Archive for Fiction
September 15, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cities from Scratch, Creative Cities, Fiction, Happiness
There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this—mainly because a city’s qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place’s cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.
More…
Popularity: 26% [?]
April 8, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Cities from Scratch, Creative Cities, Fiction, Modernism, Public Life, Public Space, Social Networks, Visualization
Since the 60s we’ve imagined the combination of computers and our environment would create both utopias and dystopias. Since the 80’s we’ve seen academics, artists and corporate R&D labs prototype these futures from the top-down. Now, hackers are building sensors, bots and software into everything around them bottom-up, fast, cheap and out-of-control. They’re creating environments that react, adapt and respond to us - and perhaps more importantly - each other: The Demon-Haunted World. Matt’s session will be a whistlestop tour of those days of future past and pointers to some practical futures we can start building right now, together.
More…
Popularity: 46% [?]
February 25, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Cities from Scratch, Density, EcoCities, Fiction, Infrastructure, Multi-Level Urbanism
The project explores how new forms of habitable infrastructure might be extrapolated from a geopolitical agreement – in this case, materializing architectural form from the legal interstices of the Oslo Accords. The result is a fantastic example of architectural speculation: genuinely massive – and impossibly cantilevered – bridges used as transport links, aerial housing, and skyborne agricultural complexes, all in one.
More…
Popularity: 36% [?]
January 27, 2009 · Filed under Fiction, Highways, Suburbs
I was fascinated to discover that Ballard had hung around Notting Hill in the 70s with Moorcock and the New Wave SF writers, and Emma Tennant and the Bananas magazine crowd. He must have walked the same streets that years later I was to haunt with my own damaged crew. Living within sight of the Westway, which I felt must have helped form his motorway mythology, I was moved to do some geo-detective work on Concrete Island, that great updating of Crusoe, and was surprised by what I found.
More…
Popularity: 28% [?]
