Interview with Peter Schwartz
‘Inevitable Surprises: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century’ Free Press (Simon & Schuster), 2003. 320pp Peter Schwartz interview by Austin Williams | 20 November 2003 I first heard Peter Schwartz speak when he attended the press launch of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report’ at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. He joined an impressive panel of speakers who had been assembled to describe,...
Futuro: Tomorrow’s House from Yesterday
‘Futuro: Tomorrow’s House from Yesterday’ by Marko Home and Mika Taanila (Eds); Desura (Finland), 2003. 192pp Review by Maari Vertainen | 4 November 2003 The book of the film of the concept of the building. When, in 1965, Dr Jaakko Hiidenkari asked Matti Suuronen to design a ski cabin that would be ‘quick to heat and easy to construct in rough terrain’ the result was a simple, space-age structure that...
Tomorrow's People
‘Tomorrow’s People: How 21st Century Technology Is Changing The Way We Think And Feel’ by Susan Greenfield; Allen Lane, 2003. 304pp Reviewed by Dave Clements | October 2003 In Tomorrow’s People, Greenfield, renowned neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, indulges her literary ambitions to create a speculative dystopia owing much to Huxley. In this updated Brave New World, she imagines a near-future...
The Art of Travel
‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain De Botton; Penguin, 2003. 272pp Reviewed by Elisabetta Gasparoni-Abraham | 25 October 2003 This fascinating book, written by Alain De Botton, examines the diverse motives that moved great men of the past – like Charles Baudelaire and Edward Hopper, Gustave Flaubert, Alexander von Humbolt and William Wordsworth – to venture to new shores. He does this by juxtaposing their great...
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
‘Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything’ by James Gleick; Abacus, 1999. 326pp Reviewed by Peter Smith | 25 July 2003 Faster is a quick paced, entertaining description of the spread of technology and its impact on our lives. Unlike other superficial accounts Gleick locates recent developments in consumer goods and information technology within a broader context of development, citing railroads and the telephone...
Rocket Dreams
‘Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond’ by Marina Benjamin; Simon & Schuster, 2003. 242pp Reviewed by Martin Earnshaw | 27 June 2003 What became of our dreams of the aspirations that fuelled the ‘space age’ of the 50’s and 60’s? In this fascinating study Marina Benjamin takes on this problem in a fresh and innovative way. Rather than recount the familiar story of cut funds and scrapped...
Projected Cities
‘Projected Cities: Cinema and Urban Space’ by Stephen Barber; Reaktion Books, 2002. 208pp Review by Austin Williams | 26 June 2003 This is the latest in the ‘Locations’ series of books examining the relationship between cinema and broader cultural themes or national context. This book specifically addresses the way cities have been portrayed. As with many Reaktion books, the theme suffers from a cultural...
Where’s my Space Age?
‘Where’s my Space Age?’ by Sean Topham; Prestel, 2003, pp160 Review by Austin Williams | 31 July 2003 This fascinating book, written by Seam Topham (who’s recent book ‘Blow Up’ was reviewed in the Architects’ Journal), asks ‘whatever happened to the space age?’ Constructed in three parts, with a two-page conclusion at the end, the book examines the historical moment of space...
Cities for a Small Country
‘Cities for a Small Country: The Future of Cities’ by Anne Power and Richard Rogers; Faber and Faber, 2000. 314pp Review by Austin Williams | 11 January 2001 In his introduction Will Hutton kicks off the argument that more socially balanced neighbourhoods ‘have to be constructed and designed’. There then follows 300 pages of morally charged argument about how to do it and why. ‘Social mix’ figures...
Splintering Urbanism
‘Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition’ by Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin; Routledge, 2001. 512pp Review by Austin Williams | 20 December 2001 This important book develops the authors’ 1996 analysis of contested flows in ‘Telecommunications and the City: Electronic spaces, Urban Places’. In that book, the authors’ views were left to the...
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