The great nowhere at the edge

I’m back from London now to find the news cycle absolutely abuzz with so many interesting stories that it’ll be hard to keep up – but I’ll start posting the best of the best in a bit.

[Image: A photo from Jacob Carter’s ridiculously gorgeous River Thames Series].

First, though, last week’s lecture was a blast; I talked way too fast, of course, bungling several points in the process, but, in the main, I had a great time and can only hope that everyone who came out on a Wednesday night in London – including my father-in-law! – to hear perhaps a bit too much about geology and not enough about offshore structures, or about the colonial politics of naming alien territories, or about urban iterative architecture, had a good time, as well.
The Bartlett may or may not be uploading a film of the lecture at some point, meanwhile; until then, a few notes from the talk can be seen courtesy of Matt Jones and Mark Simpkins. Also, if you attended BLDGBLOG’s recent lecture at SCI-Arc then you would have heard a lot of this before – but you would have missed out on instancing gates and billboard houses and the Indonesian mud volcano and China Miéville’s “slow sculptures” and what I thought was a really fun Q&A.

[Image: Another one from Jacob Carter’s River Thames Series].

So here’s a huge thanks to Iain Borden for hosting the lecture, and to Alex Haw, both for setting it up and for introducing me. Expect more from Alex here on BLDGBLOG, by the way, hopefully soon.
Now: back to regular posting…

(Note: The title of this post is a line from London Orbital by Iain Sinclair).

3 thoughts on “The great nowhere at the edge”

  1. Welcome back. It’s good to hear that your talk went well. The recent rains, and the fact that I live in a trailer park on a flood plain protected by a levee, has got me thinking about both water-control architecture (and groups like FOVICKS
    Friends Of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures), and the fact that I really really want a water tank. Just one to collect enough rainwater to use on my small yard for the summer.

    My parents had a water catchment tank in Kenya, and I have thought that if just, say, 10% of Californians got a water tank and filled it up with rain, we could avoid building stupid things like desalination plants. That and xeriscaping….

  2. Billboard houses? did that come from your talk of from the Q&A? Would you mind saying more, or emailing me notes, whatever’s easier.

    I’m working on some unsolicited architecture based on manila’s billboard jungles, which line the main highways.

    thanks,

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