Category Archives: Asides

Norman Foster and Steve Jobs

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But the culture of Foster and Partners (as it was then called) was different from firms in Silicon Valley with one notable exception – Apple, the place that combined geek business inventiveness without its reputation for poor aesthetic sensibility. Perfecting the model of selling design that is compatible with big business, Foster simultaneously grew one of the largest architecture practices in the world while still winning awards for design excellence. The secret was to design buildings like the limited edition, invite only Porsches that Foster drove and fellow Porsche drivers would commission them.

More alike than you would imagine.

[Link to Norman Foster and Steve Jobs]

Density is Natural

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The benefits of living close to other people are evident even to hunter-gatherers. Though their societies have changed over the millennia, studying characteristics of present-day hunter-gatherers can let us peer into the past. That’s what was done by three anthropologists—Marcus Hamilton, Bruce Milne, and Robert Walker—and one ecologist—Jim Brown. In the process, they seem to have discovered a fundamental law that drives human agglomeration. Though their survey of 339 present-day hunter-gatherer societies doesn’t explicitly mention cities, it does show that as populations grow, people tend to live closer together—much closer together. For every doubling of population, the home ranges of hunter-gatherer groups increased by only 70 percent.

[Link to Density is Natural]

Final Parcels Developed in Battery Park City

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The completion of the skyline in Battery Park City comes at a crossroads moment for the neighborhood, which was conceived in 1968 by the State of New York as a way to redevelop a moribund shipping area. Trade Center dirt later filled in rotting piers, though it was not until the 1980s that construction really ramped up. Today the area has 34 residential buildings and a population of 13,000.

[Link to Final Parcels Developed in Battery Park City]

How Riots Start, and How They Can Be Stopped

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The riots that began in London have spread across the country. Decades of social-science research has delivered insights about these outbursts of violence, but hasn’t explained why they erupt when and where they do.
We do, however, understand how they usually end: with overwhelmingly force that clears the streets.

[Link to How Riots Start, and How They Can Be Stopped]

The Earthscraper

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Build the other way

The Earthscraper, designed by BNKR Arquitectura, is the Skyscraper’s antagonist in the historic urban landscape of Mexico City where the latter is condemned and the preservation of the built environment is the paramount ambition. It preserves the iconic presence of the city square and the existing hierarchy of the buildings that surround it.

[Link to The Earthscraper]

New York – Empire of Evolution

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White-footed mice, stranded on isolated urban islands, are evolving to adapt to urban stress. Fish in the Hudson have evolved to cope with poisons in the water. Native ants find refuge in the median strips on Broadway. And more familiar urban organisms, like bedbugs, rats and bacteria, also mutate and change in response to the pressures of the metropolis. In short, the process of evolution is responding to New York and other cities the way it has responded to countless environmental changes over the past few billion years. Life adapts.



Amazing examples of studying evolution…in New York City.

[Link to New York - Empire of Evolution]

Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal

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Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials offered a glimpse Monday morning at the Apple store proposed for the train station, near the terminal’s east staircase. Apple plans to start building the gadget shop immediately, should the agency’s board give its approval Wednesday. Construction is expected to take about four months.



A new retail strategy implemented in one of the prime locations in New York City. One of the foremost in modern industrial design giants in one of the beloved historic designs in the world; a perfect match. I love the last three lines of the article.

[Link to Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal]

Fresh Thrust to Urbanization

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India’s Census 2011 shows that one in every three Indians now lives in an urban habitat and that the move towards towns and cities has happened mostly in south India, contiguously from Maharashtra to Tamil Nadu.

According to the latest census, 31.2% of the total population lives in urban centres compared with 27.8% in 2001 and 25.5% in 1991. Of the 1.21 billion population, 833 million live in rural India while the remaining 377 million reside in urban India.



The fact that India has more than 1.21 billion people makes any percentage shift, let alone from 25% to 31% in two decades, for interesting times in the near future. Watch this space.

[Link to Fresh Thrust to Urbanization]