Notes from an apocalypse
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We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. Old postwar alliances are crumbling. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does it mean to have children—nothing if not an(...)
Notes from an apocalypse
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We’re alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. Old postwar alliances are crumbling. A pandemic draws our global community to a halt. Everywhere you look there’s an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How is a person supposed to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does it mean to have children—nothing if not an act of hope—in such unsettled times? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what on Earth is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell is consumed by these questions—and, as the father of two young children himself, he finds them increasingly urgent. In 'Notes from an Apocalypse', he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization’s collapse. He engages with would-be Mars colonists, preppers, right-wing conspiracists. And he bears witness to those places, like Chernobyl, that the future has already visited—real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. In doing so, he comes to a resolution, while offering readers a unique window into our contemporary imagination.
Environment and environmental theory
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Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into(...)
September 2017
The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possiblity of life in capitalist ruins
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Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, "The mushroom at the end of the world" follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.
Central park : an anthology
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In a city where people can live sixty-three thousand to a square mile, Central Park is an escape, adventure, meditation, memory, and amusement, and this anthology, comprising the work of some of New York's literary luminaries, is a charming 21-essay tribute to what is probably the most closely watched and monitored 843 acres on Earth. Marie Winn pens a funny letter to(...)
Central park : an anthology
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In a city where people can live sixty-three thousand to a square mile, Central Park is an escape, adventure, meditation, memory, and amusement, and this anthology, comprising the work of some of New York's literary luminaries, is a charming 21-essay tribute to what is probably the most closely watched and monitored 843 acres on Earth. Marie Winn pens a funny letter to Holden Caulfield about what happens to the park's ducks in winter; Bill Buford tries sleeping there one night; and Nathaniel Rich gives the sentimental history of an annual Thanksgiving touch-football game (the "Turkey-Lurkey Bowl"). Othersa Susan Cheever, Colson Whitehead, Adam Gopnik, and Paul Auster among thema fish for carp, run past Jackie Kennedy, befriend goats at the zoo, and explore the place "where nature is so beautifully and spectacularly kept on a leash." But it wasn't always so: the masterpiece of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux was, at times, a "municipal embarrassment," the site of muggings, murders, anda rumor had ita "a nightmarish water fountain that dribbled raw sewage into the mouths of toddlers." It's clear, by the collection's range, that there must be at least as many Central Parks as there are annual visitors and that's close to 40 million.
Architectural Theory
What is landscape?
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Landscape, John Stilgoe tells us, is a noun. From the old Frisian language (once spoken in coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany), it meant shoveled land: landschop. Sixteenth-century Englishmen misheard or mispronounced this as landskep, which became landskip, then landscape, designating the surface of the earth shaped for human habitation. In What Is Landscape?(...)
What is landscape?
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Landscape, John Stilgoe tells us, is a noun. From the old Frisian language (once spoken in coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany), it meant shoveled land: landschop. Sixteenth-century Englishmen misheard or mispronounced this as landskep, which became landskip, then landscape, designating the surface of the earth shaped for human habitation. In What Is Landscape? Stilgoe maps the discovery of landscape by putting words to things, zeroing in on landscape’s essence but also leading sideways expeditions through such sources as children’s picture books, folklore, deeds, antique terminology, out-of-print dictionaries, and conversations with locals. (“What is that?” “Well, it’s not really a slough, not really, it’s a bayou . . .”) He offers a written narrative lexicon of landscape as word, concept, and path to discoveries. What Is Landscape? is an invitation to walk, to notice, to ask: to see a sandcastle with a pinwheel at the beach and think of Dutch windmills—icons of triumph, markers of territory won from the sea; to walk in the woods and be amused by the Elizabethans’ misuse of the Latin silvaticus (people of the woods) to coin the word savages; to see in a suburban front lawn a representation of the meadow of a medieval freehold.
Landscape Theory
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Green design is the major architectural movement of our time. Throughout the world architects are producing sustainable buildings in an attempt to preserve the environment and our globe's natural resources. However, current strategies for forming sustainable solutions are typically too general and fail to take advantage of critical geographical, environmental, and(...)
Towards a new regionalism : environmental architecture in the Pacific northwest
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Green design is the major architectural movement of our time. Throughout the world architects are producing sustainable buildings in an attempt to preserve the environment and our globe's natural resources. However, current strategies for forming sustainable solutions are typically too general and fail to take advantage of critical geographical, environmental, and cultural factors particular to a specific place. By focusing on the Pacific northwest, this book provides essential lessons to architects and students on how sustainable architecture can and should be shaped by the unique conditions of a region. Pacific northwest regionalism has consistently supported an architecture aimed at environmental needs and priorities. This book illuminates the history of a "green trail" in the work of key architects of the northwest. It discusses environmental strategies that work in the region, organized according to nature's most basic elements - earth, air, water, and fire - and their underlying principles and forces. The book focuses on technologies, materials, and methods, with a final section that examines thirteen exceptional northwest buildings in detail and in light of their contributions to sustainable architecture. Critical case studies by northwest architects illustrate some of the best environmental design work in North America. Notable architects from Seattle, Portland, and British Columbia are included. These projects feature innovative design in water and site stewardship, intelligent technologies, passive energy strategies, ecologically sound building materials, and environmentally sensitive energy management systems.
Green Architecture
Tools n° 05 : To Spin
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Le cinquième numéro de la revue annuelle qui s'attache à valoriser les savoir-faire et la technique dans le design, l'artisanat ou l'industrie, se penche sur le geste de tourner. Le monde tourne, et avec lui, tout ce qui est à sa surface : vous, moi, les arbres, la mer, les montagnes. On a beau se bercer de l'illusion que tout est immobile, la réalité, c'est qu'on est(...)
Tools n° 05 : To Spin
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Le cinquième numéro de la revue annuelle qui s'attache à valoriser les savoir-faire et la technique dans le design, l'artisanat ou l'industrie, se penche sur le geste de tourner. Le monde tourne, et avec lui, tout ce qui est à sa surface : vous, moi, les arbres, la mer, les montagnes. On a beau se bercer de l'illusion que tout est immobile, la réalité, c'est qu'on est perpétuellement en mouvement. La planète fait des tours sur elle-même, elle tourne autour du soleil, et nous, là, au moment où je vous parle, on est en quelque sorte le produit de cette rotation : c'est grâce au cycle des jours, des saisons et des années que notre planète offre les conditions favorables à la vie. / The fifth issue of the annual magazine that promotes know-how and technique in design, craft or industry looks at the act of spinning. The world is spinning, and so is everything on it: you and me, the trees, the oceans, and the mountains. We may have deluded ourselves into thinking everything is stationary, but the reality is that we're perpetually in motion. The planet is spinning around its axis and orbiting around the sun, and in a way, at this very moment, we are all products of rotation: life on Earth is only possible because of the cycles of days, seasons, and years.
Magazines
Real Review 16 Autumn 2024
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There is no snow on Mount Fuji. Any hack will tell you the phase change is here, the restructuring of the world is underway. That would be a relief, like a broken fever. But they are wrong. We are still waiting. This period is merely the static on the skin, the rising pressure and building tension before the impending climax of a deluge. We live under a lavender sky,(...)
Real Review 16 Autumn 2024
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There is no snow on Mount Fuji. Any hack will tell you the phase change is here, the restructuring of the world is underway. That would be a relief, like a broken fever. But they are wrong. We are still waiting. This period is merely the static on the skin, the rising pressure and building tension before the impending climax of a deluge. We live under a lavender sky, silver and green; this is the time of unsettled air, heavy with that metallic smell of the earth. Soon the wind will awake, driving the rain forward like a cloud of smoke. The tremendous powers by which our lives are encompassed are stirring. How can we prepare for this transformation? We interview professor Jonathan White on the future as a political idea. Artist Dozie Kanu presents a flyer for higher education, while Opioid Crisis Lookbook speculates on semiotics. Peter Saville reviews the mood with Jack Self, who reviews voice notes, moral killing, and the Star Trek universe. Isabelle Bucklow binge-watches tech demos. Satoshi Fujiwara captures law enforcement hardware. Ruba Al-Sweel reviews the non-commercial image, while Martina Rocca and Izzy Farmiloe review the production of culture. Carmen Winant documents the last safe abortion, Felix Mcnamara writes notes on minutiae, John Sunyer attends a run club, plus much more.
Magazines
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After a century largely dominated by discussions of space and form, there is now renewed interest in the material and tectonic aspects of architecture. This illustrated book takes a detailed and timely look at the importance of materials in architecture, focusing particularly on modern and contemporary buildings. Richard Weston begins with a brief cultural history of(...)
Materials, form and architecture
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After a century largely dominated by discussions of space and form, there is now renewed interest in the material and tectonic aspects of architecture. This illustrated book takes a detailed and timely look at the importance of materials in architecture, focusing particularly on modern and contemporary buildings. Richard Weston begins with a brief cultural history of major building materials--such as timber, earth, stone, steel, and glass--exploring how they have been produced, considered, worked, and used in a variety of buildings and cultures. He then explores the ways that architects, theorists, and critics have articulated the relationship between materials and architectural forms and spaces throughout modern history. Other featured topics include the importance of place, time, junctions, finish, and meaning; the proposition that in an increasingly global and virtual world, many architects emphasize the material qualities of buildings to ensure a heightened sense of reality; and a comprehensive survey of current and prospective developments in materials, from refinements of such familiar materials as fiber-reinforced concrete and “intelligent” glass to new synthetic compounds and working methods. Together, these varied perspectives on the material art of building offer insights into the impact that the type and treatment of materials has on how buildings can be constructed and designed, how they function, and how they fare over time.
Materials and Lighting
Mesozoic Park, Terry Munro
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"Mesozoic Park" is an intriguing series of photographs documenting the construction of a (pseudo) prehistoric landscape in Calgary, Canada in the early 1980s. The history of photography has been dominated by the landscape: from its state as a pristine natural phenomenon, to its altered forms, and then to the manufactured, of which the city's Prehistoric Park is a prime(...)
Mesozoic Park, Terry Munro
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"Mesozoic Park" is an intriguing series of photographs documenting the construction of a (pseudo) prehistoric landscape in Calgary, Canada in the early 1980s. The history of photography has been dominated by the landscape: from its state as a pristine natural phenomenon, to its altered forms, and then to the manufactured, of which the city's Prehistoric Park is a prime example. The site includes multiple geologic structures that humans have built to mimic nature. The images in the monograph address the illusions that humanity creates for itself, as in our increasing quest to find substitutes for 'the real'. The simulated environment in Mesozoic Park focuses on the earth and landscape as packaging or amusement, and more importantly, as a site for social and political inquiry. The black and white photographs, printed in duotone, document a geological dream world in which a 'primordial' landscape has been cleverly designed and programmed for an artificial visitor experience. By exploring the park in great detail, Munro offers privileged access to what we never get to see: the construction of a facsimile panorama that will provide visitors with the illusion of time travel. The real and false are confused, no longer relevant in this walk through a purported 65 million year-old landscape. The book also contains photographs which show the artificial human construct in 2018.
Photography monographs
Shelter cookbook
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DIY architect, publisher and pioneer of the self-build movement, Lloyd Kahn (born 1935) is a legend of the American counterculture. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller, in 1968 Kahn started building geodesic domes, and was an editor for Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. In 1970 Kahn published his first book, Domebook One, followed the next year by the bestselling Domebook(...)
Architectural Theory
December 2025
Shelter cookbook
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DIY architect, publisher and pioneer of the self-build movement, Lloyd Kahn (born 1935) is a legend of the American counterculture. Influenced by Buckminster Fuller, in 1968 Kahn started building geodesic domes, and was an editor for Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. In 1970 Kahn published his first book, Domebook One, followed the next year by the bestselling Domebook 2. In 1971, he bought land in Bolinas and built a geodesic dome (later to be featured in Life magazine), but he soon pursued other ways to build, resulting in the classic 1973 book "Shelter." Kahn published numerous self-build books over the ensuing decades, most recently "Tiny Homes on the Move" (2014). "Shelter Cookbook" is an exploration of Kahn’s now iconic publications by the Swiss architect Leopold Banchini (born 1981) - whose practice makes emphatic use of DIY architecture culture- and the German author and curator Lukas Feireiss (born 1977). It relates Kahn’s building philosophy to contemporary practices, recording Banchini and Feireiss’ personal search for unexpected relationships between historical documents and contemporary architectural projects. The large-format volume includes interviews, photospreads and archival material on self-building, and also includes a mycological investigation. "Shelter Cookbook" will inspire architects, designers, artists and counterculture cognoscenti alike with its positive vision of the possibilities and legacy of the self-build movement.
Architectural Theory