AS Byatt on the lure of fairy tales:
“Italo Calvino, in his lecture Cybernetics and Ghosts, makes the inevitable connection between storytelling and myth. He describes the storyteller of the tribe telling about the younger son getting lost in the forest: “He sees a light in the distance, he walks and walks; the fable unwinds from […]
The Alternative Mobility Futures conference at Lancaster University wrapped up today - but you can check out the papers here. Particularly interesting looking ones?
Alexandra Arellano, Mobility systems and performance at Machu Picchu (doc)
Gilles Delalex, Living on the motorway (doc)
Michaela Evans, Becoming a local to the train-line wallpaper: Graffiti and questions of ‘non-place’ (doc)
Ulricke Spring, […]
The Me, Myself and Infrastructure exhibition looks at “public expectations and the everyday experience of infrastructure while considering the role of civil engineers as designers, builders, and managers.” (Via Social Design Notes)
The unaffiliated Me, Myself and Infrastructure blog posts pictures from the Big Urban Game.
This Magical Book: “200 years of children’s pop-up and other movable […]
Hammurabi’s Code:
228. If a builder build a house for some one and complete it, he shall give him a fee of two shekels in money for each sar of surface.
229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and […]
Via Matt Jones, a new course at the London Consortium:
shit and civilization: our ambivalent relationship to ordure in the city, culture and the psyche
“Our societies are, quite literally, founded on shit. Civilization means living in cities and cities are confronted, in a way more dispersed settlements are not, with heaps of garbage and ordure … […]