My latest initiative, NatureStructure, launched on May 17 in Boston. The exhibition features dozens of architectural, design and infrastructure projects that represent a new model for the relationship design and the built environment can have with nature. The history of the built environment could be broadly defined as a battle against nature: barricading cities and coasts […]
Phone booths are an endangered urban species, joining the ranks of newspaper boxes, parking pay meters, and other urban elements whose original function has been replaced by technology and changing social behavior. A common thread runs through all these pieces of the urban landscape that are too quickly deemed to be obsolete: they contain a […]
Everything is a “last remaining” at some point. In 2016, the last remaining journalists still working on London’s “newspaper row”, Fleet Street, left. There are last remaining survivors from moments in history. Last remaining descendants of famous figures. Last remaining businesses in areas once filled with their trade. Newspapers love “last remaining” stories. The articles […]
The finish line is within sight for the Reprogramming the City book! The book will feature the most innovative projects from the five Reprogramming the City exhibitions and initiatives I’ve created to date, along with a curated selection of new projects that reprogram existing urban assets for additional use. Also included in the book will be […]
The history of the built environment could be broadly defined as a battle against nature: barricading cities and coasts with sea walls, expanding over wetlands and green terrain, dividing migration routes with motorways. Tremendous effort has gone into the long war against the natural world. Yet as sea levels rise and the severity of floods, […]
During recent talks in Oslo and Malmö, I’ve been showing how a simple shift in thinking can open awareness and generate new possibilities. My goal in that specific part of the presentation is to get audiences to expand their thinking about how existing urban assets could be used in different ways, but the “conditional thinking” approach is an […]
The course I teach for the University of British Columbia is being offered again this year as an online workshop, and registration is now open. As UBC describes it… In this workshop we look at the potential of reusing, repurposing, and re-imagining a wide variety of urban assets, including existing infrastructure, […]