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Category Archives: Material culture

Book Review: Tourists of History

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Marita Sturken, Duke University Press, Durham: 2007.
Serendipitously, I read Sturken’s Tourists of History while visiting one of the kitschiest cities in the Canadian prairies: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Moose Jaw has made a tourist industry out of Chinese immigrant exploitation of the early [...]

Also filed in Book reviews, Cities & urbanism, North America, Production & consumption, Tourism | | Comments (1)

Found Space Tiles

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Found Space Tiles by Stephanie Davidson

As an architect I often ask myself, how can this surface, this wall or floor, give more? What more can it give? In answering this question, I have produced a series of ceramic tile prototypes – tiles that reach out to be touched.Much like appropriating found objects, in my work [...]

Also filed in Art & design | | Comments (3)

Palo Alto Urban Petroglyph Project

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Palo Alto Urban Petroglyph Project
These petroglyphs were all photographed from one particular road in and near Palo Alto, CA. It seems that the roadworkers had some good fun–or a tradition, of laying down their extra tar. Enjoy.”
I hope they actually ask what these are all about! (via anthrodesign)
- Anne

Also filed in Cities & urbanism, North America | | Comments (2)

Operation Silhouette: delegating governance

Friday, June 6, 2008

The Vancouver Sun reports that the city’s police are now using cardboard cops with radar guns to get drivers to slow down:
‘There may or may not be a police officer behind one of these cut-outs,’ Vancouver police traffic Staff Sgt. Ralph Pauw said at a news conference. Police will erect several on poles at the [...]

Also filed in Cities & urbanism, Embodiment & performance, Mobilities, North America | | Comments Off

Book Review: Medicine by design: The architect and the modern hospital, 1893-1943

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Medicine 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 [...]

Also filed in Architecture, Book reviews, Cities & urbanism, North America | | Comments (1)