My Bookmarks
Maintenance and Care
Places Journal
A working guide to the repair of rust, dust, cracks, and corrupted code in our cities, our homes, and our social relations.
Interfacing Urban Intelligence
Places Journal
As we build so-called “smart” cities, we need to consider the point of engagement where citizens interface with the city’s operating system.
Library as Infrastructure
Places Journal
Reading room, social service center, innovation lab. How far can we stretch the public library?
A City Is Not a Computer
Places Journal
This seems an obvious truth, but we need to say it loud and clear. Urban intelligence is more than information processing.
Closet Archive
Places Journal
Closets are not just for storage. They are also active, generative spaces where media are made and knowledges born.
Post-It Note City
Places Journal
A visit to the smart-city-in-progress at Sidewalk Toronto prompts questions about what it means to “participate” in civic design.
Tree Thinking
Places Journal
Trees have served as models of intellectual inquiry and as sites of religious and civic deliberation. Now they are inspiring deeper forms of ecological investigation.
Liquid Cities
Places Journal
In Japanese architecture and science fiction from the 1960s through the 1990s, we can trace an enduring question: “how to make substantial architecture when substantial things are losing their meaning.”
The Anti-Cairo
Places Journal
Egypt’s military regime is building a new capital city in the desert, where the “People’s Piazza” will be a pale shadow of Tahrir Square.
Site, Ascendant
Places Journal
On the rising importance of landscape to architecture, seen in works by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Peter Zumthor, OMA, Zaha Hadid, and others.
Utu in the Anthropocene
Places Journal
How are colonial landscapes to be redesigned? To answer this question, begin with the Māori concept of reciprocity, the foundation for the valuation of all beings, human and non-human.
Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Design
Places Journal
A young architect recounts his experiences at Arcosanti, Rural Studio, and YouthBuild, and describes the challenges of making a real career in public interest design.
Makerspace: Towards a New Civic Infrastructure
Places Journal
Makerspaces are at once an emerging architectural and institutional typology and a manifestation of the so-called sharing economy. But will they last?
Scenographic Urbanism: Paul Rudolph
Places Journal
A detailed look at Paul Rudolph’s masterful — and theatrical — civic and public projects of the early 1960s.
Writ Small
Places Journal
Children’s literature is full of stories about houses and their makers, and the meaning of home.
Place and Augmented Reality: Part I
Places Journal
The real-time, mediating imageries of augmented reality are revolutionizing how we perceive and inhabit place.
Countryside: The Future and the Past
Places Journal
Two recent exhibitions showcase efforts by vastly different visual thinkers to document rural life. One body of work is determined to remain detached; the other is driven by political commitment.