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Author Archives: cosmopolitanscum
A Cathedral Dedicated to Excrement
As London’s sewer system accepts into its gaping maw a huge autumnal deluge, it is worth sparing a thought for those who created it. The Metropolitan Board of Works was created in 1855 to improve the cities infrastructure ‘under the … Continue reading
Posted in 2012, Architecture, Engineering
Tagged Architecture, Bazalgette, design, John Lyall, London, Metropolitan Board of Words, Olympics, sewage, Urbanism
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Northern Seascapes
Posted in Architecture, Engineering
Tagged Architecture, gareth hoskins, marintek, snøhetta, V&A
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Ruskin in Venice
The years that John Ruskin spent in Venice are no longer just an important biographical fact about an eminent art Victorian critic. They have become a narrative prism through which to assess architecture’s role in contemporary society. This month the … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Old Things
Tagged Architecture, biennale, gothic, lisa fior, muf, pavilion, politics, ruskin, stones of venice, Urbanism, venice
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Empire State of Mind
I re-read JG Ballard’s Empire of the Sun recently. This was at the same time that I was getting sent beautiful shots of pavilions from the Shanghai Expo, and then writing about it in some kind of historical context. At … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Urbanism
Tagged Architecture, ballard, empire of the sun, heatherwick, pavilion, shanghai, Urbanism
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Not Learning From Learning From Las Vegas
The exhibition What We Learned at Yale and the 3-day symposium Architecture After Las Vegas prompted a predictable degree of puffery from those media-friendly, Po-Mo apologists over at FAT. Sean Griffiths review in Building Design was generally a list of … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Architecture, Dave Hickey, Las Vegas, Neon Boneyard, Scott Brown, Steve Wynn, Venturi
2 Comments
A drop in the ocean
In July 2007, Hilary Clinton, then a candidate for US President proposed a no-flight zone over Darfur, to prevent the Sudanese government from bombing their own citizens. It was an attempt to call to a halt what has been described … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Engineering
Tagged africa, Architecture, Darfur, Sudan, Urbanism, water
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The Tallest Building In The World
This is the text of a phone interview with Bill Baker, structural engineer on the Burj Khalifa and partner of S.O.M, on the day after the Burj Khalifa was inaugurated. What was the launch like? It was a pretty amazing … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Engineering
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Man and van der Laan.
The work of architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904-1991) is more influential as a system than as a design. The Dutch Benedictine monk is acclaimed by those who embrace modernism as a style rather than as an outlook or … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
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“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.”
Jonathan Glancey repeated a few familiar myths about the Berlin Wall when he wrote about it recently. He wrote that ‘what remains of it are a few graffiti-spattered stretches of concrete for tourists to snap one another by’. Certainly much … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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cosmopolitan scum 