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If you can ignore the dreadful intro, there's a cute little Flash thing here which compares Harry Beck's original 1933 London Underground map with the 2003 version, and then the geographical 'reality'.
The Real Underground [req. Flash]
[via Paul Hammond - thanks!]
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Hugely enjoyable police procedural set in several alternate New Yorks. (****)
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Some choice excerpts in here. (****)
Alex Coles: The Transdisciplinary Studio
Invaluable research, and smartly-written. (*****)
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Traditional history book, but a good one. The stories are so good, it can hardly fail. (****)
Bruno Munari: Supplemento al Dizionario Italiano
Just a beautiful little book. Wonderful conceit, perfectly executed. Some further brief thoughts here. (*****)
Geoff Dyer: Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room
(Still reading, but...) Dyer—in my top five, fwiw—does a kind of written (non-Director's) commentary through every scene of Tarkovsky's "Stalker". Absolutely hilarious, with sudden blooms of insight. (*****)
Dan Hill: Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary
By me! An e-book on design practice, with a strategic bent. Read all about it here, and buy the thing here.
Steven Johnson: Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age
Steven kindly asked me for comments on his draft of this, which is what I read. There's so much in here; I don't fully buy the premise and promise of networked politics, as Steven knows, but I do buy a lot of it. Excellent survey of current progressive thinking about political systems and cultures, and so highly useful. (****)
David Brooks: The Social Animal
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Natalini: Superstudio: The Middelburg Lectures
Good collection of reflection on the work of Superstudio, in the context of that particularly fertile period for Italian radical architecture. (*****)
Ian McEwan: Solar
An odd book. Somewhat humdrum affair from McEwan. Engaging in places, funny in places, but curiously lacklustre overall. But McEwan is always worth reading to some extent. (***)
Steven Holl: Urbanisms: Working with Doubt
Wonderful projects, beautiful book. (*****)
