architecture

Swedish architect Per Friberg – possible designer of house in Bron/Broen

March 14, 2017

Swedish architect Per Friberg  – possible designer of house in Bron/Broen


Above: Erlandson Villa designed by Per Friberg. Below: detective Martin
Rohde in “Bron/Broen” (The Bridge)

The Bridge (Bron/Broen) is a Danish-Swedish TV co-production set on both sides of the  Øresund Bridge that links Copenhagen, Denmark & Malmö, Sweden.

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Bjarke Ingels’ Vancouver pirate ship

November 1, 2016

Bjarke Ingels’ Vancouver pirate ship

Oh really

I can’t remember if I’ve already talked about this Dubai-style luxury twisted tower that Vancouver is getting; apologies if I have. The tower, designed by architect Bjarke Ingels, is now rising in Vancouver but the reason I’m writing about it now is that I just read a critique in Artforum of this year’s Venice Biennale for Architecture which contained a chilling portrait of Ingels.

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Harvey Molotch’s “The City as Growth Machine”

November 12, 2015

Harvey Molotch’s “The City as Growth Machine”


Sociologist Harvey Molotch
“A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite.”

Harvey Molotch‘s seminal 1976 article “The City as Growth Machine”—which is equally applicable today—just happened to be published the same year of the UN Habitat Conference on Settlements that took place in Vancouver (and is the subject of my upcoming book).

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From Syria to Greece to Corbusier: Hozoviotissa monastery

September 5, 2015

From Syria to Greece to Corbusier: Hozoviotissa monastery

Earlier this summer a number of the Syrians fleeing civil war landed on the Greek island of Amorgos. Amorgos is not a common landing point in the exodus—most people are now landing on Kos not far from the Turkish coast.

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“When Hipsters Dream of the 1890s” – an abridged version of my hipster essay is now in Briarpatch Magazine

May 7, 2015

“When Hipsters Dream of the 1890s” – an abridged version of my hipster essay is now in Briarpatch Magazine

Briarpatch Magazine, one of Canada’s oldest lefty political mags, has published an abridged version of my earlier essay on heritage hipsters and colonialism redux.

If you want to read the original and longer post (with a far drier title) it is here: Settler & pioneer “heritage hipster” styles in the age of Idle No More, Chinatown gentrification, &c.

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Post-mortem on the old Eaton’s building: an interview with Cesar Pelli

March 2, 2015

Post-mortem on the old Eaton’s building: an interview with Cesar Pelli

The TD Bank building and Eaton’s building by Cesar Pelli, photo © Michael de Courcy, mid-1970s

This is not a true post-mortem, since Cesar Pelli‘s 1973 Eaton’s building has not actually been demolished—and how rare it is to be able to say that in Vancouver, now one of North America’s capitals of demolition.

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