My Bookmarks
Steve Jobs: Architect
Places Journal
Finding common ground in the extraordinary careers of Steve Jobs and Rem Koolhaas, both driven “to learn about the world through the attempt to change it.”
Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies
Places Journal
The word “ecology” has been co-opted so widely that it has lost real meaning, yet it remains a powerful lens for designers working with complex adaptive systems.
Tent City, America
Places Journal
Tent cities are now so common that advocates are campaigning to make them semi-permanent settlements of micro-housing. But is this a genuine solution or a cheap fix?
Eat the City
Places Journal
The case for “civic agriculture” — for reconceptualizing cities as networks of agricultural zones, from parks to allotments.
Notes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism
Places Journal
Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and Andrea Branzi anticipated today’s interest in urban farming.
Champion Trees and Urban Forests
Places Journal
Personal epiphanies, tree farming, and a plan to save the planet: a review of “The Man Who Planted Trees.”
Your Sea Wall Won’t Save You
Places Journal
Negotiating rhetorics and imaginaries of climate resilience in Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, and Bangkok.
Metaphor Remediation
Places Journal
As cities become the new frontiers of green living, let’s revise the old metaphors. Will the high-rise replace Half Dome as the new emblem of environmentalism?
Paper Architecture, Emerging Urbanism
Places Journal
Underemployed designers are proposing speculative solutions to unfolding environmental crises and infrastructural needs. Let’s ground this work in the realities of urban design.
Nature-ization Takes Command
Places Journal
Exploring the dynamic relationship of landscape and architecture, from big civic projects by Norman Foster to small rural houses by Glenn Murcutt.
The Productive Surface
Places Journal
An architect assesses the potential for built surfaces to accommodate agriculture, harvest water, and generate energy.
Digital Farm Collective
Places Journal
A Phoenix artist and farmer describes the multimedia project he created to spark dialogue about the future of the family farm.
Thirsty City
Places Journal
An environmental historian assesses the massive infrastructure that brings water to the American West — and makes it possible to take a shower in Los Angeles.
UPSTATE: Design, Research, Real Estate
Places Journal
A profile of an urban design center at the Syracuse University School of Architecture, including an interview with the directors and a slideshow of projects.
The Emergence of Container Urbanism
Places Journal
The repurposed shipping container, now a fixture of urban architecture, is part of a movement that can be traced back to Archigram and the Metabolists in the 1960s.
Place and Augmented Reality: Part I
Places Journal
The real-time, mediating imageries of augmented reality are revolutionizing how we perceive and inhabit place.
Fracture Critical
Places Journal
Much U.S. infrastructure is “fracture critical” — vulnerable to catastrophic and systemic failure; so too are our finance, housing, and energy systems.