dodeckahedron

i've moved!

2009-12-07T20:35:00.003Z

click on the postcard!

overmodulated marriage

2009-09-14T23:06:00.007Z

We went to a night of Matthew Silver's films in New York, never have seen anything quite like his oeuvre. Plus he started the whole thing crawling backwards on the stage, a monologue about reality. If I recall. Enjoy! Part one.

seizure

2009-09-09T16:49:00.001Z

(Nick Cobbing)

Roger Hiorns' installation.

expo 67 postcards

2009-09-08T11:58:00.002Z

A treasure trove.

punch and judy

2009-09-08T10:40:00.001Z

Last night we saw Jan Švankmajer's version, and it was incredible:

graphic presentation, 1939

2009-09-08T10:34:00.002Z

Willard Cope Brinton's book on data visualisation is online to browse.

beatles week

2009-09-08T10:19:00.004Z

There were good audio documentaries on the two Georges. Which are not available any more.

divine horsemen

2009-09-08T10:06:00.003Z

Maya Deren shot this between 1947 and 1952 and edited and completed by Deren's third husband Teiji Ito and his wife Cherel Winett Ito (1947-1999) in 1981, twenty years after Deren's death. Most of the film consists of images of dancing and bodies in motion during rituals in Rada and Petro services.

We saw it at the South London Cultural Centre on Friday night.

white fungus

2009-09-01T16:07:00.002Z

Image by Elaine Thompson

A story by Bruce Sterling, an excerpt from Beyond: Scenarios and Speculations.

chico

2009-08-29T23:45:00.001Z

sesame street and shapes

2009-07-07T00:28:00.001Z

and now for some philip glass:

lost in creteil

2009-06-30T11:03:00.002Z

Lost in Creteil:

Niemeyer's roof in Bobigny Town Hall.

Olympiades area. I used to live near here, and walk around the brocantes on the weekend.

La Defense

recently

2009-06-28T13:37:00.002Z

manuel mota + norberto lobo in london 24/06/09

2009-06-21T22:08:00.002Z

This Wednesday! I can't wait.

green porno! series 2!

2009-06-15T11:26:00.004Z

Isabella Rosselini's ace collection of costumed underwater stories.

A couple of favourites:

amiga work - suzanne treister

2009-06-10T13:38:00.002Z

Suzanne says: In January 1991 I bought an Amiga computer and made a series of fictional videogame stills using Deluxe Paint II ... The original Amiga floppy disks are now corrupt.

She also has a great stamp collection.

john whitney, 1961

2009-06-02T16:57:00.000Z

alphaville

2009-06-02T12:36:00.003Z

Developed by the Alphaville Urbanismo Corporation in the 1970s, Alphaville São Paolo ‘resembles its fictional namesake in elaborate and all-encompassing surveillance techniques’ writes an American professor of urban studies, ‘including high walls, hidden cameras and alarm systems … The Alphaville gym specializes in self-defence and is called CIA.’ The facts about the development get better, or still worse, depending on whether one prefers dystopia to remain firmly in the realms of fiction or to come fully fledged to life:

To advertise Alphaville, the company sponsored some episodes of a popular prime-time Brazilian soap opera whose leading male character is an architect. The architect and his mistress visit Alphaville where, according to Brazil’s Gazeta Mercantil, the characters exalt the safety, freedom and planning of the place, comparing it to the neighbourhoods shown in US films.

And so … Godard’s film about a city of the future, shot on location in the Paris of the mid-1960s, has endowed not just one but thirty ‘gated communities’ in Brazil with its name. And reality, having provided fiction with the raw material for its most dystopian scenarios, returns the compliment by materialising them. The back-and-forth between image and reality is dizzying: from CCTV to soap opera, from European art cinema to aspirational Hollywood and back again. Where does the utopian projection end and dystopian reality begin?

From Visions of the City

notes from other peoples' notes

2009-06-01T09:43:00.006Z

Thrilling Wonder Stories on Friday had a great mixture of French and British speakers. The former being daringly intellectual, the latter doomily realistic. It was the hottest day of the year so far. My notes aren't great - too many doodles. And decontextualised quotes that I liked - mainly from François Roche: “protocolising the witch in the forest”, "swimming in a charming distress".

For a succinct glide through the day, check Jim Rossignol's notes.

Bryan McKay wasn't even in the AA! That probably made his concentration span better. On Iain MacLeod:

“SF is a concept and the concept of the future resides in that. It is one of the major myths of Western society. Before SF we had the western, another projection of the American dream, risk, possibilities, wide-open dreams, and prospects waiting to be discovered.”

Eight Problems for Writing on an SF Future:

The future isn’t going to be dominated by Western culture
People won’t be people as we know them now.
Space travel isn’t likely to happen in the way we once imagined.
Science itself is becoming increasingly incomprehensible.
Real aliens would be barely recognizable to us as alive.
The physics and technology required to drive a society more advanced than ours would be incomprehensible to us.
Language and means of expression will be different.
There’s a strong likelihood that we’re all going to be dead.

“Maybe, someday, we will get back to the moon, which is never that far away.”

Which makes me think of Le Guin's Anarres:

An anarchist society living on the moon: an ambiguous utopia: the best fiction I've read in a long time.

--------{}----------

2009-06-01T09:42:00.001Z

erupting light

2009-04-06T19:46:00.001Z

Is a song by Hildur Gudnadottir, from an album called "Without Sinking" out on Touch now.

ambiguous and distant

2009-03-30T23:40:00.001Z

~~~~~~~~

octagon city

2009-03-30T23:29:00.002Z

"Octagon city is a utopian settlement based on the twin ideals of anti-slavery and vegetarianism. It was organised in an octagonal subdivision pattern, used for its social and spiritual potency."

That happened in Kansas, in 1854. New Yorkers put an ad in the paper, and they all moved out there. From Towards Cosmopolis, by Leonie Sandercock.

civilia

2009-03-30T23:27:00.001Z

"Far from the sterile and sober best practice notes we now have from every kind of para-governmental-commission-on-urban-design, Civilia is a ribald romp of a postcard-perfect consumer paradise - complete with sex shops, vagrant beatniks, commuter yachting, impromptu Shakespearean theatre and excessively flamboyant brutalist architecture."

Scroll down the "medium" thoughts here

2009-03-24T22:54:00.001Z

Norberto Lobo from Cláudio Fernandes on Vimeo.

parole!

2009-03-11T17:36:00.002Z

this is a fun place to play.
A "dictionary on the contemporary city"

For instance, città analoga [definition]
City existing in the collective memory, made up from the sum of projects, even not built and the transposition of MONUMENTS. The projects as the monuments are given by the history of architecture and of the city, their composition giives birth to a city that w recognize, but that is new. To clarify this concept Rossi uses the example of the perspective of the painter Canaletto that represents a project done by palladio for the Ponte of Rialto in Venice, placed next to the basilica of Vicenza and the Palazzo Chiericati, as if it was one real urban environment. For Rossi it is possible, in the same way to, build a theory of deign in which the elements are prefixed and their combination leads way to new and original meanings.

Here's the picture they give:

It's tempting to spend my days adding to this list.
The first I would add, is Xenakis' VILLE COSMIQUE. It's listed in the dictionary as 1968 (Xenakis wrote his essay in '64) and as relating to Russian utopia ...

stability, space, drawing other lands.

2009-03-11T17:23:00.003Z

One thing I miss about Caracas: the Gego room.

"Sometimes these patterns illusionistically swell into lumps or sink into pockets; occasionally, lines will suddenly stop in the middle of nowhere, skip a beat in unison, then move on, leaving a strip of unmarked space like a tear in the surface, with light showing through." from NYT.

2009-02-01T22:26:00.001Z

from the best book ever, originally uploaded by marthaahtram.

microscopic

2009-02-01T22:04:00.000Z

john cage on dependency

2009-01-23T21:05:00.003Z

Cage:
Branca has to have Branca. Laurie Anderson has to have Laurie Anderson.

My music is quite different; I don't have to be present.

Wim Mertens:
There has been a time in which composers wanted to as stay close to their music as possible.

John Cage:
Like the music of the Middle Ages, that's what these people are like.

It's a return to the Middle Ages but with the use of modern technology.
In fact, it's the modern technology that makes it Moyen Âge, because they make circuits upon which they become habitually dependent.

If the circuits don't function, the music collapses.

It's very different from writing music that can be used by a stranger, someone you don't know.

From A Dip in the Lake, 1982

visualisations of imbalance

2009-01-22T15:39:00.002Z

Martin Rowson, in the Guardian:

From Moiz Syed's Israeli/Palestinian Coffin Counter:

from web to newsprint

2009-01-21T20:05:00.002Z

A really nice post from Ben Terrett about the process of compiling interesting articles from the web and turning it into a newspaper, thanks to News of the World (I didn't know they'd let you do short print runs. Of course you'd have to choose a newspaper that didn't make you feel dirty about it).

A gorgeous, out-of-print piece.

dossier

2009-01-20T19:49:00.003Z

It seems that every time I turn on the tv, Dossier is on. I love it. It's worth watching for the intro credits, massive world map and Walter Martínez' charismatic dissection of world politics. I don't understand so much, but they dub Obama's speeches with a slight time-lapse so I'm slowly catching on.

Dossier was off the air for 3 years, but came back in September.

Here he is in action:

Walter1 050109
Cargado por Radioaporrea

beacon

2009-01-15T14:27:00.001Z

a basic sensation

2008-12-10T23:55:00.002Z

Telepathe - Devil´s Trident (Planning To Rock Remix) from Darío Peña on Vimeo.

troy

2008-12-10T23:24:00.002Z

A split EP from Cardopusher + Pacheko: This Troy. They're from Caracas, although Cardopusher ends up at Bangface sometimes. Hielo Seco remix is ace.

illustrated horror films

2008-12-10T23:14:00.002Z

part one and part two.

american boy

2008-12-09T21:10:00.000Z

thanks dan!

hard to find good coverage.

2008-12-09T20:39:00.005Z

This is an article from a British person in Athens and this one from kathimerini

Tropisms Part III = Tropism VI

2008-12-02T16:01:00.003Z

The title might sound a bit confusing; there are many Tropisms, but this one is the last. Maybe one day we could do something with the off-cuts, which I like a lot. In any case, here is the music. It's a more succinct version of a set that Anil played in London at Shunt.

Re-reading what started it makes me think more of Caracas.

They seemed to spring up from nowhere, blossoming out in the slightly moist tepidity of the air, they flowed gently along as though they were seeping from the walls, the boxed trees, the benches, the dirty sidewalks, the public squares.

They stretched out in long, dark clusters between the dead house-fronts. Now and then, before the shop windows, they formed more compact, motionless little knots, giving rise to occasional eddies, slight cloggings...

fantastic architecture, tetra city

2008-12-02T15:57:00.001Z

From Jack.

wiley in nigeria

2008-12-01T16:05:00.004Z

Three Wise Men Greeting Entry into Benin, from the "World Stage, Africa: Dakar-Lagos" series.

That one is my favourite. Here's a story about it.

AB-

2008-11-27T17:30:00.001Z

lucky cloud

2008-11-25T14:19:00.004Z

(Tokujin Yoshioka)

(Atelier Bow-Wow)

(An Te Liu)

(Barry McGee)

(Julie Mehretu)

pacha mama

2008-11-07T15:06:00.000Z

make it blue!

2008-11-04T21:50:00.002Z

You know that bit in Sleeping Beauty, where the fairies keep arguing about her dress colour? We did that too, in front of the TV. "make it blue!" Like Tomasky in this video, where he guides us through 270 to win and predicts the red states turning blue. Too much excitement. I voted in my own designer's way. And now we wait.

modular living

2008-10-31T15:19:00.002Z

A few years ago I saw N55's micro dwellings, and thought "I'd like to live there when I'm older":

Although today in the Guardian I see they've made these walking houses, that look shinier and more feasible for moving around and also pretty self-sustainable. Here's a manual.

I think I'll definitely live in one of these when I'm older, in the mountains in the South of France. Just got to make it wild boar-friendly. Maybe I could attach proximity sensors that emit a strange smell or noise within a certain range ...

drop the lime fact mix.

2008-10-30T17:30:00.002Z

(by gusset)

enjoying this today! Sad I couldn't be at Night Slugs Trouble & Bass party last week!! I bet ... well I know it was fun times.

proSolve370e

2008-10-30T17:20:00.002Z

A 3D tile that can be attached to places to reduce air pollution (preferably "standardized, repetitive surfaces of modernism, housing estates, traffic spaces").

Not entirely sure how it works, but here's the BLURB.

From Elegant Embellishment, this was shown in Germany's pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

cacao at shunt

2008-10-29T23:27:00.002Z

Last week in London, Cacao played again! Here are stills of the visuals that Anil's put up.

UCV

2008-10-29T00:31:00.002Z

I took a bunch of photographs when we visited the Central University of Venezuela, designed by Carlos Raúl Villaneuva, 1944 - 1970. It's a really beautiful, quiet place in the city.

Here's a bit about it. I hope I can visit the "clouds" auditorium during my stay here.

red desert

2008-10-29T00:28:00.001Z

I really want to see this film. I think I can get a ripped copy at the UCV (main Caracas university) and watch it with Spanish subtitles. In any case, a DVD's coming out soon in the UK.

relationship advice from beyonce

2008-10-23T23:30:00.001Z

via Sasha Frere-Jones:

Beyoncé, for all her traditional behavior as good-looking good girl, is building a catalogue of songs that have little to do with traditional expressions of love or pain. She is most fond of the second person, and her hits, in the aggregate, form a sort of default advice column. She isn’t as interested in her own pain as she is in telling others what mistakes not to make. I’ve made a small list of her key talking points, reaching back to her work in Destiny’s Child:

“No, No, No”: Be entirely clear with your partner; vague language can lead to confusion and hurt feelings.

“Bills, Bills, Bills”: Money and romance do not mix, so keep separate bank accounts and go Dutch until your relationship is stable.

“Bug-A-Boo”: Constant communication can feel more like harassment than affection.

“Say My Name”: If your partner is avoiding you, arrange a face-to-face meeting. Monosyllabic answers and lack of affection can be an indication of deeper troubles.

“Jumpin’, Jumpin’”: Couples do not necessarily need to spend every night together. Plan one night a week where you are with your friends, and he with his.

“Independent Women Part 1”: If you pay for your own shoes, you are more likely to judge your relationship on its own merits rather than as a tallying of goods exchanged. (Get Cameron Diaz to help you count your belongings, if you feel like you’re losing track.)

“Bootylicious”: If you are more experienced than your partner, make sure to be explicit about your needs and expectations. Direct questions will save time and decrease anxiety. (Comfortable jelly levels, for example, should be established early on in any relationship.)

“Check On It”: If a man shows sustained interested, allow him to get close to you over dinner, or a movie. Leave your options open. If he has a friend, perhaps invite him along; the friend can act as a control group for the evening.

“Ring The Alarm”: Fights are not always unhealthy. Sometimes, a blowout can be cathartic and release pressure that might be damaging your ability to communicate. Introduce a sense of play into your arguments—megaphones are fun (make sure your neighbors are familiar with your routine, and don’t call the police), and role-playing can help defuse anger with humor.

“Irreplaceable”: If your ex is having trouble finding his way out of the house, provide clear and consistent directions. Men are sometimes challenged by the word “straight,” which has sexual overtones. Suggest that he go left or right, terms familiar from both baseball and driving. Also, keep several empty boxes on hand. (Once broken down flat, boxes can fit horizontally into a closet or under a leaky houseplant.)

“Freakum Dress”: Be sure you own at least one freakum dress. If you find one you really like, consider buying several of them in different colors. (Make sure you have a friend who can explain what a freakum dress is.)

“Single Ladies”: If a man values your relationship, be prepared to demand a commitment. Suggest that he signal the value of his commitment by buying you an enormous piece of jewelry, something big enough to kill a hamster with one mild blow.

touch me baby

2008-10-20T23:13:00.002Z

Myrna Hague - Touch Me Baby (1977)

(my current favourite song)

bocadillo love

2008-10-20T22:50:00.001Z

I'm not allowed to eat too many of them, the sugar makes me turn crazy.

The guanabana ones wrapped in leaves that you can buy from kiosks on the street one by one, are my favourite.

born everywhere, raised in britain

2008-10-17T23:25:00.002Z

Quite funny interactive piece from the Guardian.
Antonis, 14:
"In Greece, you can hug your teacher. In England teachers aren't allowed to touch you in any single way. They're not very friendly."

Akeilha, 9:
In Antigua they eat ackee, saltfish, fried dumpling, and goat Ð but I don't eat goat now because I'm a Rasta. It's not that easy being a vegetarian, because you like going to McDonalds and getting the toys, but you need to eat a vegetarian or fish burger. We left Antigua because there was a volcano. I would like to live back in the Caribbean, but somewhere the volcano can't come.

Vanessa, 10 (Solomon Islands):
It's like 30 degrees there every day, all year round. Here, it's -1 or something.

WIFEY! tomorrow

2008-10-16T22:51:00.002Z

Wish I could be there. Fun times in Visions! Gif magic.

this weekend in caracas:

2008-10-16T22:45:00.002Z

1) The British Council is weird but nice. They've brought over Rory Philips and Mad Professor to teach kids how to mix and also tell stories. And play! On Saturday afternoon in Plaza Altamira, localish! It looks like this:

2) Saturday night, Simpl3 have another party! Get in.

32 postcards

2008-10-16T22:40:00.002Z

Cacao's audiovisual piece 32 Postcards is online now (after two London performances with me as a ghost in the laptop). More information from Anil, here.

paul rand + germs + black flag + MIT

2008-10-16T22:35:00.002Z

I refound Mark Cousin's article for DOT DOT DOT 12 "Graphics Incognito" today - downloadable. It's ace.

kant

2008-10-15T14:51:00.001Z

Jose Antonio Hernandez Diez

steven holl's paintings

2008-10-10T16:57:00.001Z

Watercolour descriptions.

can you be more specific?

2008-10-08T23:46:00.001Z

fave moments of election 08 graphically depicted.

neither

2008-10-02T22:15:00.000Z

how far?

2008-10-01T22:08:00.000Z

YES

2008-09-26T21:12:00.000Z

the school of life

2008-09-26T20:22:00.002Z

Alain de Botton has opened a shop (School of Life) in London. wha?

It has my old drawing teacher from Camberwell, drawing on the walls.

They're organising architectural trips to Heathrow and holidays to the Isle of Wight with Martin Parr. There are books. And a lecture room. Oh and psychotherapy of course.

But I thought the economy was rubbish?
More info from Dezeen.

sleeves

2008-09-26T19:49:00.003Z

record envelopes recommended by rafael.

tonight in london:

2008-09-26T19:46:00.001Z

Vasco and Pat and Trevor present:

spine stories

2008-09-25T20:54:00.002Z

by Nina Katchadourian.

moment of reflection:

2008-09-24T00:28:00.003Z

From Emiraty via Adam.

cacao at cafe oto tomorrow:

2008-09-19T21:25:00.004Z

a half of cacao (anil) will be playing sounds for 20 minutes, i'll be projecting these images (a ghost inside dan's laptop) and people will be plugged in. le placard headphones festival v.1! fun times. Here's the line-up.

PS. here is a picture of cacao in highgate woods, may 2008. taken by the lovely sheikh.

open house london 2008

2008-09-19T15:54:00.002Z

With searchable buildings! For instance, here is a map of all the industrial buildings you could explore this weekend.

Here's a picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, because one time at Open House weekend I visited the Brunel museum, and it was very good.

cute.

2008-09-18T20:30:00.004Z

bird & banner

slavs and tatars:

2008-09-18T20:30:00.002Z

yes they make good posters.

mega

2008-09-18T15:15:00.004Z

In Berlin, Megastructure Reloaded finally opens tomorrow!
(it's been on pause since spring, I've been waiting)

It should be a nice collection of works + ideas: 1960s utopia + contemporary reflections. The list of participants reads like a beautiful book come alive, but with extra criticality, I hope. There's a symposium, so there's a chance.

Blurb:
The exhibition is not intended purely as a documentary representation however; instead the megastructuralists are to be tested for their currency and relevance to the problems of contemporary urban design. We will focus on the connection, so significant for the designs, between architecture/ spatial structures, and visual art, as well as on actual architectonic and urban-design issues..

It's that last bit there that interests me: how these ideas can be practically useful.
A dreamy visions of the city put into action. Like this flexible, modular idea of Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, I'd like to see built:

Some of my constant-internal-references are involved too: Tomas Saraceno, Gordon Matta-Clark. Superstar Superstudio, BAM:

COSMOS 2

2008-09-12T16:20:00.000Z

OK TO GO from universe on Vimeo.

COSMOS 1

2008-09-12T16:18:00.001Z

søtt not sick

2008-09-11T21:06:00.002Z

(club transmediale)

Nice new Bodytonic podcast.

cybersyn

2008-09-11T20:18:00.002Z

(control room)

Thanks dan for telling me about Project Cybersyn. An oddly fantastical tale of socialist cybernetics.

Also liking the Guacharaca Migration mix tape today.

tomorrow night in london and caracas

2008-09-11T15:16:00.002Z

Pitágora Suichi

2008-09-09T18:50:00.001Z

ultimate collage.

oh!

2008-09-03T19:46:00.003Z

I want to hear this / have this / hold this:

Plus, it's the 7th in the series of 7"s. It's meant to be!

tomorrow night hannah is an owl.

2008-09-02T22:30:00.002Z

Hannah has an exhibition tomorrow! It's going to be amazing. I'm so excited. And really sad I can't be there to support my oldest, best, absurdly talented friend. It's on for a long time too! At one of the nicest places to sit and chat and drink and watch people go by too. Imagine, all the different kinds of people on the bus passing through Old street and Kingsland road, peeking through the window, through another window, and into Hannah's wonderful world. It'll make many daydreams complete.

Oh, and if you see her, ask her for one of her "First waves, then clouds" fanzines. It's lovely:

squatters estate agents

2008-09-01T02:27:00.002Z

Old but great news about a service in London offering prime real estate ready to be squatted. From Robert Neuwirth via the Daily Mail via Indymedia (woah there)

copy/paste/to-read/ on my mind:

2008-08-31T23:53:00.003Z

From Mr. Clayton, on being a tourist

(from Columbia Road, sniff)

design and non-design

2008-08-30T21:56:00.002Z

COPY/PASTE from Architecture Theory since 1968

(More Diana Agrest)

The discursive specificity of architectural codes which are permeable to other cultural codes.

The relative autonomy of levels in a social formation organized in a structured but decentred totality.

Each practice is determined by the effects and interactions of all other instances at one - a set of insides and outsides enfolded in the structural totality.

The interaction of these zones is an exchange of ideological codes, each of which has its own designations of relevance, propriety, regularity, and so forth, but which can transcode, that is, act as a kind of commutation device, moving and sorting among other discourses and levels in the cultural field.

A code is like an ideological prospect, constantly shifting its point of view, constantly being produced, constantly seeking to compare itself to the conceptual possibility of other codes.

Architecture is not confined to its own narrow idiolect of design, but rather transcodes between design and non-design, throwing discursive forces into multiple play.

Design can achieve a certain plurality. Within its necessary enclosure of specificity - its cultivation of its own autonomous techniques and occlusion of other cultural codes - it is unconstrained by an imperative of representation; it can combine multiple networks of self-reflexive meaning and provide various points of access for filtering material from outside. Nevertheless, design classically conceived produces what Roland Barthes called a lisible text, in which the whole range of institutionalised techniques and habits necessary for its legibility - and that make it an integral whole, a traditionally "good" design - limit the plurality of the text. Non-design, in contrast, produces a scriptable text, permeable, fluctuating, giving no indications as as to how it is to be read, demanding that its reading be in effect its rewriting. To maintain the architectural text's plurality, a reading is called for that refuses to make hierarchies, integrations, or syntheses of the heterogeneous constituent codes, that instead simply juxtaposes fragment by fragment - a productive reading, mise-en-sequence

tonight in caracas:

2008-08-30T19:50:00.001Z

Rafael of Simpl3 is putting this on:

open dalston

2008-08-28T22:31:00.001Z

A great blog all about Dalston regeneration and community debate, called Open Dalston.

Thanks, Amp!

el Avila

2008-08-28T20:44:00.002Z

These pictures show what it's like to feel so tiny in such a huge city. Those mountains are 7400 ft high, and the Caribbean coast lies beyond them.

We drove higher up the mountain on the South side to a neighbourhood called "el Hatillo" which is a former colonial place. It was surrounded by thousands of little lanterns, which by day is a barrio neighbourhood that I don't know the name of. The houses are smaller and painted, which hidden pictures in the stone walls. It's the most touristic place here I've seen. Here is a window:

The view of the city from Santa Fe, another neighbourhood on that side, was stunning. The occasional lightning bolts lit up the mountains behind the skyscrapers. It was quite dramatic, a bit like being a bird. The police told us to move after 2 minutes.

The weather continues to be extreme: the heat is too much, the lightning sounds like a building dying. The rainfall yesterday was immense, we couldn't cross the street because it had become a brown river. Apparently it's the worst in 2 years - and the proper start of the rainy season.

imagination and

2008-08-26T00:24:00.002Z

(Brockley, London)

... the suburb.

the countryside.

coming soon: the city. (I had tickets for that, but forgot. bah!)

Spirits Drifting

2008-08-25T21:13:00.001Z

the gecekondu: innovative urbanism for the west and global urban poor

2008-08-19T22:30:00.003Z

That's the title of my dissertation I wrote this year as part of my Interactive Design BA at LCC. It's just won the Design History Society Essay prize.

Here's the pdf if you fancy a read. Let me know what you think! (update: proper version uploaded, mail me if you're intrigued by the appendix as it's detached)

Here are some pictures I took in Sariyer, Istanbul around this time last year.

first thoughts:

2008-08-19T16:13:00.002Z

I spent 10 hours sitting next to a member of the Venezuelan Olympic team. He had a cool get-up: head to toe in national colours, with matching bum bag. He was the silent, Spanish-speaking type. I think he specialised in martial arts.

Leaving the airport, the first thing that hits me is the heat. The air is thick with heat.

The mountains, blanketed with trees, are so tall that they dissolve into the grey clouds. It's quite beautiful - I used my favourite phrase to communicate this to my driver Luis.

And the colours! I can't really describe them, it wouldn't do them justice.

Nestle is everywhere, even painted onto a mural in a barrio.

The barrios! It's like a book has come alive.

The scale, and the pace, is quite intense. High-rise towers everywhere, vehicles constantly honking, buses with bullet-sized holes in the windows.

I had my first Venezuelan meal after my first meeting in the office (straight off the plane) after being awake for more or less 24 hours. A cachapa - a sweetish corn omelette, filled with a cheese which was like brie but more zangy. The watermelon juice was superb.

Here's two views from our apartment, the building is called "Anclemy". It's nice, feels like Greece inside.

wifey

2008-08-13T22:27:00.001Z

my last night dancing in the continent of europe, woop! fun times ahead.

8 8 8

2008-08-08T12:50:00.002Z

Serra in the Tuileries this summer:

Maxime told us a great story about the great slabs were made in Germany, rested on the border, and carried into the Grand Palais (image 12 of 23). I can't retell it in the same way. In any case, here are many Serra pictures.

comic book war journalism

2008-08-06T12:28:00.003Z

Het Gekkenhuis (Oud Liedje, Nieuwe Wijs)
{approx: The Insane Asylum (Old Song, Newly Wise (or 'new tune'?)}
(by Louis Raemaekers; Amsterdam, Senefelder [pub.] 1915)

Great satirical maps of the first world war

Raemaeker, above, challenged the Netherlands' neutrality.

I wonder what Joe Sacco is up to, whether he'd make things like this. He should have a new book out soon, in theory.

are you ready?

2008-08-06T11:54:00.001Z

integrated city making

2008-08-01T18:56:00.002Z

What I've been doing the past month, is designing a detailed report at Urban Age. About governance, planning and transport within 4 Indian cities (Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore) and comparing them to London, Berlin, New York and Johannesburg. Worth reading I'd say.

tomorrow:

2008-08-01T18:05:00.001Z