Category Archives: Urbanism

At Home With Jimmy Carter and Don DeLillo

Posted on April 25, 2012 by cosmopolitanscum

I read White Noise recently and noticed by chance that Picador have bizarrely just published a 40th anniversary edition of Don DeLillo’s book, although it was first published in 1985. Perhaps it is the accumulated prescience of the book that … Continue reading →

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Price Was Right

Posted on February 20, 2012 by cosmopolitanscum

Fantastic news that the Cedric Price Potteries Thinkbelt exhibition curated by Barnabas Calder and designed by Alan Pert of Nord has made it to London from the Lighthouse in Glasgow. This great exhibitions reinvigorates Price’s plans and drawings as a … Continue reading →

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Interview: Jaime Lerner

Posted on October 17, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

Jaime Lerner is the celebrated thrice Mayor of the Brazilian city of Curitiba and twice governor of the state of Parana. Trained as an architect and then planner, he is famous for his acts of urban acupuncture, swift, decisive moves … Continue reading →

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The Limits of Europe: Nuclear City

Posted on October 14, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

The Limits of Europe is a new series of special reports from the outer reaches of Europe. In these wastelands and the structures they contain: from space stations in the Arctic regions to modern ruins on the Mediterranean rim, we … Continue reading →

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Interview: Yona Friedman

Posted on October 10, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

What are your views on planning? I am very much against planning. We are now in a worldwide crisis due to overplanning. I am against overplanning. Planning means that you consider every event possible. Except an event which is unexpected … Continue reading →

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Why Park Hill Should Live

Posted on October 4, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

Reyner Banham liked Park Hill. To the greatest critical champion of New Brutalism, it was ‘the biggest brutalist building ever completed’ an example of all that he had, once at least, held dear. In his book The New Brutalism, written … Continue reading →

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Of Montreal

Posted on July 13, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

After the establishment of the Committee d’Organisation des Jeux Olympique (COJO) in 1972, the body tasked with not just running the Olympic Games in Montreal but controversially to build the structures, the Canadian Ambassador for Argentina wrote to his superiors … Continue reading →

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The Pompidou Centre Inside Battersea Power Station

Posted on July 7, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum
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Reaching for My Revolver

Posted on June 21, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

Will Gompertz on the Today programme this morning said that the arts has “always been embedded in the idea of hosting the Olympics.’ As portions of the £80m Cultural Olympiad were officially announced – a group of artists to create … Continue reading →

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All The People

Posted on June 16, 2011 by cosmopolitanscum

Just a short walk north from the Olympic stadium, up a canal dug in the 1770s, is the Hackney Marshes. Unprepossessing on a weekday with the wind whipping in from the west, this site has in a fact become defined … Continue reading →

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