Just arrived. Always an excellent, illuminating read. Attend the-modernist.org for yours. This one’s mine and you can’t have it.

In the enduring search for the peaceful rural ideal it can be easy to forget that the ‘rural’ acts as a conduit for the modern. Through their role in transport, militarisation or energy production, these pastoral, bucolic or rugged areas have evolved their own architectures and infrastructures. A dam halfway up a mountain, for example, is a surprise – a startling juxtaposition – but as with so many edifices it is there for one reason: to help us live.

One of my favourite regular reads. And I just reupped my subscription, which you can do too at northernearth.co.uk.

Just arrived. Looks good. Certainly a solid object for six quid and postage. A few familiar names in the credits – hi, Tim!

Check out the listing for yourself at ritualsdeclarations bigcartel com.

Excellent new arrival. Going to https://www.weirdwalk.co.uk/product/weird-walk-zine-2 gets it to you for £5.50 and postage. It’s very good reading, beautifully designed, and proper weird Albion wintery.

I don’t know how people even get through the year without reading this marvel. Go to the-modernist.org immediately.

…in celebration of aspects which are undocumented, obscured, lost, overlooked and ephemeral. Although this might sound an obscure perspective to take, their role in architectural history is no less important or intriguing. So often these jostle up side-by-side with modernism’s more familiar facets, but as a result of our deference to debates about style, star characters, iconic buildings, and in architecture’s anonymous collaboration, these other aspects disappear. If we can expand our field of vision to look for a moment at what these might be, we might consider what we have already lost, and what we also stand to lose.

It’s not on their website yet for some reason, but issue 63 of the always excellent NEURAL arrived yesterday. As usual, a mix of fascinating features and interviews, and excellently curated review sections. Check your local specialist magazine stockist, perhaps. For me, NEURAL is one of those things absolutely guaranteed to surface a dozen wonderful things I’ve never heard of, time after time.

Congrats to them on hitting 40 years in print.

It’s always a good day when a new mono.kultur arrives, but I am particularly delighted today to see that the new issue is an interview with and retrospective of the designer Iris van Herpen.

The pages are on a staggered cut on the lower right, so you can see a sliver of the next page on – the future leaks through. Very apt.

I grew up in a small, small village, and I didn’t have a television or a computer…

You can pick up a copy directly from them here.