a writer's notebook
Journey of the Senses by Zhuoer Zhong
“This project reimagines the river Clyde moored Renfrew Ferry venue as a high-tech, floating biomaterials education centre.
The Pompeii Archaeological Park has recreated an ancient perfume garden—right down to its antique roses.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Comments closedThe Orb: A Living Algorithm in Architectural Form
With its swirling, code-born structure and shimmering, spaceship-like exterior, The Orb looks like something generated by an algorithm, and that’s because it is.
June 06, 2025 at 04:52PM
Comments closed
Comprised of three small structures that include a main residence, an art studio and a bath house, the Rain Harvest Home integrates rainwater-harvest architecture – an uncommon practice despite the region having abundant rainfall.
Visit ancient Mars—a surprisingly temperate planet where snow or rain falls from the sky, and rivers rush down valleys to feed hundreds of lakes.
A new study from geologists at the University of Colorado Boulder paints this picture of a red planet that was relatively warm and wet, much different than the frigid wasteland we know today. The team’s findings suggest that heavy precipitation likely fed many networks of valleys and channels that shaped the Martian surface billions of years ago—adding new evidence to a long-running debate in planetary science.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Comments closed
This is also where I do a search and find out Parfrey died nearly ten years ago. I knew nothing about him beyond having admired his book APOCALYPSE CULTURE back circa 1990. The article is a weird read.
Comments closed
While the exhibition is physically immersive, its conceptual focus is time (or rather, how time is experienced in prison). As Caputo explains, “Time in prison is never neutral; it is structured, regimented, and often experienced as an oppressive force.” The exhibition’s title, Prison Times, nods to this fragmented, fictional timescale, where the outside world runs on one clock and the incarcerated on another.
A jacket with built-in electric fans designed by Japanese fashion brand Anrealage keeps staff cool at the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation pavilion at the Osaka Expo.
The pavilion aims to depict the future of communication, and Morinaga applied the same idea when designing the uniforms.
“These clothes transcend division and disparity, connect the dots and expand human potential by sharing senses,” the designer explained.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Comments closed
Here’s some THE BRUTALIST vibes: Arkpro Studio designs concrete church in Albania as “new village centre.”
As I noted here, the soundtrack for THE BRUTALIST was excellent. The soundtrack by Daniel Blumberg is being released on CD next month (UK) (US+). The cover, of course, is the still that’s going to become one of the defining filmic images of the first half of the 21st Century.
It’s even floating around as a phone wallpaper now.
Personally, I’ve gone with something else this season:
Blumberg has his own bandcamp page that I want to dig through soon.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Comments closed
Phillippe Starck designs a nine-floor hotel with a 19th Century mansion stuck on top. There’s your boom boom vibe shift right there.
HOO Cafe Kyoto. I love that little sign.
All of these things give me pleasure because they are uncommon and ambitious.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
One Comment… it occurred to me that if the U-Bahn system could somehow be hooked up to massive, earth-anchored magnets, and made, therefore, to produce a magnetic field of its own, that you could transform all of Berlin into a geomagnetic harddrive.
As a sail traps the wind, a planetary harddrive would use geomagnetism.
Provided constant motion on behalf of the trains, I thought, and given absolutely gigantic magnets of the right polarity and location, Berlin could start producing its own magnetic field – which meant that any city with a subway could be transformed into a harddrive. Harddrive London. Harddrive Beijing. Harddrive Moscow.
Of course, it’s obvious even to me that you’d have to do quite a lot more than just bury some magnets underground in order to transform a city into a harddrive – you’d need a shovel, for instance, and perhaps some strong anti-manic drugs; but my point is that if Christopher Wren could build a tower that simultaneously memorialized the Great Fire of London even as it acted as a scientific device, then perhaps you could turn urban infrastructure itself into a kind of working scientific apparatus.
You could turn all of Berlin into a geomagnetic harddrive….
(originally noted 27 February 2006)
CONNECTED:
Mandy Barker’s cyanotypes of junk found in water.
Brutalist-style hilltop home intended to look like an ancient ruin.
(Which really just summons Albert Speer and “ruin value” to my mind, oops)
A team of Egyptian-American archaeologists has uncovered the tomb of an unknown king who reigned over the region of Abydos in southern Egypt 3,600 years ago.
Luxury real estate goes off-grid. Ruins in waiting.
I used to ride the train past the Olympic stadium in Stratford quite often, and would frequently imagine it repurposed as a post-apocalyptic ritual space, a giant radio dish for praying to the space gods and a complicated gallows for mass executions.
morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.
My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Comments closed