... for a week or so, on long-overdue holiday, in Spain. Back soon.
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Recent Posts
- Essay: Shepherd, sheepdog; on people, robots and cities
- Essay: 'The commodification of everything', for 'SQM', by Space Caviar (Lars Muller)
- Essay: 'Urban parasites, data-driven urbanism and the case for architecture', from Architecture + Urbanism, 2014:11
- Essay: 'A sketchbook for the city to come: the popup as R&D', for AD 'Popups and Parasols'
- Journal: Three essays from last summer; networked urbanism
- Sketchbook: London Squared map, with After the Flood
- Sketchbook: User experiences for bikes
- Essay: On Tesla Powerwall, and the skirmish between Moore's law and physical laws
- Sketchbook: Noticing planning notices
- Journal: Interaction Design Classics #4: The Melnikov House intercom system
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RECENT READING
Bruce Sterling: The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things
Magnificent. (*****)Saku Toiminen and Pekka Pohjakallio: The Workbook: Redesigning 925
Some useful thoughts/insights, but needed another edit, another iteration. (***)Sean Lally: The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come
Currently reading (*****)Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg: Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology's Designs on Nature
Currently reading (*****)John Lanchester: What We Talk About When We Talk about the Tube: The District Line (Penguin Underground Lines)
A great book to read if you happen to be returning to London after seven years away. And a great book to read if you're not. (*****)Stephen Emmott: Ten Billion
Scariest book I've ever read (and I read all those Stephen King books as an impressionable teenager.) Blunt assessment of our chances as a species. (*****)Dave Eggers: The Circle
Interesting to read just before Shteyngart—it's not quite as imaginative or sharp as 'Super Sad True Love Story' but more plausible, worryingly. (****)Gary Shteyngart: Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel
Finally got around to this, years after Justin McGuirk recommended to me. Witty, vivid and scary satire. (*****)Daniel Brook: A History of Future Cities
Lovely idea for a book—connecting Dubai, Mumbai, St. Petersburg, Shanghai—as cities of the future (and of the East.) (****)Martti Kalliala, with Tuomas Toivonen and Jenna Sutela: Solution 239 - 246: Finland - The Welfare Game
Lovely little Sternberg Press book speculating imaginatively on possible future Finlands and so generating deep insight into today's Finland. (*****)Michael Frayn: Skios: A Novel
Enjoyable, and very funny in places. (***)David Lodge: The Campus Trilogy: Changing Places; Small World; Nice Work
Great fun, and actually fascinating as a document of the time, and often prescient indication of what was to follow. But primarily, great fun. (*****)Ken Kalfus: Equilateral: A Novel
A wonderful, wonderful small book. As deep as the night sky is vast, yet also humourous and accessible. (*****)Warren Ellis: Gun Machine
Hugely enjoyable police procedural set in several alternate New Yorks. (****)Natalini: Superstudio: The Middelburg Lectures
Some choice excerpts in here. (****)Alex Coles: The Transdisciplinary Studio
Invaluable research, and smartly-written. (*****)Roger Crowley: City of Fortune
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.
