Archive for February, 2008
36
36 9 today, thanks to everyone that has sent a card or sms especially the friends with whom I haven’t been in touch with recently.
Transport Live
Live transport on google maps, so far I know of Helsinki, Swiss Train system (via), Dublin. It’s pretty obvious this will be ubiquitous in the very near future.
Artic Seed Vault Opens
The first world seed ‘doomsday’ vault opens in Svalbard Norway to protect biodiversity (see previous post). There are about 1500 seed vaults worldwide but this is the only one buried under a polar glacier.
Amsterdam 360°
Dutch graphic artist Frank Dresmé has made a series of psychogeographic collages of routes through Amsterdam. They are quite stunning images by themselves but also interesting as they present the city as a kind of unified whole, somehow for me capturing the quality of the city in a way that single images or map for [...]
Brutalism under threat
Peter and Alison Smithson’s brutalist masterpiece Robin Hood Gardens looks set to be Demolished. But BD has launched a last minute attempt to save it. Go here to sign the online petition but you only have until march 7th to sign. I posted last summer about another brutalist masterpiece that is now demolished, they may [...]
Subterranean Amsterdam
The office of Zwarts and Jansma came up with an intriguing idea. To build a new underground Amsterdam under the the existing one. The structural solution is what makes uit interesting and unique; Amsterdam has a 30m layer of waterproof clay which will be used together with concrete and sand to make new walls. We [...]
EfficienCity
Efficiencity by Greepeace shows how we can make our cities and infrastructure more ecological with the technology we already have now. Well worth a walk through.
Monospace
I started reading this article in the Guradian without realising the profundity of it until some way through. It is actually a fascinating piece about a music critic Nick Coleman who had a sudden total hearing loss in one ear, and what happened after that. Particularly interesting was the fact that before he lost his [...]
Reading List 2008
Archinect has a great reading list for 2008, and dysturb has a good post on 010′s upcoming publications of 2008. 010 really has been one of the great Architectural Publishing houses over the last few years, and it looks like 2008 will be no exception.
Japanese House
Houses in Japan typically last for 30 years and are never sold before they are demolished. This article in the economist explains the economic reasons behind this but I instantly remembered that at least some Japanese temples like the Ise Shrine are remade every few years. The ideas of time, ageing and solidity seem tantalisingly [...]
Energy Awareness Visualisations
We don’t really think about it day to day but we live in an energy grid, a complex system of infrastructure and activity of which we know only the vaguest details and definetly rarely think about beyond plugging the light in when its dark. But that really has to change soon, if we are going [...]
Europan 9 Results
The results of Europan9 in Finland are out. With three competition areas in Finland Kotka, Vantaa, and Espoo, it was the winner of the Espoo site which stood out for me as being able to create a real quality set of shoreline spaces without being twee or contrived. Clear connections to the existing infrastructure and [...]
Jjimjilbang
I’d never heard of a Jjimjilbang before I’d read Adam Greenfield write about inspaworld in New York, an outpost of this Korean take on the sauna. It seems a little different from the Finnish version though, which is usually quite private and dark and more intimate. Inspaworld is like the sauna meets Disney on Ice. [...]