal site of Dan Hill [fuller biography below] The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer. Please ask if you need clarification.

Some relevant starting points
Below, some popular or defining posts at cityofsound. They all tend to gravitate towards recurring themes of cities, architecture, design, media and culture—often colliding in the same post, say on the imagined connections between travel writing and design, or football and architecture—but here's an attempt at filing some starters discretely nonetheless.

Design practice

• Architecture and interaction design, via adaptation and hackability
• Adaptation, personalisation and self-centred design
• How can the design of digital surfaces help engender trust?
• "How the computer can help the designer", New Scientist, 1964
• The New Rationalism
• Design. Architecture. Football
• Starflyer (and service), Schiphol (and soccer), Stansted (and signage)
• Trenitalia, travel writing and total design
• Insanely great, or just good enough?
• Towards a new architect: an interview with Carlo Ratti
• Soft Infrastructure Superpowers: Lift09 presentation
• Wi-fi structures and people shapes
• Post-occupancy evaluations of public wi-fi
• The Adaptive City
• The new engineering: A discussion with Arup's Tristram Carfrae
• Two or three recent diagrams
• Teaching and drawing urban sensing
• Sensing the immaterial city
• The CLOUD
• Sketchbook: Melbourne Smart City, for City of Melbourne/C40 Cities (incl. a note on why it's easier to crowdsource a revolution than a light-rail system)
• Essay: Interfaces for the unlimited dream of flying (Domus)
• Essay: The Garage of Small Things: nanotechnology, biomimicry and design practice (Annex)
• Essay: Foreword to Rory Hyde's "Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture"
• Essay: Introducing SuperNormal
• Essay: Maginot Line, from "Dark Matter & Trojan Horses" (Strelka Press)
• Sketchbook: Print-on-demand work-in-progress
• Sketchbook: Dark Matter
• Essay: Dark Matter & Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary (Strelka Press)
• Essay: 21st Century Gestures Clip Art Collection
• Sketchbook: Domus magazine on iPad

Architecture

• The Smithsons and adaptive architecture
• Daily Express building, Fleet Street
• Swiss Cottage Library, London
• Frank Gehry's MIT Stata Center, Cambridge Mass.
• Senate House, University of London
• Two possible Google Earth extensions: time and sound
• Flora, fauna, pixels and paper
• Tales of two cities imagined in music: Metropolis Shanghai and Chavez Ravine
• Brunswick Centre, London
• La Tonnara and the Chamber of Death; Arabian floating architecture in Sicily
• The Anti-Fun Palace: APEC Fence, Sydney lockdown
• Staircase, University of Technology Sydney
• In Every Dream Home A Heartache: The Great Australian Dream and its architecture
• Indiscreet music
• Façades: expressive, responsive, interactive
• The Personal Well-Tempered Environment
• Density, via the Weaire-Phelan structure, Holbæk Kasba and the Monaco House
• Joost Greenhouse, Melbourne
• A collaborative map of modernism in Australia
• 'Placemakers', and architectural scenes
• Barangaroo Tomason
• Sketchbook: Drawing The Shard's parking
• Essay: Foreword to Rory Hyde's "Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture"

Cities, Places and buildings

• New York: Seoul Survivor?
• Brief Notes on Seattle
• The Shock of the New World, with respect to the flora and fauna of Australia
• Punching holes in Ciutat Vella; adaptive urban form in Barcelona
• Urbis: Imagining The Modern City - And A New Kind Of Museum
• The theft of Bedford Square
• Close to the madding crowd (on St. Giles, London)
• Savile Row and tailoring urban fabric
• New Islington, New Hope (Manchester)
• Koolhaas/Balmond/Arup Serpentine Pavilion, 2006
• Boston/Cambridge Diary
• Shanghai Diary (Please note: the Shanghai diaries were written for this blog by Justin O'Connor.) 
• Best-laid plans for Australian garden cities and reflections on the Southern Cross
• Suspended at a junction in time: Australia, Silent Running, The Drowned World and the University of Queensland
• The View
• Apocalypse Sydney
• The city as destructive system: wildfires, Dresden and the case against urban sprawl
• Father of modern Brisbane
• The city is conceived of radial opposites
• Best Urban Spaces and Places
• Lyons House, Robin Boyd, Sydney
• State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Donovan Hill Peddle Thorp, and some notes on libraries in general
• Sheffield and The North
• Writing, about Sydney
• In denial, on the beach, the drowned world
• Aerial music over Beijing
• Notes on Geneva. A Walk
• Life on Mars; #duststorm
• Emergent Urbanism, or 'bottom-up planning'
• Flood
• Same Old New World Cities; or, the missing vision for Australian cities; or, asking the right questions in the first place
• On retail
• Journal: 'Bullitt', 'Drive' and Walking the LA River
• Journal: A walk in Schöneberg, Berlin: energy policy, gentrification, protest, and the humble joys of communal flower bed
• Journal: Of brains and cities; neuroscience and cultures of decision-making
• Journal: Passport Control to Pimlico
• Essay: Happy Feelings at the Awakening of Finnish Spring*, Summer, Autumn / Helsinki, Spirit Level Cities, Scarry Cities and Opaque Cities
• Journal: Ravintolapäivä, Restaurant Day, edible urbanism and civic opportunism
• Essays: An edible urbanism
• Essay: Helsinki Street Eats (Sitra)

Postopolis!

• Postopolis! LA, April 2009, days one, two, three, four and five
• Postopolis! NYC, June 2007, days one, two, three, four and five

Policy

• Design Thinkbelt
• Industrial Policy for Creativity
• Hear that rain
• Flat rates, Flat whites
• "The Shinkansen to Melbourne is now boarding at Central Station, platform 27 ...": A new high-speed rail network for Australia
• Røde, and the new manufacturing

Media

• Binge Watching contemporary TV
• Calling All Nations
• Movements in Modern Media
• Why 'Lost' is genuinely new media
• Ripples, or "The Social Life of a Broadcast"
• Assessing the new Guardian, with brief nod to the avant-garde [aka Grazia, Heat and The Sun]
• Work: quick review of 2005 at the BBC
• On podcasting itself
• The Fall and Rise of the Magazine Cover?
• iPods and the wireless
• Cables

Games

• Los Angeles: Grand Theft Reality
• Modeling urban behaviour amidst networked ultraviolence
• Gangs Of New York, World-Building

Music

• Music for Films: Top 12 Appearances by Bands in Films
• New Musical Experiences
• Designing for shuffling
• How Devices Learn
• Music's Rich Facets

Reviews

• Alan Fletcher, Design Museum
• Defab
• Stephen Gill and photographing the everyday invisible
• New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York
• But Beautiful, by Geoff Dyer
• Jonathan Raban at London Review Bookshop
• Archigram, Design Museum, London
• "China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795", Royal Academy, London
• Modernism is abroad, generally
• The city as exhibition
• HyperCard RIP
• 'Future City: Experiment and Utopia in Architecture 1956-2006' exhibition
• Barbican: This Was Tomorrow
• 'Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait', by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno
• Luigi Colani exhibition, Design Museum, London
• +&-=X 20 years of typo-graphics from the Tokyo Type Directors Club. UTS Gallery, Sydney
• Houses. Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa. SANAA (Actar 2007)
• Habitus magazine
• The Black Swan, Nicholas Nassim Taleb
• "Modern Times: The untold story of modernism in Australia", Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; plus some notes on architectural exhibitions
• 'Network + network + network = network'. Lift09 conference, and Geneva
• Work and the City, Frank Duffy (2008)
• The Murder of Crows, Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller, Biennale of Sydney 2008
• 'Towards the Sentient City' exhibition, New York
• A machine for the life between buildings: some notes on the iPad
• Notes on the 'next generation check-in experience' from Qantas
• Linked Hybrid by Steven Holl Architects, and designing for the occupation of space in contemporary Beijing
• Tetsuo Kondo's Suspended Ramp, Tallinn

Fuller biography for Dan Hill
British. Born Zürich, 1970. Based in Treviso, Italy.

Dan Hill is CEO of Fabrica, a communications research centre and transdisciplinary studio based in Treviso, Italy, and part of the Benetton Group (more details here.)

Throughout a career focused on integrating design, technology, cities, media and people, Dan has been responsible for shaping many innovative, popular and critically acclaimed products, services, places, strategies and teams.

Previously, he was Strategic Design Lead at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund (see related post). He was part of Sitra's Strategic Design Unit, exploring how design might enable positive systemic change throughout society. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Architecture department at University Technology, Sydney (UTS) and a member of the Integrated Design Commission Advisory Board in South Australia.

Previous to this, Dan was Urban Informatics leader for Arup, assessing how real-time information changes the urban experience from a design-led perspective. He was also the leader for Arup’s global Foresight + Innovation team for the Australasia region, responsible for long-term scenario planning and strategy. He developed the Strategic Design business at Arup, using design practice to help clients in government and business address complex interdependent issues, helping frame the right questions. Based in Sydney, Dan worked on major urban and building projects worldwide.

Before Arup, Dan was Head of Interactive Technology & Design at the BBC in London, where he helped lead design across their award-winning websites as well as conducting significant strategic work, re-thinking the organisation for the on-demand age. He was design lead for iPlayer, and his team introduced podcasting to the BBC, amongst numerous other innovative services. In between the BBC and Arup, Dan worked for Monocle where as Director of Web and Broadcast he was a core part of the startup team. Dan is one of the organisers of the acclaimed architecture and urbanism event Postopolis!, running in New York and Los Angeles so far. He also writes City of Sound, generally thought of as one of the leading architecture and urbanism websites, as well as regularly writing for architecture and design press worldwide.

Dan is also a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which selects nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, the leading honour for websites, as well as being a jury member for both Core77 and IxDA interaction awards in 2012. He was included in the inaugural list of Sydney’s ‘Creative Catalysts’ for the Vivid Sydney arts festival 2009.

Books and essays include "Dark Matter & Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary" (Strelka Press, 2012), "Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space", Mark Shepard (ed.) (2011), "Best of Technology Writing 2009", Steven Berlin Johnson (ed.) (Yale University Press, 2010), and "Actions", Mirko Zardini (ed., 2008), amongst others.  His writing also appears regularly in Domus' magazine, amongst others, where he curates the SuperNormal series. He is also a strategic design advisor to Domus.

His design work has featured in the Istanbul Design Biennal (2012), the AAA exhibition 'Remodelling Architecture: Architectural Places - Digital Spaces' (Sydney, 2009) and 'Habitar: Bending the urban frame' (Gijon, 2010).

Work

• 2012— Fabrica, Chief Executive Officer, Treviso [related post]
  
• 2011—2012: Sitra, Strategic Design Lead, Helsinki. [related post]
• 2008—2011: Arup, Associate, Sydney. [related post]
• 2008: Consultant (clients included Channel 4, Lonely Planet, BBC)
• 2007-2008: Monocle, Director of Web and Broadcast, London/Sydney. [related post | related post]
• 2001-2006: BBC, Head of Interactive Technology & Design, London. [related post]
• 2001: Urbis Museum, Manchester. Curator/Producer (freelance) [related post]
• 2001: Playlouder.com, London. Design Director (freelance)
• 1997-2001: state51, London. Designer
• 1994-1997: Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester. Researcher/Designer
• 1992-1994: Manchester City Council, Manchester. Senior Officer, Chief Executive's Department

Education

• MA by research: 'Cultural Industries in the digital city', Manchester Metropolitan University (1995-1997)
  The research provided a snapshot of contemporary cultural change in Manchester's Northern Quarter, addressing the nascent new media design industry and other design-oriented cultural industries, urban cultures, urban regeneration models, and theoretical writing on the city. It provided practical recommendations for regeneration and intervention in this area, tied to active engagement and support for cultural businesses in the Northern Quarter. [published article | related post]
• BSc: Computer Science (2:1), University of Hertfordshire, (1988-1992)
  [related post]

Presentations and events

• New Babylon: Architecture & Urbanism after the Crisis, Karlsruhe, speech, January 2013
• Electric City, London School of Economics, speech, December 2012
• SmartCityExpo, Barcelona, panel, November 2012
• International New Towns conference, Rotterdam, moderator, September 2012
• Trust Us, V&A conference, lecture and panel, September 2012
• Public talks for Integrated Design Commission, Adelaide & Melbourne, March 2012
• Social Cities of Tomorrow, Amsterdam, keynote, February 2012
• Design of Understanding, London, keynote, January 2012
• Cisco Public Services Summit, Oslo, workshop, December 2011
• Integrated Design Commission/TACSI public lecture, Adelaide, November 2011
• Creative Entrepreneurship for a Competitive Economy, Tallinn, speech, October 2011
• Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design Open Lecture, Copenhagen, September 2011
• Laptops and Looms, Derbyshire, August 2011
• Keynote speech, National Digital Forum, Wellington, October 2010
• Helsinki Design Lab Global, moderator of sustainability sessions, September 2010
• Partnership for Urban Innovation, Shanghai, June 2010
• Creative Clusters symposium, Hong Kong, June 2010
• Microsoft Social Computing Symposium on cities, January 2010 [related post]
• Closing keynote, Web Directions South, Sydney, October 2009
• 'New Soft City', World Design Congress, Beijing, October 2009
• Opening speech, 'Bluestone Lounge Room: Designing the streets of Melbourne' exhibition, Melbourne, July 2009 [related post]
• 'Urbanism about information', Australian Institute of Architects, Sydney, July 2009
• RE:HAB Student Architecture Congress, Canberra, July 2009
• Brisbane Ideas Festival, Brisbane, March 2009
• Postopolis! LA, Los Angeles, April 2009 [related posts]
• 'Soft Infrastructure Superpowers', LIFT09, Geneva, March 2009 [related post | presentation]
• State of Design, Melbourne, July 2008
• Pervasive 2008, Sydney, May 2008
• Postopolis!, New York, June 2007 [related posts]
• 'New Movements in Media', Aula: Movement conference, Helsinki, June 2006. Speaking as part of a panel with Tyler Brulé, Abbas Raza, Jim Griffin and Dan Gillmor among others. [info | related post | presentation]
• IDEA 2006 conference, Seattle, October 2006. Speaker on 'The New Media': how the architecture of information around media/art shapes our experience and interaction. [info]
• 'New Musical Experiences', Sibelius Academy/British Council, Helsinki, keynote speaker at 'Future of Music' seminar, September 2005. Also given at Manchester Metropolitan University 'Local Cultures in Global Space' lecture series, February 2006. [presentation]
• 'Radio in 2010', Nokia symposium, Helsinki, February 2005
• 'The Future of User-Centred Technology Design', AIGA Experience Design, Design Council, London, January 2005 'Self-Centred Design', Design Engaged conference, Amsterdam: November 2004 [info]
• 'Future of Design' seminar, UK Government-sponsored (DTI) mission, British Consul, San Francisco, October 2004 [info | report]
• 'Designing for Hackability', SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems conference (DIS2004), Cambridge, Mass.:, August 2004 [info | presentation]
• 'Towards Designing for Adaptation', AIGA Experience Design, Design Council, London, December 2002 [info |

Publications and published work

• The Garage of small things: nanotechnology, biomimicry and design practice (Annex)
• An edible urbanism (Manifest)
• Helsinki Street Eats (Sitra)
• Dark Matter & Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary (Strelka Press)
• 21st Century Gestures Clip Art Collection
• Foreword to Rory Hyde's "Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture"
• Interfaces for the unlimited dream of flying (Domus)
• In Praise of Lost Time (on Facebook Timeline) (Domus)
• Portable Cathedrals (on the Nokia N9) (Domus)
• Happy Feelings at the Awakening of Finnish Spring*, Summer, Autumn / Helsinki, Spirit Level Cities, Scarry Cities and Opaque Cities (Monocle)
  'Towards a new architect: an interview with Carlo Ratti', in Architectural Review Australia (2009) [full text]

• 'Røde, and the new manufacturing', a version of which appeared in Monocle (2009) [full text]

• 'The Adaptive City', chapter in the accompanying publication to 'Urban Play' project/exhibition, curated by Droog Design and Scott Burnham, part of ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam (2008) [full text]
• 'Loam for civic creativity', chapter in the accompanying publication to 'Actions: playing, gardening, recycling and walking', exhibition, curated by Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi for the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal (2008)
• Review of Jan Gehl Architects' plans for Sydney in Architectural Review Australia (2008) [full text]
• Contributed a section of Dan Saffer's book 'Designing for Interaction' (New Riders, 2006) on the subject of adaptive design, interaction design and architecture, alongside 10 other 'interviewees' such as Marc Rettig, Larry Tesler, Hugh Dubberley, Brenda Laurel etc. [full text]
• Report for UK Government: 'Adaptation, Personalisation and Self-centred design', in the Department of Trade & Industry Global Watch Report: 'Innovation through People-Centred Design' (2004) [full text]
• Icon magazine: 'When Perfect Isn't Good Enough', on the iPod and adaptive design (2004) [article]
• Core77: 'Insanely great, or just good enough?' (2004) [full text]
• Other writing and journalism for Monocle, City journal [full text], BBC Music, Icon, Cre@te magazine and various online music magazines.
• My architectural photography appeared as part of the Art Gallery of Ontario's major Frank Gehry exhibition throughout early 2006 [info]