Dan Hill

A slim cataloguing of the rich diversity of small vehicles that help shape street life in the world’s largest city

This brilliantly engaging book may actually be one of the first to describe and discuss what might be architecture’s true value at this pivotal point in our own history: seeing that everything is connected, and artfully hosting that complexity, before constructively plotting routes towards clarity, pinned up on broad civic, ethical foundations.

So Architects after Architecture, as the title suggests, is not about buildings. Or at least not always, not directly. Buildings are simply one of the ways that this complex yet constructive sensibility might exert itself, but they are certainly not the only way, nor are they always the most potent – as muf’s Liza Fior makes clear here, when she says “the answer to a brief is not necessarily a building.”

• Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not endings
• Unfinished = fertile
• Artists are to cities what worms are to soil.
• A city’s waste should be on public display.
• Make places that are easy for people to change and adapt (wood and plaster, as opposed to steel and concrete.)
• Places which accommodate the very young and the very old are loved by everybody else too.
• Low rent = high life
• Make places for people to look at each other, to show off to each other.
• Shared public space is the crucible of community.
• A really smart city is the one that harnesses the intelligence and creativity of its inhabitants.

The ability to significantly extend the functionality of the product via firmware upgrades feels like it‘s increasingly possible to reveal new devices from within the existing device. It’s almost as if one simple firmware upgrade had me sensing that battery life had just increased, that there were additional functions, that I felt like I had a whole new iPod. The physical aspects of the product—control wheel, four navigation/select buttons, screen and a couple of ports—are abstract enough to enable improvements by simply remapping new elements of the software.