November 21, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Running parallel to the back of each row of townhouses is a long subterranean corridor, cramped, artificially lit but still dark, with pipes and cables running through its length, moisture trickling down its unfinished concrete walls, it’s the mechanical and services spine of the block. Garbage cans are lined up at each door marking the [...]
A peripatetic conversation with Eyal Weizman about his new book project on forensics and the negotiation of judicial truth, taken on 18 June 2011 in the rural setting of the DAAR Architecture Rehab Camp organised by DAAR and Iaspis in the Stockholm Archipelago.
Thanks to Ben Sweeting, PhD candidate in Architectural Design at the Bartlett, for his input on this post.
Saturday 6th June 2011 saw the launch of the post-exhibition catalogue following up last December’s ‘Invisible Machines’ exhibition, held at Grand Parade in Brighton, which investigated the various relations between machines and architecture. Although the invocation [...]
Now for something a little lighter. A recent trip to Scotland and a wrong turn into a suburb of Edinburgh brought us to this suburban gem, a heroic reminder that yes, a man’s home is indeed his castle. It reminded me I had once thought of posting photos of two similar meaningful roadside architectural attractions [...]
By external contributor Deepa Ramaswamy.
A lot has been already said about the slums of Mumbai and their role within the city’s memory and identity. Dharavi, which is supposedly the largest of Mumbai’s slums, figures very prominently in most of these discourses. Dharavi has developed and expanded over the last few decades [...]
‘You have a sense of real comfort,’ she says, standing on the quayside, as he pours two glasses of whisky.
Paul Thomas is an architect from Paris completing work on a housing development on the edge of a harbour near St Tropez. On that winter’s afternoon, he attempts to seduce Frédérique, an acquaintance from the area [...]
April 16, 2011 – 11:00 am
By external contributor Miguel Torres-Garcia.
Today we conceive urban space to have a substance of itself. Architectural proposals take part in it, and produce it to a certain extent, but I wonder if there are still areas beyond the discipline’s reach. In this text I will use a few samples across time, starting by a comparison [...]
April 12, 2011 – 10:00 am
In recent years there has been an explosion of films on the informal constructions (favela’s in Portuguese) spreading over the hills of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Elite Squad (1997), City of God (2002) and The Elite Squad 2 (2010) are only a few examples of such productions. All are filmed in the [...]
The separation barrier sneaking by Abu Dis from the al-Quds University campus, on 8 December 2010. These Palestinian landscapes are naturally very contrasted and defined, and with their sparse vegetation they often resemble the backdrops of some Italian early Renaissance paintings.
The wall in its context is a text-book example of low entropy structure. Like an [...]
Buildings at their most primal provide a means of sheltering people from the extremities of climate; historically building fabric offered mediation between the external environment and inhabitants with minimal energy use.
Responding to the climate developed broad vernaculars that offer legible interpretations of local environmental conditions: Light weight stilted dwellings in the tropics respond to the [...]