Material for thought

A letter that I wrote few months ago about local and mobile capital has been published in the issue 232 of the “Design, Architecture, Ideas” Ottagono magazine. The letter introduces very briefly the Marxist geography terms that I discovered during my philosophical investigations on the concept of place. The magazine is in Italian and English.

Here is a map that was made at the occasion of the Magnificent Maps exhibition at the British Library.

“A number of groups and some individuals were given a large piece of a grid map to create their unique interpretation of the neighbourhood.”

New and shiny buildings are the ones that attract most of the attention in Hong Kong. But older buildings are also remarkable. The new towns in the Hong Kong New Territories (such as Fo Tan and Sha Tin) and some residential lots in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon are worthwhile a visit. They are usually from the 70s and look all more or less the same: apartment towers, multiple levels of public spaces for pedestrians, a park and a playground, a shopping mall, parking and roads at the ground level. I have seen similar examples in Western cities but most of them become urbanistic nightmares. The model seems to work much better here, maybe because of the habits of its people.

As for all Expos, most of the pavilions will be destroyed at the end of the event. Only few will remain, here are some of them.

These buildings are huge and cold. Partly because they will need to accommodate a huge number of visitors, but still, I don’t think they incarnate the ‘better city, better life’ theme of the Expo at all. Except maybe few green credentials, which seem to me like drops of water compared to the massive use of electricity in the Expo, how would life be better in these massive buildings? The Chinese pavilion looks like it is overlooking the crowd outside. The Theme pavilion feels like an unfriendly fortress.

A model of London

The New London Architecture, at the Building centre, is an initiative that seeks to highlight the level of development either planned or currently underway in London.  ”Digital Cities, London’s future” was their latest exhibition. It highlights some of the resources and technologies which designers can use in the development of the city and explores areas of debate that arise alongside the opportunities of this new digital world.

The exhibition was packed with fascinating glimpses of the future.