Sometimes in conversations thoughts or connections come thick and fast. The following is a stream of consciousness hyperlink ramble through some recent project reviews with Architecture students at Strathclyde University, stopping off at interesting points along the way:
A UK Housing crisis, but is it housing, or rather the economies of land and housing that requires design attention? — From Andy Wightman to Danny Dorling, to recent work from the New Economics Foundation (and Zed Books) — and connected to that, the work of GCPH on resilience, and Harry Burns’ TED talk — Soliders returning, to what? Did William Lethaby say something about good accomodation being a more fitting monument to service than any public sculpture? — If we’re thinking about parliaments and buildings, we need to consider the nature of government (and built parliaments) now and in the future, and consider issues such as extra-state-craft — how might the shape of our seats of democracy shape the politics that passes through them? — If creating ‘speculative design’, or devising design fictions, we need to think about speculative everything (dunne and raby) — what are the pressures on students and their mental health? Should architecture seek to mitigate these pressures, and could we engage more directly with the politics of the situation? — Developing a critical vocabulary when approaching temporary urban interventions, this is a useful case-study (and the urchronian maps are interesting) — A space port in Paisley? Here is one in a colliery in Wales — if redesigning civic spaces, how might they operate under Fully Automated Luxury Communism? — and how might we die in the future?