In 2003-2004, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC ran an exhibition called Up, Down, Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks, and Terry Caesar’s (2000) essay looked at Japanese elevators as transit spaces that negotiate the public and the private, but generally-speaking elevators as social spaces have received little to no research attention–including within Space [...]
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Although Edmonton — my current abode — subscribes to the striated-space solution when it comes to its road network design, recent research by French and US physicists has revealed that more often than not road networks in urban spaces resemble the veins of your common leaf (PDF).
The production of these “lines of desire” [...]
Debates are breaking out about the emerging field of neuroaesthetics — the effort to quantify, chart, and make “scientific” our experiences of art and affect. The Times Literary Supplement has recently entered the debate with Raymond Tallis’ vociferous reply to A.S. Byatt’s call to “observe the neorones.” Tallis, it seems, is not content to [...]
Tagged academia neuroaesthetics art biologyMedicine by design: The architect and the modern hospital, 1893-1943, Annmarie Adams, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008
Annmarie Adams‘ methodological position treats buildings and architecture as social agents, not simply as receptive canvases of human intentionality. Taking this attitude towards hospitals, she uses Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) in the period 1893-1943 as her [...]
If Dan Hill’s incredible post on urban informatics wasn’t enough to convince you that he’s one of the most observant and insightful writers on the topic, then perhaps his most recent exploration of transport informatics will. But don’t be deceived by his claim that this is merely a “quick survey of new informational approaches [...]