Category: Architecture
Man-made structures; conceptual or real.

Textures of Gdańsk
My company has an office in Gdańsk, where my favourite colleagues hang out. I've been down twice so far, and spent about two weeks there. It's a delightful town, and as i get to know more and widen my circumference i discover new treasures. Gdańsk is a lot more than just the main drag. You ...

Bislingen: beautiful decay
On the northern edge of the Oslo forests sits Bislingen. It used to be a bustling place, with downhill and cross country skiers, weddings, parties. One day they closed the door and left. The plan for someone to come back another day and open the door … i guess this plan fell through. Then plan ...

Textures of London
Last year, i actually got my arse in gear, and went to London. Good thing, that, considering the pandemic of 2020 ...

Textures of Utrecht
I went to Utrecht last year, to meet up with two of the other squirrels, and attend a workshop in datavisualisation with Stefanie Posavec. A few days in Utrecht. You should stay away, so it always stays delightful for me. I am going again in april. Wonderful place. 36 73 tile tile 6 44 43 ...

Stave churches – medieval vikingry
Stave churches are curious buildings. They seem to try to mirror some viking age aesthetics, and in the process, produces their own visual premise. It has been suggested though, that the stave church is a translation of the architecture of bysantine basilikas – from stone to wood, with its closest architectual relations in Ireland. Maybe, ...

The Elite and Winter: The Eden, a Nazi Hotel in Argentina
Washington, winter, 1945. Walter Eichhorn and Ida Bonfert are being investigated in connection to Hitler's crimes. The Eichhorns actively believe in nazism, and they have supported it financially, as documents show. Ida has given Goebbels 30,000 marks and, since then, the matrimony is allowed into the Fuhrer's room without permission. The Eichhorns travel frequently to Germany, ...

The Elite and Fire: JM Frank’s Short-lived Llao-Llao Furniture
The year is 1938. A monstrous hotel, in size and ambition, opens its doors in Bariloche, Patagonia. The Llao-Llao caters to Argentina's richest - those enjoying form the in-between wars economic boom - and their international friends. Long stays in Paris are not at all uncommon for the local aristocracy, and soon exclusive shops open up in the ...

A Glance at Industrial Archaeology
Industry has been more than a simple influence on our society, environment and landscape. It has shaped who we are and where we live, and it has brought about social change on an unprecedented scale in an unbelievably short period of time. But Chronos doesn't discriminate and buries it all, so a discipline emerged after World War II (when the retooling of ...

The Great Exhibition of 1851
I was once walking around Crystal Palace Park, waiting for a movie festival to begin, when a man approached me and my friend and asked us if we had seen the dinosaurs. We were confused at first, but he quickly pointed at some massive and frankly strange-looking sculptures that were spread around the park. Only ...

The art, design and architecture of birds
What is architecture? What is design? What is art? Conscious choices. Some kind of cognitive processes that says "naaah. that doesn't work" or "fabfunfantastic!" That is what bowerbirds do. I came across them for the first time as a child. A newspaper we subscribed to used to run a small "interesting-facts from the natural-world" section in a hidden ...

Hostile architecture – how dare you be homeless?
This is an old post once posted elsewhere: brought it here when Twitter user @olebjarkoy took a pic of spikes outside a hotel in Norway, tagged it with #hostile. The hotel replied, on Twitter asking him to remove the hostile tag, as it was negative. Does not take a genius to figure how that went ...

The tree house dwellers of Papua
The Korowai people, inhabitants of Guinea, have become famous for three reasons. First, there are no records of the group having contact with Westeners until 1974, when anthropologist Peter Van Arsdale and a group of researchers led and expedition to the south bank of the Upper Eilanden River. Second, the Korowai have been reported to practice ritual cannibalism, although there are suspicions this ...

Thomassons: extinct architecture
The 99% invisible is a brilliant podcast. I was alerted to the so-called Thomassons. These are architectural artefacts who have lost their function, but, and this is crucial: are still being maintained. For – essentially – no reason whatsoever. It is surprisingly hard to find images that exemplifies it. What I find fascinating, is the ...

Islamic art and the patterns of the infinite
It's difficult, if not impossible, to determine what exactly encompasses Islamic art. The term is not specific to a religion, place, time or even a field, and instead spans over 1400 years and receives influences from Roman, early Christian, Byzantine and even Chinese art. Although some think Islamic art is a false concept, the similarities between pieces of the Islamic world ...

Black & white
The world looks different in black and white. I think it might sharpen some parts of the visual processing, to see the world in ebony and ivory. Damascus Connie Melbourne Melbourne Damascus Oslo Oslo Oslo Oslo Oslo Riga Oslo ...

Streetart
Streetart is all around, in the most unlikely places. I implore you, do not just walk past. Stop and sniff the excellence of creativity in the dark. alley turtle turtle kitty banksy-ish marine life ape in the hotel unicorns weird biker war pac-man eh... trumpeter royal creature stikman piece piece gekko gekko good people once ...