Earlier this year I was in San Francisco, and found myself with an hour to kill at the ferry terminal, over a cold beer and the pleasingly tall and slender format of the San Francisco Chronicle. At first glance it seemed like a decent paper - interesting stories, well-designed. But in the self-styled 'digital capital' that is the Bay Area, and with the gloomy pronouncements about American newspapers in particular, it’s hard to believe its circulation is going anywhere but south.
A month or so later, I made sure I ordered another San Francisco newspaper, the San Francisco Panorama. This isn’t a daily newspaper, and probably won’t make it beyond issue one - but that’s on purpose. It’s a prototype of a newspaper, designed to demonstrate that such things are still viable. And it’s an extraordinary piece of work.
In this core mission, it just about succeeds. It tries to demonstrate that it's possible to make a newspaper, and a local one at that, financially and creatively viable. Despite its leviathan form - which the creators are clear wouldn’t be sustainable - it easily conveys the creative possibilities in the format. Here, interestingly, it’s a hybrid, drawing much from the culture of the web as well as newspapers. And it’s beautifully designed, with a wonderful range. It feels utterly alive, and convincing, in this respect.
The paper turned out to be a prototype of the fantastic Newspaper Club, one of the more interesting ventures to have emerged from 'the papernet'. Their model rather brilliantly combines a craft-led agenda — a kind of 'slow' approach informed by bespoke design as well as template-driven production — as well as a potentially scalable infrastructure for localised printing that piggy-backs on the installed base of the newspaper industry.
Recently, the Newspaper Club team produced another entry into what may or may not be turning into the Things Our Friends ... series by creating a one-off publication for the SXSW conference, Things Our Friends Sent Us For Printing. Russell again kindly asked me to contribute something for this. So I did, choosing to write, and to write something about the physical and cultural infrastructure surrounding newspapers, as well as addressing these new physical artefacts emerging around 'the papernet' idea. It's reproduced here below.
It doesn't suggest one set of artefacts will replace the other — that so rarely happens — but there is admittedly a slightly melancholy note running through the opening series of memories, which also begins to explore the relationship between a city and its press. There's a lot more in that particular topic that I didn't get into here, but the importance of a good newspaper for a city surely cannot be underestimated (whether digital or physical or some fusion of both is another matter, and only hinted at). Hence my interest in the San Francisco Panorama, and I'll expand upon the three examples I refer to below in a subsequent post. But for now, congratulations to Newspaper Club — watch that space.
We may have a soft spot for architects and designers working directly with media as a way to influence architecture and urbanism. Perhaps this is partly given the heritage of Archigram, Superstudio, Cedric Price, Reyner Banham, Yona Friedman et al, but also due to us ‘curators’ all being bloggers, at least to some degree.
So Jeffrey Inaba’s work at the Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting (C-LAB) is particularly interesting, not least their magazine Volume, an influential component of the architecture and urbanism press, produced in collaboration with Archis and AMO. Volume is always worth reading, not least as it takes a very broad-minded and inquisitive view of what architecture can be in the first place. It’s as comfortable with an article on the history of Pininfarina or the Watergate complex as it is with various political agendas. It’s variably designed - sometimes fashionably undesigned, in the contemporary lazy style; other times excellent, confident, exploratory and playful. While you have to wonder whether Volume has any impact outside of “the converted” or the niche audience of the existing architecture and academic community, it does at least try to engage through a widescreen view on contemporary urbanism whilst retaining a sharply intellectual tone and a nose for the political in architectural practice. A good thing.
Inaba concentrates mainly, though not solely, on Volume throughout a talk in which he rapidly disappeared into the gloom of the first night of Postopolis! LA, lit only by the large projected images of page spreads above his head.
Habitus is a new quarterly Australian architecture magazine of some promise. The Australian architecture and interiors magazine market is pretty well stocked, led by the likes of Monument, Architecture Australia, Architectural Review Australia, (Inside), Artichoke,C+A (the extraordinarily elegant publication of Cement Concrete and Aggregates Australia - yes, really), and several others. There are some failings in this set - they’re perhaps overly fixated on image (though this tends to come with the medium); perhaps overly focused on domestic architecture - a particular local strength (and failing) - and Architecture Australia occasionally suffers from being the ‘house mag’ of the AIA and so can be a little “uncritical” (in the words of a local architect friend). There’s nothing particularly avant-garde here either, for which we’d turn to a few of the good university offshoots, such as Mongrel/Subaud. All told, though, there is often good value in all of these publications and it’s a pretty strong showing.
However, Habitus launches unperturbed into this feisty local market with a smart new take on what local actually is. The editorial stance that particularly interests me is its focus on the architecture of Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia, seeing this region as a broad continuum of spaces, places, terrain, climate and culture. In the words of editor Paul McGillick:
“Habitus is about cultural engagement - about architects and designers from Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia enriching one another in an on-going dialogue. The differences and commonalities all add up to a matrix of ideas which can lead to better outcomes for the environment we live in.”
This is not only a great idea but a strong guiding mission, recognising that Australian and New Zealand cities are essentially Asian now, and also the potential for local architects and designers in this wider ‘common market’. It also means the pages are replete with gorgeous tropical houses from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, all warm concrete and burnished wood slowly being engulfed in verdant foliage, surrounded by green-tinged pools and dense eruptions of palms and Tembesu trees. The sheer fecundity of these environments often combine to make the Aus/NZ houses look as if they’re situated in positively spartan terrain, no mean feat. The projects range from enormous mansions to the smallest interventions in the environment, and are balanced with contributions from across the region (though there’s little from Australia north of Sydney in this particular issue, unfortunately.)
It’s a year or so after launch of Monocle and things are going very well, both in print and online, so it's time for me to move on. Having worked with Tyler Brûlé and the rest of the Monocle team to breathe life into the project, creating the first volume of the magazine and iterations of the website and steering it through its first successful year of operation, I decided to leave, and departed at the end of March 2008. The project is up and running, with good solid foundations. Thus, others can run the daily business from here on in.
With that, I thought I’d pause to reflect on some of the design and strategy choices I made with Monocle.com and share them here. I’ve often tried to be ‘transparent’ about the work done on projects here, in the hope that it stimulates useful thought or conversation in other projects elsewhere, and partly to facilitate my own reflections on work. None of what follows is rocket science, and it’s not the place to look for thoughts on 2.0/3.0, social software, or urban informatics. That would be in the accounts of different projects. But if you’re interested in the honest craft of website work, almost deliberately old-fashioned ‘classical’ web design - and how to ally this with innovation in magazine publishing - the following should provide a decent account of several of the key decisions in this particular project.
During the course of an insanely busy year there are many other key decisions that just occurred and aren't noted here - most of them, in fact. And of course some that are confidential. Nor is this particularly structured. Nonetheless, it contains early sketches, outlines of strategic thinking and some insights into decision-making, tool choices and design practice. I hope you find what follows to be useful or interesting.
Context As someone put it, Monocle was probably the most blogged about magazine last year. It was written about offline a lot too, but I won’t dwell on the magazine specifically here, except where it relates to the design and production of the digital services. (For a bookended account, Monocle's editor Andrew Tuck wrote about the launch and Tyler and Andrew were both recently interviewed a year on.)
Many were too quick to judge perhaps, but others were less so and considered responses emerged throughout the year. Reception varied wildly, as one expects, but leaving aside the reception for the magazine and brand overall, the website itself often received much critical acclaim, for which many thanks. The likes of Eye, Print, BusinessWeek,MagCulture and Design Week all suggested we were onto something with our integration of print and web specifically. I’ve mentioned the Eye article before, but the Print piece by Andrew Blum was particularly sharp in identifying the Monocle.com difference. While the new media commentators often mistakenly looked for a 2.0 platform play, Blum noted our attempt to bring quality back to the table, trying to use a new platform to reinvigorate broadcast journalism itself. Similarly BusinessWeek spotted that the “web component (is) more like TV than print”. It actually feels somewhere between the two, but that was the intention.
Perhaps more importantly, the user figures have grown healthily throughout the year. Unique users and time spent on the site are all doing fine, but I knew from the BBC that getting the broadcasts into iTunes would be the thing that really extended the viewership of the programmes, our primary purpose. When we added BBC radio podcasts to iTunes they really thrived, and sure enough, since November 2007, viewing figures have been doubling month on month for Monocle’s movies, driven by iTunes’ ease-of-use. We’re now shifting terabytes of editorial each week. If you have audio or video material, the value of iTunes at this point cannot be stressed enough. It’ll be interesting to see how that platform develops.
Best of all, we hit number 1 in the iTunes News & Politics chart just before Christmas 2007. It’s hardly the most rigorously calculated chart in existence, but still an achievement, I think, to have the likes of the rather more well-funded and well-established Economist, Guardian, BBC, Reuters and Sky trailing in your wake through December, even temporarily (with the first four there having an average age of over 100 years or so, and our brand barely 10 months old at that point.)
After a hiatus, Princeton Architectural Press have re-started Materials Monthly, in their words the “popular, build-your-own materials library subscription service that delivers the latest in materials research, from our desks to yours.” And that it does.
I’ve had a chance to look over, and pore over, issue #11, based around the theme of ‘Modern Adaptations’, and cannot fail but to be very impressed with this unique publication. Arriving in a pleasingly chunky cardboard box, the package contains actual examples of the materials discussed, alongside some well-produced loose-leaf editorial discussing them and their use, in this case historical. The ability to pick up, touch, rub and generally explore the tactility of materials is surprisingly affecting. I’ve long been espousing the virtues of senses other than sight in terms of assessing the impact of the built environment, drawing heavily from the likes of Juhani Pallasmaa, Stephen Holl, Paul Schütze, Mirko Zardini etc., but here’s a publication that actually takes that idea and delivers a sensory experience.
In The Eyes of the Skin, Pallasmaa discusses the relationship between touch, objects, memory, history and process - "The surface of an old object, polished to perfection by the tool of the craftsmen and the assiduous hands of its users, seduces the stroking of the hand … The tactile sense connects us with time and tradition … it is time turned into shape." He notes that "the skin reads the texture, weight, density and temperature of matter."
Indeed, despite only being fragments and samples, it is a revelation to feel the cool weight of the small block of pigmented structural glass, or the delight on peeling back the protective wrapper to stroke the small square of sharp, highly-polished prismatic stainless steel. This simple yet rewarding experience actually suggests that the series serves not only as a regular prompt for designers and builders, but almost as an oblique critique of the ocularcentric architectural press elsewhere.
Of course its target audience is really designers, builders and engineers, and the publication is tuned to that crowd accordingly, but you half-wonder what if other, more general magazines like Dwell, Monument, A+U, Architectural Review, Frame and Mark took this approach, perhaps as a multi-sensory special-edition every quarter.
But for now, you have to subscribe to Materials Monthly for that kind of experience. They say:
“Each issue now includes at least five material samples and spec sheets with mechanical and physical properties, life cycle analysis data, sourcing and manufacturing details, digital and prefab options, installation, maintenance, and preservation advice, and other important technical information.”
It’s well-designed for use, with pages in loose form to be bound later, and a coding system linking object to text and beyond that makes the information architect within twitch with glee (he doesn’t get out much these days, so you’ll forgive me.) Subscribing, you'd quickly build a fantastic collection of materials, and copious notes on their historial, and potential, use. With so much attention being paid to new materials - e.g. the Transmaterial series amongst others - but so little opportunity to genuinely sense them, Materials Monthly, and Princeton Architectural Press, deserve a lot of credit for this smartly realised service.
Ben Terrett asked me to jot down some thoughts on the way Archigram worked, as part of a piece he’s pulled together on them, Pentagram and Magnum (the other pieces written by Michael Bierut and Henrietta Thompson, so I’m in august company). The idea being that all these organisations were united in having interesting 'co-operative' structures that enabled creativity. (As well as all ending in ‘m’). So here’s my quick and glossy contribution, on how I understand Archigram’s organisation to have contributed to their creative success.
Please excuse the work-related post. Just a quick note that there are a couple of vacancies at Monocle at the moment, working across the magazine and website. Both jobs are based at our London HQ in Marylebone. Drop a line to the people named below:
Photo editor Monocle is looking for an experienced photo editor for a nine-month contract starting in March. We are looking for someone who understands the style of the magazine and is happy to work with our existing team of photographers as well as finding new talent around the world. You will need to be able to commission everything from news to fashion and be willing to work irregular hours, including some weekends. This is a fast-paced, demanding and rewarding position. Send applications, including a CV, to Rose Percy at this email address: rp at monocle dot com. Closing date for applications is 14 January 2008.
Producer, Monocle Web Commercially-orientated web producer required to continue the development of Monocle.com, with editorial responsibilities across the website, and particular responsibility for creating and procuring bespoke advertising and sponsorship opportunities, and with potential for syndicating Monocle's services onto mobile and television platforms. As ever, we're looking for innovative ideas, beyond simple sponsorship and banner advertising. This key role would entail developing such ideas, representing Monocle at pitches with clients, working alongside our advertising team, so commercially-orientated experience is a must. In-depth knowledge of both broadcast and new media industries is ideally required, with particular emphasis on emerging models for sponsorship and advertising. The successful candidate will have a passion for new media and share Monocle's mission to 'raise the bar' in terms of quality for online editorial. Send applications, including a a CV, to Dan Hill at this email address: dh at monocle dot com.
"The interesting fact, not easily explicable, is that pamphleteering has revived upon an enormous scale since about 1935, and has done so without producing anything of real value ... The reason why the badness of contemporary pamphlets is somewhat surprising is that the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own. We live in a time when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organized lying exists on a scale never before known. For plugging the holes in history the pamphlet is the ideal form. Yet lively pamphlets are very few, and the only explanation I can offer - a rather lame one - is that the publishing trade and the literary papers have never gone to the trouble of making the reading public pamphlet-conscious. One difficult of collecting pamphlets is that they are not issued in any regular manner, cannot always be procured even in the libraries of museums, and are seldom advertised and still more seldom reviewed. A good writer with some he passionately wanted to say - and the essence of pamphleteering is to have something you want to say now, to as many people as possible - would hesitate to cast it in pamphlet form, because he would hardly know how to set about getting it published, and would be doubtful whether the people he wanted to reach would ever read it. Probably he would water his idea down into a newspaper article or pad it out into a book As a result by far the greater number of pamphlets are either written by lonely lunatics who publish at their own expense, or belong to the sub-world of the crank religions, or are issued by political parts. The normal way of publishing a pamphlet is through a political party, and the party will see to it that any 'deviation' - and hence any literary value - is kept out. There have been a few good pamphlets in fairly recent years. D. H. Lawrence's Pornography and Obscenity was one, Potocki de Montalk's Snobbery with Violence was another, and some of Wyndham Lewis's essays in The Enemy really come under this heading. At present the most hopeful symptom is the appearance of the non-party left-wing pamphlet, such as Hurricane Books. If productions of this type were as sure of being noticed in the press as are novels or books of verse, something would have been done towards bringing the pamphlet back to the attention of its proper public, and the level of the whole genre might rise. When one considers how flexible a form the pamphlet is, and how badly some of the events of our time need documenting, this is a thing to be desired."
Here's a little portmanteau posting, compiling a few items of interest from elsewhere. I try to keep this site free of this kind of post these days, using the 'noted elsewhere' column instead (to the top-right if you're looking at the site; or in the daily links in the feed). But these items deserve a little more context, visual or otherwise. They're all worth a look.
Mayne and Blum in San Francisco First up, an excellent conversation between Thom Mayne of architecture firm Morphosis and the writer Andrew Blum. It's centred on the former's new Federal Building building in San Francisco, but wanders freely and interestingly. It's a good discussion, augmented by photos of the building and surrounds. I was particularly taken with the fact that its the first (major) naturally-ventilated building on the west coast since the introduction of air-conditioning, and Mayne's intentions for a form of post-occupancy evaluation (POE); he didn't call it that as such, but referred to a series of studies over the forthcoming years, to track the use of the building. Conducting POEs has become a CoS mantra, so it's great to see it explicitly referred to in a discussion about building. It's also an excellent piece on introducing radical architecture into San Francisco, a latterly-conservative city in this respect.
Neutral at the Architecture Foundation Architectural visualisations a-go-go at the Architecture Foundation's Yard Gallery in London, with an exhibition on filmmakers Neutral, which opened last week and runs until 13 October 2007. Neutral have been communicating architecture through digital animation for a few years now, producing work for Zaha Hadid and Herzog+De Meuron along the way. The exhibition also features two never-seen-before installations. I can't be there to see it, so I'd be interested in any responses from visitors.
Energyville, by The Economist and Chevron The Economist Intelligence Unit have partnered with energy giant Chevron to produce a small but good online game: Energyville. It's a fairly direct rip-off of SimCity, but for broadly educational purpose - discovering how difficult it might be to power up a city, scrolling forwards to 2030. It would be easy to be cynical about this kind of partnership, but the simulation has actually been done with some care and attention. Though the available parameters, and their impact, would benefit from a little more explanation, you do genuinely learn something about the varying energy sources available to a particular kind of city (a standard SimCity model, and therefore essentially a medium-sized US city). It's interesting how the organising level is urban too, not national - I don't think that's just SimCity defining a kind of 'default setting' for these kind of simulations; rather a sense that the city is the most interesting and effective scale to work at.
Z-A at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York The Storefront in Manhattan is one of my favourite places, and was even before they hosted Postopolis. So it's nice to be able to point at their 25th anniversary events, called 'Z-A' and which run for 26 days, from 2 days ago, in a specially built pavilion in the adjacent Petrosino Park, by Korean architect Minsuk Cho. If you're in NYC, it's a must-see. (I expect people in NYC get told something is "a must-see" every day, but this one really is.) There's a full line-up at the Storefront site - it looks an incredibly varied programme, with many fascinating contributions. I'd be intrigued to hear from Stefano Boeri and Gianluigi Ricuperati on the new Arbitare magazine, for instance. The day after sees Tomas Saraceno's research on "inhabitable lighter-than-air airborne structures as a solution to the world's exploding population". That gives a flavour of things, I think. Oh, and Vito Acconci on Oct. 10th.
Joseph Grima just sent me these pictures (below) of the opening night.
I also note they're starting "Storefront Books, a curated micro-bookshop." That's excellent. I've very taken with Published Art bookshop, here in Sydney, and really appreciate their editing - only stocking the latest of the best magazines, and the best new books. It ensures that you can evaluate them properly, and see their covers. (Contrary to that silly old saying, you almost always can tell a book by its cover.)
Mimoa A new European architecture website, comprising a user-generated set of pictures and notes on modern architecture. Confining it to Europe actually seems a little unnecessary in a way, but it's rather nicely designed, both in terms of its information architecture and aesthetics, feeling somewhat 2.0 but not drenched in cliché. And it has a point, unlike most 2.0 work. I can't quite tell if it's linked formally to the lovely European architecture magazine A10. Interesting either way.
Mary Myers: Andrea Cochran: Landscapes A glorious book, about glorious work. Cochran's landscapes are pitched perfectly, balancing formal order with controlled explosions of planting, light and colour. It's quite beautiful work, stretching mainly down the west coast of the USA, and so with beautiful landscape to borrow. And the book presents and dissects the work, and the thinking behind it, with equal precision. Wonderful. (*****)
John Birmingham: Leviathan: The unauthorised biography of Sydney A fantastic read. Thoroughly subjective, impassioned, personal and slanderous. Well researched and hefty, but written with a light touch, it takes apart the Emerald City, revealing it to be both impossibly dark and essentially conservative. Along with The Fatal Shore and a few others, essential reading in terms of understanding the city. (*****)
Gary Hume: Toyo Ito: Sendai Mediatheque As with the Seattle Public Library book in this series from Actar, I've been poring over this over the last year, pulling details and insight into recent work. A good resource, well-produced. (*****)
Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap Clever yet eminently readable novel of modern Melbourne manners. Written with the devilishly compelling page-turnability of a good grown-up soap opera, it's also a smartly structured and beautifully nuanced depiction of contemporary Australian urban:suburban society, warts and all. (*****)
Steven Carroll: The Art of the Engine Driver Lovely evocation of late-'50s Melbourne suburb, and of the railways just before the heart was ripped out of them. Not just a warm nostalgic costume drama, but with rich atmosphere and complex themes rippling beneath the surface. (****)
Geoff Dyer: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi: A Novel Hugely enjoyable, as ever. One of the finest British writers around. Not autobiography, but autobiography. Fiction, and non-fiction. Travel writing, and not travel writing. Hilarious and occasionally moving, learned and light, warm and bad-tempered, revelling in facile reactions and almost immeasurably deep. A mess of contradictions that establishes a coherent world-view. Which is a contradiction in itself, of course. Beautifully turned prose too, apparently effortless but almost certainly not. (*****)
William H. Whyte: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Amazingly, I'd never read this in linear fashion, from cover to cover, until recently. Quite brilliant, clearly, and written so well. With humility and grace, wit and candour, insight and experience. Although focused primarily on New York of the '70s, it's still essential. (*****)
David Peace: GB84 Not sure why it's taken me so long to read this, as I'm a big fan of David Peace's writing and this book is set in and around the early-80s Sheffield of my youth. But it was well worth the wait. Peace fictionalises the miners' strike, and the extraordinary events of 1983-85 as Britain teetered on the edge of large scale civil unrest. But it's only just fiction, no matter how brutal it seems. A brilliant evocation of the time, and a social fabric stretched taut to breaking point. (*****)
Cormac Mccarthy: The Road I don't recall being quite so affected by a book before. Absolutely extraordinary, particularly if you read within one day. It left me speechless, shattered and reflective. (*****)
Julianne Schultz (Editor): Griffith REVIEW 21: Hidden Queensland (Griffith Review) Very good issue. Although it pores over the same old ground again and again from numerous angles, it ultimately reveals a fascinating, multiperspectival portrait of a place. Beneath its becalmed, languid easy-going surface, QLD has the scars of an extraordinarily rich half-century of history; a set of stories and characters well drawn out here. (****)
Frank Duffy: Work and the City (Edge Futures Ser.) Excellent summary of issues around working environments by DEGW's Duffy - from numerous angles, taking in history and future. Very useful read, even if you sense there's much more to come here. (*****)
Movies Is Magic Klimek: Movies Is Magic Dedications was one of the albums of the last decade, and this is a supreme follow-up. Breathtakingly gorgeous music. (*****)
Contra Vampire Weekend: Contra A vaguely more ethical version of Graceland, this is perfectly pleasant pop with little glamour or edge, but is just arch enough to tweak the synapses. (****)
History, Mystery Bill Frisell: History, Mystery Gentle, supremely tasteful, and beautifully arranged - and therefore without the edge of Frisell at his best. Those days may be gone forever (although the Gerhard Richter album gives us some hope) but this is 21stC easy-listening at its best. (****)
The BQE Sufjan Stevens: The BQE Come on Sufjan, could do better. And this doesn't qualify as New York State. (Though even coasting, he's still good.) (****)
Gutter Tactics Dälek: Gutter Tactics Crunching relentless paranoid dark-hop. Form an orderly line, 'The Wire'-fans, your soundtrack is in. (*****)
Monoliths and Dimensions Sunn 0))): Monoliths and Dimensions Ye Gods, the most startlingly beautiful thing I've heard for a long time. Absolutely stunning. They say: "the most musical piece we’ve done, and also the heaviest, powerful and most abstract set of chords we’ve laid to tape"." Features Eyvind Kang, Julian Priester (!), frequent collaborator Oren Ambarchi and a Viennese choir. (*****)
SND: Atavism Brutal in its starkness, these ultra-precise, ultra-sparse clipped rhythms are the polar opposite of Sunn O))). (*****)
Filastine: Dirty Bomb Not every track works here but those that do are fantastic. A rich stew of jump-cut rhythms and Hispanic samples, framed by an architecture of R&B. (****)
Various Artists: Pop Ambient 2009 A few quite lovely tracks on here, generally those featuring the brilliant Klimek. Others are pretty enough but a little insubstantial. (****)
Flying Lotus: Los Angeles Beautiful fractured rhythms and smeared fizzing neon samples. Wondrous piece of work. LA, indeed. (*****)
Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light Luminous, shimmering, iridescent. Seriously, quite lovely. Only a couple of off-notes; otherwise, a major progression. (*****)
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