Miniature utopias, the International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest 2007. The aquarium is a space for small-scale exponents of the city beautiful movement, mixed in with a healthy dose of Rococo-era landscape fantasies, with everything planned down to the last waving frond / tno, a website / spot on, Top 10 albums of 1987. With one possible admission (influential, if not entirely listenable) / lonely cars by Christopher Michel / 'It's not a laptop, it's a movement. And it deserves our full support.' / there's an element of car-crash-fascination with Born Rich (see also Luxist), devoted to ultra-conspicuous consumption.

London's Lost Designs, on manhole covers and homogenity / Lost in Tyme, psychedelic music from the past / fake children's books, some are pretty good / the space art of John Polgreen / it's all about perception: HD DVD players become 'DVD upscalers' / an exhibition by photographer Guido Mocafico: Nature Morte - Photography in the company of Old Masters / BySoAndSo, on craft and design / Can the British just sail right up the Mississippi? / Habitually Chic is a visual splurge of contemporary shelter magazine aesthetic, mustard yellow, uncracked monographs, ottomans and catkins.

aerial geometry: 5 circular communities from the sky / more striking images of planned communities / empty houses on London's most expensive road: 'The only visible signs of habitation are the security guards lurking in the shadows like feral cats.' Google Maps / Export to World, bringing Second Life objects into three dimensions / book-lined staircase / another journey by train, the NE corridor viewed by primitive nerd.

The case of the Pantheon clock, the AJ interviews the UX, the secret organisation comprising of various clandestine specialists: 'To this end, [infiltration specialists] The Mouse House has a vast collection of keys and alarm-system know-how, while the cartography wing boasts the only comprehensive map of Paris in existence, unifying all disparate underground networks, from the sewers to the metro, underground parking lots to electricity grids. Another group, which counts a rock-driller among its members, uses these maps to dig connecting tunnels, taking care to camouflage the newly made entry points.'

Fred's footprint: The impacts of a new PC via City of Sound. Also noted, admired, whatever, On the 'Archigram-What-Organisation-You-Must-Be-Joking-Mate', DH writes about the ad-hoc organisation of what has evolved into one of the most influential architectural offices of all time (still cited today, 'yet assessed in terms of built projects they produce only a playground in Milton Keynes and a swimming pool for Rod Stewart.'). Part of a triptych of informed opinions on important creative collectives, organised by Noisy Decent Graphics / Learning from North Philadelphia, Dmitri Siegel on Guild House by Venturi and Rauch, Cope and Lippincott, 1963. A building that was too clever for its own good, and pretty much shot down the concept of Postmodernism before it even started. As did this.

London Profiler, a modern day Poverty Map, only without Charles Booth's obsessive attention to detail.

posted by things at 23:17