The Anti-Human Eco-City
By Paul Thomas | 20 April 2014 Before attending this lecture on The Anti-Human Eco-City at Leeds Met, I’d heard of them but was unsure what they were. Apparently, I was not alone. According to the speaker, Austin Williams, Associate Professor of Architecture at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China, there is no agreed definition of what an eco-city is; there are very few that have been built; and the most famous one,...
Critical Subjects
Higher education is in crisis. This summer sees the launch of Critical Subjects, a new architectural Summer School placing the pursuit of knowledge and critical thinking at the core of education. These are troubled times for higher education. In recent years the idea of pursuing knowledge for its own sake has found little support. Instead of creating an atmosphere supportive of open enquiry and free thinking, universities have...
Ordos’ Other Ghost Town
Ordos in Inner Mongolia is synonymous with the phrase ‘Ghost Town’; a term describing cities apparently built on a whim, with no-one to occupy them. With China having already started to fulfil its pledge to build 400 new cities in 20 years, innumerable articles have emerged in the Western press to laugh, pity or gloat at the emergence of such tragi-comical examples of urban desolation. Forbes magazine is typical of many...
The uncivil civility of Richard Rogers
By Richard J Williams | 31 July 2013 The idea of ‘civility’ crops up a lot at Richard Rogers’s exhibition. It’s there right from the start in a room decked out in orange vinyl, with a series of panels laying out Rogers’s ‘ethos’. In practice, it’s most clearly represented in Rogers’s non-architectural work, such as his chairmanship of the New Labour government’s Urban Task Force (1999), his work as London’s architecture ‘tsar’ for...
Dear Chris…
This is a series of letters between Chris Twinn, Arup Fellow & Senior Sustainability Consultant in Shanghai; and Austin Williams of FCP, after the publication of Williams’ article in China Daily (here) Dear Austin Having read your article in the China Daily criticising sustainability and sustainability consultants, I would like to say that I agree there are there are too many Western consultants peddling low level...
Military Urbanism?
‘Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism’ by Stephen Graham; Verso, 2011. 402pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 18 December 2012 Urban transformation has often been considered to be a virtue, but some view it differently; as a source of instability and conflict. The United Nations calls cities “dynamic centres of creativity, commerce and culture” but adds that they are “better known for their chaos and grime”....
I run therefore I am!
‘The End of the Race (Running Away From The Race)’ by Dan Travis, 2012. 20pp Reviewed by Jean Smith | 10 October 2012 As an active teenager growing up in the Midlands, I loved field hockey, even though my school team lost most games in the early 1970s. Cross-country running was another story altogether. I was hopeless and dreaded the humiliation of being the last one to walk (not run) across the finish line.There was no camaraderie...
Keeping it Real in the ‘Fictitious Capital’
By Andrew Calcutt | 9 October 2012 Foolish to judge a whole book on this basis alone; but if the design on the front doesn’t give you the gist of what’s between the covers, its editors should be shot. The front cover of a new book London After Recession depicts the eponymous city as a ‘fictitious capital’, existing in a think-bubble dreamed up by a bowler-hatted gent of possibly Asian extraction. Of course the subtitle ‘a fictitious...
Getting planners off our backs
By Alastair Donald | 22 September ‘This Government means business’ announced David Cameron recently, and that starts with ‘getting planners off our backs’. But as highlighted by recent initiatives which attempt to use design to make us fitter and healthier, planners are meddling more than ever in our personal affairs and lifestyle choices. There are many aspects of the coalition government’s recent statement on Housing and Growth...
FILM: Urbanization
‘Urbanized’ directed by Gary Hustwit, 2011 Reviewed by Michael Owens | 25 June 2012 Urbanized is the cinematic delight one might expect of Gary Hustwit, the director of this, the third in a trilogy of studies in design, following Helvetica (modernism in a typeface), and Objectified (industrial and product design). Each deals with a dimension of design’s intimate relationship daily life. Here, we look at design...
Listen in
Next meeting
Publications
NEW TITLE
