Category Archives: Asides
City 2.0 to Europe
Living PlanIT and Cisco systems have announced a collaboration to build the next generation city in Northern Portugal. It is going to integrate IT into the fabric of the city, we will see if unlike Dongtan this project can make it off the drawing board.
View from Stockholm
Johnathan Glancey in a recent article stated that Stockholm and Helsinki are under threat of getting the ‘world class city’ treatment. This of course is a bad thing because it means a kind of internationalized blandness in the pursuit of some imagined advertisers dream. I was just in Stockholm for the first time a couple of [...]
Life of An Architect
There are a diverse range of Architecture blogs or blogs that are Architectural to put it more accurately. The best often cover theory and conjecture or post cool stuff. But someone who hits the sweet spot somewhere in the middle is lifeofanarchitect.
Ecosia
Save the worlds rainforests a search at a time with Ecosia. (via) update: Lee in comments to this post said Ecosia is a scam. I’ve had a look at this (see article here and here). It seems Ecosia is a for profit organisation but looks quite legitimate and worthwhile to use. It is always worth [...]
The Art of Simon Page
The Art of Simon Page, just fantastic. Check out his international year of astronomy set also.
Google street view now in Finland
Google Street View came to Finland this week, and the coverage looks really good, although there should really be a winter version as well as a summer one here.
Pixelache 2010
Pixelache’s 2010 Helsinki Programme is up on the internets and it’s the best one yet, it’s really developing into a fantastic kind of city laboratory and getting stronger every year, coming up a few more art and energy consumption crossovers like Nuage Vert, as well as other cool stuff like window farms.
Ode to Reading
Read voraciously, many books at a time. Only then will you hear the conversation taking place among them. (via)
Longest Sea Bridge
China has just announced it began constructing the world’s longest sea bridge which will be 50km long. It is y shaped in plan and connects China, Hong Kong and Macau. Just for reference there has been much talk in Finland and indeed Estonia about a link between Helsinki and Tallinn, it was in the Helsinki2050 [...]
aj notebook
The new aj notebook is pretty cool for a desktop/coffeetable browse.
Roman Architecture
23 lectures on Roman Architecture, in case you wondered what a first year history of Architecture course would be like.
The Answer
Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer is there had to be.
Nordic Names
nordic names website will answer all your questions about what all those names mean. I particularly liked the entry for Smilla a name made up by Danish author Peter Høeg in the book Smilla’s Feeling for Snow and now being used in Sweden.
Broadband Access Legal Right in Finland
Finland will be the first ( or maybe second behind Switzerland) country in the world to have a broadband connection a legal right from summer of 2010. (via)
David Byrnes’ Perfect City
A great article by David Byrne about his perfect city, If a city doesn’t have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It’s human nature for us to look at one another— we’re social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to [...]
Open House Helsinki 2010