Make Room! Make Room!

My piece on the hellish "rodent universes" of John Calhoun is now online at Cabinet magazine. Researching overcrowding, Calhoun built elaborate "utopias" for rats and mice, in which they enjoyed unlimited resources and freedom from disease or predation - but limited space. Once population density passed a certain point, the mouse heaven always became mouse hell, rife with violence, rape and asocial freakery. This research formed a cornerstone of the overpopulation and anti-urban doom-mongering of the 1970s - and informed fictions from Stand on Zanzibar to Soylent Green.

Here's Calhoun in one of his universes, via Wikimedia:

Space out

My New Statesman review of "Out of This World" at the British Library, which I mentioned earlier, is now online.

Here's an idea for a science-fiction story. Humanity suffers a recurring bout of cultural amnesia. Bearers of the flame must restate the same ideas, and refute the same myths, every ten or 20 years. But, twist! This isn't some distant future but our own time. Such is the cultural Groundhog Day that afflicts science fiction. The genre contains much serious literature, and much serious literature should be considered part of the genre. The ghetto walls may be weaker than ever but the case still has to be made over and over again.

Read the rest.

Aliens! Fetishists! Situationists! Psychopathic mice!

There's a bumper crop of stuff by me floating around in August, on a pleasingly wide array of subjects.

In this week's New Statesman (edition of 8 August) I review "Out of This World", the British Library's survey of science fiction ephemera - an exhibition well worth catching before it finishes on 25 September.

On the chunkier side, there are a hat trick of longer, thinkier essays approaching the newsstands. I'm in the first issue of new journal Transgressive Culture, published by Glyphi, reviewing Jonny Trunk's Dressing for Pleasure (FUEL), a compilation of classic fetish magazine AtomAge. I first reviewed Dressing for Pleasure last year for Icon - this is a much more in-depth look at the book, attempting to place it in a cultural context.

In issue 42 of American art quarterly Cabinet, there's an essay by me on the American ecologist John Calhoun. Calhoun was interested in the effects of overcrowding, a phenomenon he explored by building elaborate "utopias" for mice and rats. These "universes" were free of disease and predators and supplied with abundant food and water - all they lacked was space. Rodent populations inside the tanks boomed uncontrollably - and then collapsed into a vortex of rape, violence and social dysfunction. Enthusiastically taken up by the overpopulation doom-mongers of the 1960s and 1970s, Calhoun's research became the "proof" that crowded cities would mean disaster for mankind - but Calhoun's message is a little more complex than that.

More, better, utopias. Under/Current issue 06 has the theme "retro-future", a chance for me to talk about my favohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifurite world-that-never-was, Constant's New Babylon. The trouble with utopias is that they tend to be striving, efficiency-minded places. New Babylon was a reaction against that - a paradise for slackers, a world-spanning megastructure geared to wandering, idling and socialising.

And finally - Icon 099 is now on sale, featuring eight pages by me on one of the most exciting design studios in London, BERG. A conversation with BERG is like hearing a friend tell you about a brilliant concept from a science-fiction novel they just read. Only they didn't just read it, they're trying to build it. And look, here's a prototype. They're an interesting bunch, to say the least.

The Latest Hallucinations

I've been up to my neck in "proper writing" and neglecting the blog lately. So this is one of those somewhat unsatisfying "read me elsewhere" posts - made extra unsatisfying by the fact that a lot of this stuff isn't online.

One thing that is online is this review of a small show in Eindhoven called "The New Psychedelica". The show really scratches an itch for those of us who feel that art hasn't really plumbed to depths of weirdness offered by the digital world.

Also online is this review of Locals Only, a photographic record of California's 1970s skate culture, at men's style website Jock & Nerds.

The new issue of Icon has a long piece by me mulling what London's new crop of skyscrapers means for the city, in the company of sculptor, polymath and expert Londoner Richard Wentworth. There's also a much shorter piece by me about David Chipperfield's Hepworth Wakefield.

Print-only (for the time being) but free is The Clerkenwell Post, an attractive zine about all things Clerkenwell. It was produced by Icon's publisher and launched at Clerkenwell Design Week. If you're in the area copies can still be found - there's a piece in there by me about the Barbican.

Pretty soon there'll be a flurry of news about the novel, now a mere eight months away from publication. Only eight months! It seems like just six months ago it was fourteen months away from publication. But here's something: you can pre-order it on Amazon now.

Next week there will (I hope) be some news about the Secret Project which has been eating up a lot of my time behind the scenes.

And I will be doing more blogging soon.

Playing in the Ruins

Bronx Floors, Gordon Matta-Clark

My New Statesman piece about Pioneers of the Downtown Scene at the Barbican, mentioned below, is now online. "The sense of decay and collapse pervades this show," I say. That's a good thing.

Downtown Scene

News from the world of print. I am in this week's New Statesman, on sale from today, reviewing Pioneers of the Downtown Scene at the Barbican Art Gallery. I try to put this really very good exhibition in the context of New York's 1970s' near-death experiences, something I feel the curators could have done a bit better.

And of course I continue to infest Icon, although the magazine's online archiving process ground to a halt in summer last year and is now proving difficult to restart. In the current issue I write about Voyager 1 and review the New City Reader and Beyond magazine. In the issue out next week, you can find me profiling the designer Philippe Malouin and reviewing Civil Unrest.

I'm planning a separate post wrapping up all the news related to the book when one or two things about it solidify.

On Pool

Over at the Bi Blog, there's a new and quite short piece by me on the theme of "Pool". I talk - briefly - about what George Orwell thought of London's suburbs. The (rather lovely) concept of the Bi Blog is that two writers riff in different directions on the same subject; my opposite number, Erandi de Silva, writes on Sunset Boulevard and reflecting pools.

The 21st-Century Equivalent of William Morris Wallpaper

Aaron Koblin's Flight Patterns, part of Decode at the V&A.

There might be a bit of a lull in the blogging for the next week or two - I have a rather heavy workload. In the meantime, here's a self-indulgent selection of a few bits and bobs that have been published or archived online in the past couple of weeks, and that I haven't mentioned before.

"The Warcraft Civilization is the outcome of two years of research, including more than 2300 hours playing the game. Bainbridge has simultaneously run dozens of characters (who he winningly refers to as 'research assistants') across a thorough cross-section of servers, races and classes, and he has played to the maximum skill-levels attainable; he also hosted Azeroth's first-ever scientific conference. And even if Warcraft does not become a permanent part of our culture, Bainbridge says, it's essential to study it now. If, decades hence, researchers want to examine World Of Warcraft, they can restart the servers and run the software, but they can't provide the hundreds of thousands of players distributed across the world that make the game what it is. This is a book that demands to be taken seriously. It's all so promising – heavyweight academic, neglected but fascinating subject matter, bold claims to support – but Bainbridge almost blows it." - Review: The Warcraft Civilization (for Edge Online)

"'An architect, and this might sound negative, has to be capable of manipulating people as the sculptor is capable of manipulating material,' he explains. 'Because that is essentially our building material – it’s getting other people to go along. But also there’s a lot of incorporating input from the outside – I realise that there’s this like entourage of decision makers and if you can, in a zen-like way, make their forces the driving force of a project, you’re much more powerful as an architect.'" - Profile: Bjarke Ingels

"Digital technologies are highly disruptive – all around us, their effect is revolutionary, upsetting industries and social systems, changing the way we work, play, live and think. But Decode doesn’t feel very revolutionary or dangerous – it’s pretty and entertaining. Despite its subtitle – “digital design sensations” – there’s little that’s very sensational about Decode, nothing that hits you at gut level and makes you realise that the world’s going to be very different. Individually, these pieces are all perfectly meritorious, although it should be said that a few weren’t working when I visited. But when the work on show is taken as a whole, its focus on aesthetics and making the raw, terrifyingly abstract world of data and the network attractive and seemly, makes it feel similar to the bourgeois Victorian decorative arts that took inspiration from nature. It’s the 21st-century equivalent of William Morris wallpaper." - Review: Decode

"Even though they never came to trouble the surface of the planet, the projects are still “masterworks” – it says so right on the cover. Actually breaking ground is beside the point now that digital technology has advanced to the present state of the art. Authenticity is overrated in a digital decade, where we can fight wars over non-existent weapons and billions of pounds can dematerialise in minutes." - Review: Unbuilt Masterworks

"'Standing before costly objects of technological beauty,' de Botton writes, 'we might be tempted to to reject the possibility of awe, for fear that we might grow stupid through admiration.' Instead, the writer chooses to be awed, and he’s right to be. It leads to the best part of the book: in the middle of the night, he is taken out to the end of the south runway and stands reverently on the portion of the tarmac where planes touch down, the focal point of the whole extraordinary enterprise. It’s a near-religious site – certainly, more prayers are offered there than in any church in the land." - Review: A Week At The Airport

"Starck is magnificent on screen, like some eccentric bright-feathered predator which grips its prey in a death-hug, dissolves it with kisses, and puts the bones on the next Eurostar." - Review: Philippe Starck's Design for Life

Icons of the month: the barcode, the book (written in retro-speculative manner for Icon's fiction issue) and, appropriately enough, Blogger.com.

Runways, Rhizobia and Revolution

X-Plantation 11 by Hubert Blanz.

Issues 075 and 076 of Icon have now been archived online, plucking a handful of pieces by me from the obscurity of print and into the bright lights of the internet. There's an interesting little news story about Francois Roche's biopunk house-meets-bacteria farm, "I'm Lost in Paris". Another news story covers David Kendall's "Always Let the Road Decide", a photographic project following migrant labourers as they travel on foot along and around Dubai's superhighways. And I wrote a short introduction for a gallery of Hubert Blanz's amazing X-Plantation images.

Looking back, Kendall and Blanz's images have a lot in common - they both reveal an edgeless nightmare wasteland only safely crossed by machines.


Vladimir Tatlin and his tower. (Not actual size.)

Also: my article on Tatlin's Tower for the Icon of the Month slot. Proposed in 1919 but never built, the Monument to the Third International still casts quite a shadow across architecture, just as this Kosmograd post makes clear. It's a fascinating structure and an interesting story, so enjoy.

Also: reviews of the V&A's Telling Tales exhibition, the film Chevolution and China Mieville's The City and the City, all of which I've mentioned on this site before.

The Mechanical Jonestown and Perfect City

Two very old reviews - from Icon 052, October 2007 - uploaded here for the benefit of my archive.

Transformers

Transformers was the first cartoon “inspired by” (that is, designed to sell) a range of toys. It was a glorified commercial, and as such was actually aided by its low production values – the toys themselves did not disappoint. They were three toys in one: killer robot; jet fighter (or flatbed truck, or whatever); and puzzle. How does this VW Beetle transform into a robot, and vice versa? What clues can be gleaned from either form that suggest the other – part of a bumper that resembles a fist, or a chest plate that looks like a bonnet? On this third level, they were almost educational. They taught kids how to interrogate mechanical design, reducing it to constituent parts and postulating alternative applications for each.

But this is summer blockbuster season, and thus no place for anything of educational value. And the lessons present in Michael Bay’s Transformers film become rather unsettling if pondered for too long. It’s lucky, therefore, that this absurd, sprawling, eye-blitzing movie so closely resembles a schizophrenic episode (My car wants us to have sex! Your mobile phone is watching us!) that quiet reflection on it is near impossible for a couple of hours afterwards.

This is the plot: once the Transformers lived in peaceful robo-topia, but after an unspecified “betrayal”, war erupted between the “good” Autobots and the “evil” Decepticons, and their home planet was destroyed. Now, the robo-diaspora has come to Earth to battle over the Allspark, a cube that can turn inanimate machines into Transformers. Robo-rampage ensues; “good” triumphs over “evil”.

This film is a primer in nihilism and moral relativism. Nietzsche deserves a writing credit. The Allspark is the mindless “queen” of Transformer society, the only reproducing individual amid sterile drones and soldiers. It is itself a Transformer, transforming from a cube the size of an office block into a cube the size of a Dualit toaster, and in the process indicating that you might as well not bother wondering how a sportscar can turn into a much larger robot. Scale is for puny humans. The Decepticons want to control the Allspark to make more Decepticons – they are obeying a reproductive imperative. But the Autobots want to destroy the cube – an act of species suicide. This makes them an insane, nihilist death-cult, pitching their entire kind into a mechanical Jonestown. This is the Master/Slave mentality Herr Nietzsche was talking about.

But these concerns are probably the result of watching the film without the recommended dosage of Wham bars and Panda cola. More disappointing is the way that the Transformers transform. Their vehicle disguises are perfect down to the fluffy dice, and the transformed robots are lithe and athletic. One gives little clue to the other, and the act of transformation is a blizzard of high-speed CGI detail that obscures the fascination of the mechanics of the act. Worse still, if a Transformer is unhappy with its disguise, it can just scan another vehicle and turn into that instead – and anything can become a Transformer. This makes them more like the molten, shape-shifting “robot” in Terminator 2 than collections of gears and hinges.

The Transformers’ unique selling point is thus almost entirely lost. The film’s redeeming features – some funny lines, gorgeous effects, John Turturro – rattle about in the remaining 144 minutes of destruction. It will make money though, and director Bay will be free to kill again. Maybe he’ll spoil Thundercats next.

The Perfect City

“Good men need no orders,” said Plato in The Republic. The rest of us need round-the-clock CCTV coverage, ASBOs, smoking bans and electronic tagging. Perfect societies and ideal cities are spoiled by their imperfect inhabitants, who insist on being lazy, selfish, bolshy and unpredictable. Build Le Corbusier’s ville de trois millions d’habitants and the trois millions would only pee in the stairwells and spray graffiti. People are the bane of the perfection-minded planner. Benches need no orders; people need “no loitering” signs.

UK-based artist Keith Piper deftly explodes the pretensions of authoritarian urban planners in search of perfection in his installation The Perfect City at London’s PM Gallery. The large-scale video diptych looks into the mind of an unidentified utopian planner building a model of an ideal metropolis, one that will “embody the memory of all cities before it”. All we see are disembodied hands manipulating maquettes, making sketches, flicking through research. The effect is very similar to the opening credits of David Fincher’s film Seven, and suggests the same conscience-less sociopathy.

White-gloved fingers caress trays of scissors and scalpels, cut out paper figures, position cardboard buildings. Meanwhile the narration, again disembodied, unfolds what the brain behind the hands is thinking as spaces and times are conjured and dismissed. The model-maker/narrator believes that the city arose as a place of refuge, a display of collective will, a refusal to be intimidated by the forces of nature and the divine. God responds to this affront to his authority, the narration reminds us, with the usual Old Testament vengefulness – the Babel workers’ collective is thwarted by heaven-sent incoherence, the sinful hiding-places of Sodom and Gomorrah are smashed. Mindful of these disasters, the model-maker attempts to impose divine authority by proxy, dissecting the city into cantonments, imposing quarantine, imposing surveillance. But the city’s people still have that irksome “inbuilt inclination” towards disorder. And so they must be brought into line with an act of destruction. The end of the film nods towards conspiracy theories, referencing 9/11 and the use of terror acts to impose social control.

The video lasts only 15 minutes – not enough to really examine any of the themes it touches upon, but enough to give the idea of planned perfection a thorough kicking. Perfect cities need perfect people, a line of thinking that tends to lead to the gulag – utopian experiments have a nasty habit of ending up as dystopias. Piper’s video is a condensed flash of insight into this paradox – it raises the eyes first to the ideal, and then casts them back to the autocratic reality.

Keith Piper’s The Perfect City was at PM Gallery and House, 29 June – 12 August 2007

A Zone of One's Own

My review of Anna Minton's book Ground Control is at long last up on Iconeye.com. But the delay* hasn't made it any less timely - I fear its subject matter is only going to become more and more relevant. It cover the sorry (and under-examined) story of what has happened to Britain's cities under the fluttering banner of Regeneration - a selloff of public space, the erosion of ancient civic rights, the self-destruction of local democracy, the rise of gated communities, and the astonishing extension of police powers into every aspect of the lives of people who have mostly done nothing more than make other people feel uneasy. It's sickening stuff, and Minton has done a good job of bringing it all together in one book.

What Minton makes clear - although she is never wholly explicit about it - is that the decline of urban liberty is a largely spatial phenomenon. Control over the city by the authorities - increasingly private authorities - is arranged by carving the territory into zones and policing individual access to those zones. As I say in the review, things like ASBOs and dispersal orders are spatial in effect. "Order" in the city is being enforced by depriving certain groups and individuals of access to certain areas.


Zones are going to be a very important part of the future. Their use has cropped up in a number of books I've read recently: Keller Easterling's Enduring Innocence, Mike Davis' Evil Paradises, and The Invisible Committee's infamous The Coming Insurrection. (These are all heartily recommended reading.) This is what The Coming Insurrection has to say on the subject:

The unmanned drone that flew over Seine-Saint-Denis last July 14th - as the police later confirmed - presents a much more vivid image of the future than all the fuzzy humanistic projections. That they were careful to assure us that the drone was unarmed gives us a clear indication of the road we're headed down. Territory will be partitioned into ever more restricted zones. ...

I don't agree with what's advocated in The Coming Insurrection, but as an analysis of the present situation, it's often extremely insightful. A future of privately owned city centres and gated communities is no future at all. This extraordinary story from the United States (via) is a sample of why privatised, gated estates don't deserve the name "community".

*The book has been out for a few months; my review was originally slated for Icon 076 but became snarled in a scheduling problem, and held for 077, when it finally had the ignominy of being bumped to make way for Mr Philippe Starck's Design For Life.

The images for this post came from my Flickr stream.

Tree Hunts and Enchanted Forests

An interview with Peter Marigold, a really interesting designer who I'd be happy to tip for future stardom. He has a collection of smashed car wing mirrors in his flat. It's nicely Ballardian. The picture above show the "Split" box and birdbox he sent to the office after the magazine (074) came out.

There are a couple of reviews by me in the October issue (076). If you have a chance, it's worth going to see Telling Tales at the V&A before it finishes; it's a small show but has some of the best work from the past decade's upsurge of "design art". Studio Job's Robber Barons piece alone is worth seeing. The atmosphere of excess is quite something, which is the area I try to explore in my review. It's on until 18 October.

The other review from 076 is about the film Chevolution, a film about the image of Che Guevara, as seen on a T-shirt near you. The film, which is good, is on at the ICA until 30 September. An early draft included an ill-advised rant against Shepard Fairey and Banksy, which was far too long to include. It was related to the passage that says: "[Che's image] has become an off-the-peg brand suggesting a conformist kind of individualism and an unthreatening kind of rebellion. It's appropriate to an age where ideology has dwindled to identifying one's consumer niche, rather than trying to change anything. It's the Nike swoosh of political statements." So, I would have continued, it's hardly surprising that it's an inspiration for the kind of vitamin-free junk protest broadcast by a certain kind of artist. But that's an argument for another day.

To end with, here's a rant that did make it into print, against the unbelievable, dunderhead mutilation of the National Film Theatre riverfront. To summarise: "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Hydroponics and Parasites

Issues 071 to 073 of Icon have gone online, completing our mammoth archiving effort and bringing the website pretty much up to date.

On the craze for urban farming (as mentioned here): "Something unbelievable has happened - farming has become fashionable", Icon 072, June 2009

"Parasite products aren't products themselves - they only become useful when they save something from becoming waste, or extend the life of something that might otherwise be thrown away. As a typology, parasite products form the central part of a new way of thinking about design, which we could call 'guilty design' - design that tries not to add an unnecessary new product." - "Guilty Design", Icon 073, July 2009

Some reviews: Sophie Lovell's timely Limited Edition, Zack Snyder's bombastic Watchmen, Owen Hatherley's refreshing Militant Modernism, Franco Clivio's eccentric Hidden Forms.

Some Icons of the Month: Muzak, JG Ballard. I consider the Muzak piece to be a companion to my earlier IOTM on Holiday Inn, continuing an interest in non-places. While I was writing it, I heard that Ballard had died.

Index: 2003-2014

2014
Review: Anti-Ugly by Gavin Stamp, Icon 129, March 2014
"Always / Never", review of Command & Control by Eric Schlosser, Review 31, 31 January 2014
Review: Memes in Digital Culture by Limor Shifman, Art Review, Jan/Feb 2014
Review: The Kensington Dollshouse Festival, Icon 128, February 2014
Driverless Cars, Protein Journal 11, Winter 2014

2013
Creepypasta, Aeon, 20 December 2013
Icon of the Month: the cassette tape, Icon 126, December 2013
Icon of the Month: Junkspace, Icon 124, October 2013
Hyperloop, Protein Journal, Autumn 2013
Review: The Alternative Guide to the Universe, Icon 123, September 2013
"Thoroughly Modern Man" (interview with Kenneth Grange), Port, Summer 2013
Review: United Micro Kingdoms, Icon 122, August 2013
Collectors: Richard Rogers, Icon 120, June 2013
"Sou Fujimoto", Icon 119, May 2013
Review: America's Assembly Line, Icon 119, May 2013
"The Anxiety of Influence", Frame 91, March/April 2013
"Unhappy? Clean House", The New York Times, 23 March 2013
"I'm on the phone", interview with Martin Cooper, Audi magazine, Spring 2013
Review: Extreme Metaphors: Interviews With JG Ballard 1967-2008, Art Review, March 2013
"Pixel Prophet", interview with Winy Maas, Icon 117, March 2013
Review: Darkitecture, Building Design, 15 January 2013
"Barber Osgerby", Icon 115, January 2013
Review: SF Season at Grand Hornu, Icon 115, January 2013

2012
"Fluid Assets", Cabinet 47, Autumn 2012
"Our Town: Asper's Casino, Westfield", Five Dials 26 [pdf download], December 2012
"Before Fruit Ninja, Cybernetics", The New York Times, 29 November 2012
Review: The Architects, by Stefan Heym, Building Design, 13 November 2012
Design Erotica (six short stories), Disegno 3, Autumn/Winter 2012
"Disaster Strikes! Three Books Where Things Go Awry", NPR.com, 8 October 2012
Review: The Meaning of Home, by Edwin Heathcote, Building Design, 8 October 2012
Review: Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style, Icon 112, October 2012
Icon of the Month: The Industrial Robot, Icon 112, October 2012
Review: Museum Without Walls, by Jonathan Meades, Building Design, 20 September 2012
"Will Wiles is Martin Blank", Electric Sheep, 18 September 2012
"The Machine Gaze", Aeon, 17 September 2012
"Practising Restraint: The Madness of the Straitjacket", Cabinet 46, Summer 2012
Review: CITY, by PD Smith/American Urban Form, Icon 111, September 2012
"The Filling Station", Icon 111, September 2012
Review: Why We Build, Building Design, 13 August 2012
"Tea and Sympathy: Cutty Sark and Titanic Belfast", Icon 110, August 2012
"Selections from the Foyles Cache" (short fiction), Man Made Lands, supplement to The Ninth Letter vol 9 no 1, spring/summer 2012
"Mirror" (short fiction), Vestoj 3, Winter 2011/2012
Review: Hexen 2.0 by Suzanne Treister, Icon 109, July 2012
"Zones of Anxiety" (on Baikonur and Chernobyl), Volume 31, summer 2012
"Thomas Heatherwick: The Towers of the Dead", Icon 108, June 2012
Review: Seven Years by Peter Stamm, New Humanist, May-June 2012
Review: Zona by Geoff Dyer, Icon 107, May 2012
Icon of the month: Nakagin Capsule Tower, Icon 107, May 2012
"Jerwood Gallery", Icon 107, May 2012
"Design Indaba", Icon 107, May 2012
"No Signal" (part of a mobile phones special), Icon 106, April 2012
Review: Cybernetic Revolutionaries by Eden Medina, Icon 106, April 2012
"Pocket Utopias: From Asylums to Garden Cities", Architectural Review Asia Pacific 124, March/April 2012
"Is Magazine Publishing Really Screwed?", warrenellis.com, 16 March 2012
"The Irradiated Zone" (inside the ruined city of Pripyat), Icon 105, March 2012
Review: Distrust That Particular Flavor, Icon 105, March 2012
"My Week", Untitled Books 41, February 2012

2011
Review: Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, Icon 102, December 2011
Interview: Martin Boyce, Icon 101, November 2011
Review: Hardware, Icon 101, November 2011
"Marlowe Theatre", Icon 101, November 2011
"Firstsite", Icon 101, November 2011
Review: Dressing for Pleasure (essay length), Transgressive Culture, October 2011
"Philippe Malouin: New Works", catalogue introduction for NextLevel Galerie, Paris, October 2011
"Inside OMA", Icon 100, October 2011
Icon of the Month: Icon magazine, Icon 100, October 2011
Review: Ma Ligne, Icon 100, October 2011
"House in Torres Vedras", Icon 100, October 2011
Interview: BERG, Icon 099, September 2011
"Zumthor's Serpentine pavilion", Icon 099, September 2011
"The Behaviorial Sink", Cabinet 42, Summer 2011 (One of Atlantic editor Jared Keller's "5 all-time great articles"; One of Nature editor Brendan Maher's top 5 Longreads of 2011)
"Space Oddities" (review of "Out of This World" at the British Library), New Statesman, 8 August 2011
Review: Belgrade Design Week, Icon 098, August 2011
"Zaha in Glasgow", Icon 098, August 2011
"Selfdiscipline", Icon 098, August 2011
"Up and up" (on London's new skyscrapers), Icon 097, July 2011
"The Hepworth Wakefield", Icon 097, July 2011
"Towering strength", The Clerkenwell Post #1, May/June 2011
"Force of nature" (on David Chipperfield's Turner Contemporary, Margate), Icon 096, June 2011
Review: The New Psychedelica, Icon 096, June 2011
"Corby Cube", Icon 096, June 2011
Review: Locals Only, Jocks & Nerds, May 2011
Interview: Philippe Malouin, Icon 095, May 2011
Review: Civil Unrest, Icon 095, May 2011
Icon of the Month: Voyager 1, Icon 094, April 2011
Review: New City Reader/Beyond, Icon 094, April 2011
"Plaza Ecopolis", Icon 094, April 2011
"Death of a City", New Statesman, 28 March 2011
"Structural daring" (on the artists Mary Ellen Carroll and Richard Wilson), Icon 093, March 2011
Review: Utopia London, Icon 093, March 2011
"Architecture on the Grid" (on the design of Tron: Legacy), Icon 092, February 2011
Review: Food on the Move, Icon 092, February 2011
Review: Nonobject, Icon 091, January 2011

2010
"Pool", The Bi Blog, 23 December 2010
Interview: Francois Roche, Icon 090, December 2010
Review: Living With Modernity/Building Brasilia, Icon 090, December 2010
Time Extend: Dungeon Keeper 2, Edge 221, December 2010
"Queer as Folk" (on the 20th anniversary of Twin Peaks), New Statesman, 22 November 2010
"The Balancing Barn", Icon 089, November 2010
Review: Dressing for Pleasure, Icon 089, November 2010
"AOC Samples London", Icon 088, October 2010 (an experiment: a heavily annotated, somewhat hypertextual, transcript as a way of escaping the conventional interview format - sadly the annotations are stripped out of the online version, making it a little pointless)
Interview: Nika Zupanc, Icon 088, October 2010
Icon of the Month: The High-Visibility Vest, Icon 088, October 2010
Review: Inception, Icon 088, October 2010
Review: The City's End/The Fires, Icon 088, October 2010
Secular Rosaries, Icon 088, October 2010
Interview: Jovan Jelovac, Icon 087, September 2010
Roadside Chapel/Prayer Companion, Icon 087, September 2010
"El Porvenir", Icon 087, September 2010
"Beautiful Rejects" (introduction and Tylenol bottle), Icon 087, September 2010
"The Leyton Roar", Smoke 016, summer 2010
Interview: Diane Bisson, Icon 086, August 2010
Review: Uncorporate Identity, Icon 086, August 2010
Review: Exposed, Icon 086, August 2010
Interview: Gramazio & Kohler, Icon 085, July 2010
Review: Other Space Odysseys, Icon 085, July 2010
Icon of the Month: The Boeing 747, Icon 085, July 2010
"What Catch-22 Tells Us About the BP Oil Spill", NS Cultural Capital blog, 11 June 2010
"Belgrade Design Week", Iconeye, 9 June 2010
Time Extend: SimCity 4, Edge 215, June 2010
"Africa: E-Waste", Icon 084, June 2010
"Africa: Mobile Civilisation" (interview with Jan Chipchase), Icon 084, June 2010
"Africa: Land Grab" (infographic), Icon 084, June 2010
Review: When The Lights Went Out, Icon 084, June 2010
"Hearth House", Icon 084, June 2010
"Is Design Playing With Your Emotions?", Icon 083, May 2010
Review: Crash, Icon 083, May 2010
Crime Against Design: Violence Posters, Icon 083, May 2010
Insight: Design Hacks, Icon 082, April 2010
Review: Books Round-up, Icon 082, April 2010
"The Office Park", Icon 082, April 2010
Review: The Warcraft Civilization, Edge Online, 2 March 2010
Review: Decode, Icon 081, March 2010
Review: CES Las Vegas, Icon 081, March 2010
"Collective Madness", New Statesman, 8 February 2010
"No Photos" (comic strip, with Paul Francis), Icon 080, February 2010
"Unbuilt Masterworks of the 21st Century", Icon 080, February 2010
Icon of the Month: The Book, Icon 080, February 2010

Interview: Bjarke Ingels, Icon 079, January 2010
Icon of the Month: Blogger.com, Icon 079, January 2010

2009
Review: Bunker, Icon 078, December 2009
Review: A Week At The Airport, Icon 078, December 2009
Icon of the Month: The Bar Code, Icon 077, November 2009
Review: Yes is More, Icon 077, November 2009
Review: Design For Life, Icon 077, November 2009
Review: Ground Control, Iconeye, 16 October 2009
"Reality 2.0", Icon 076, October 2009
"X-Plantation", Icon 076, October 2009
Review: Telling Tales, Icon 076, October 2009
Review: Chevolution, Icon 076, October 2009
Icon of the Month: Tatlin's Tower, Icon 076, October 2009
"Leave the Past Alone", New Statesman, 17 August 2009
Review: The City & The City, Icon 075, September 2009
"I'm Lost in Paris", Icon 075, September 2009
Interview: Peter Marigold, Icon 074, August 2009
"The City of Justice", Icon 074, August 2009
Review: Synecdoche, New York, Icon 073, July 2009
Review: Hidden Forms, Icon 073, July 2009
Insight: Guilty Design, Icon 073, July 2009
Icon of the Month: JG Ballard, Icon 073, July 2009
Review: Militant Modernism, Icon 072, June 2009
"Something Unbelievable has Happened: Farming has Become Fashionable", Icon 072, June 2009
Interview: Matthew Darbyshire, Iconeye, 5 June 2009
Review: Limited Edition, Icon 071, May 2009
Review: Watchmen, Icon 071, May 2009
Icon of the Month: Muzak, Icon 071, May 2009
Review: Terror From the Air, Iconeye, 29 May 2009
Review: London Yields, Iconeye, 15 May 2009
Review: The Belt, Iconeye, 1 May 2009
Review: Big Box Reuse, Icon 070, April 2009
"Thanet Earth", Icon 070, April 2009
Icon of the Month: Tintin, Icon 070, April 2009
"The Barbican Corbusier Debate", Iconeye, 15 April 2009
Review: The New Routemasters, Icon 069, March 2009
Review: Mydeco.com, Icon 069, March 2009
Icon of the Month: SimCity, Icon 069, March 2009
Review: Mesmerization, Icon 068, February 2009
"Will the Crash Save Luxury Design?", Icon 068, February 2009
Review: Three Short Films About Architecture, Iconeye, 27 February 2009
Review: Designs of the Year, Iconeye, 13 February 2009
Review: Westfield London, Icon 067, January 2009
Interview: Benedikt Taschen, Icon 067, January 2009

2008
Review: Ripley's Believe it or Not London, Icon 066, December 2008
"Meta in Miami", Iconeye, 3 December 2008
Review: Cold War Modern, Icon 065, November 2008
Icon of the Month: Modulor Man, Icon 065, November 2008
"Icon in Qatar", Iconeye, 28 November 2008
Review: Fuel (Alphabet City), Iconeye, 7 November 2008
Review: Man on Wire, Icon 064, October 2008
Icon of the Month: The Light Bulb, Icon 064, October 2008
Review: Richard Serra/Anish Kapoor, Iconeye, 17 October 2008
Review: Lost Buildings, Iconeye, 3 October 2008
"Good Things From Small Spaces", Under the Same Roof (exhibition catalogue), autumn 2008
Interview: Didier Krzentowski, Icon 063, September 2008
Review: Iron Fists, Icon 063, September 2008
Icon of the Month: Google, Icon 063, September 2008
Review: Seizure, Iconeye, 11 September 2008
Icon of the Month: The Frisbee, Icon 062, August 2008
"Ugly in a Good Way" (with Anna Bates), Icon 061, July 2008
Review: Harrods Pot Noodle, Icon 061, July 2008
Review: China Design Now, Icon 060, June 2008
"This Building is Singing", Icon 060, June 2008
"The New Brand: Meta", Icon 060, June 2008
"Folkestone Triennial", Iconeye, 26 June 2008
"Reprap", Iconeye, 12 June 2008
Review: Magnetic North, Icon 059, May 2008
"Ebbsfleet: This is a Place That Doesn't Exist", Icon 059, May 2008
Interview: Stanley Donwood, Icon 059, May 2008
Review: Dan Dare and the Birth of High-Tech Britain, Iconeye, 30 May 2008
"New Doesn't Always Mean Better", Icon 058, April 2008
Icon of the Month: Lego, Icon 058, April 2008
Review: Cloverfield, Icon 058, April 2008
Review: The Island, London Series, Iconeye, 11 April 2008
Icon of the Month: Copyright, Icon 057, March 2008
"Design Cities: Singapore", Icon 057, March 2008
Review: Psychogeography, Icon 057, March 2008
Review: London Open City, Iconeye, 7 March 2008
Interview: Will Wright, Icon 056, February 2008
Review: 700 Penguins, Icon 056, February 2008
Review: Blades House, Iconeye, 8 February 2008
Review: Space Time Play, Icon 055, January 2008
Icon of the Month: Holiday Inn, Icon 055, January 2008

2007
"ECAL: Switzerland's Best Design School", Icon 054, December 2007
Review: Rider Spoke, Icon 054, December 2007
Review: Times of the Signs, Icon 054, December 2007
Icon of the Month: Sellotape, Icon 054, December 2007

Review: Mapping London, Iconeye, December 2007

Review: A Book of Wonder, Iconeye, December 2007
Icon of the Month: Tron, Icon 053, November 2007
Review: Cigarette Health Warnings, Icon 053, November 2007
"Design Gallerists", Icon 052, October 2007
Icon of the Month: Milton Keynes, Icon 052, October 2007
"Peter Marigold Hates Maths", Icon 052, October 2007
"Labels and Beyond", Icon 052, October 2007
"Choice on Wheels", Icon 052, October 2007
Review: The Perfect City, Icon 052, October 2007
Review: Transformers, Icon 052, October 2007
"The Return of Kitsch", Icon 051, September 2007
Icon of the Month: Neon, Icon 051, September 2007
Review: Walking With Richard Wentworth, Icon 051, September 2007
"Design Cities: Glasgow", Icon 050, August 2007
Icon of the Month: The Remote Control, Icon 048, June 2007
"9-11 Truth Untruth", Total Spec 20, May 2007
Review: The Thames Whale, Icon 046, April 2007
Icon of the Month: Barbed Wire, Icon 044, February 2007

2006
Co-author, The London Collection
Contributor, Phaidon Design Classics
Review: Readymade, Icon 041, November 2006
"Left in Limbo: The Growing Affordability Crisis", ROOF, March/April 2006
Interview: Caroline Spelman, ROOF, January/February 2006
"Red Peril: The New Repossession Industry", ROOF, January/February 2006
Interview: Alexander Masters, ROOF, January/February 2006

2005
Icon of the Month: The Universal Serial Bus, Icon 030, December 2005
"So, Mr Alsop ...", Total Spec 3, December 2005
"Don't!", Total Spec 3, December 2005
"System Failure", Total Spec 2, November 2005
Reputations: Hugo Chavez, Total Spec 2, November 2005
"Fundamentally: American + Religious + Right?", Total Spec 1, October 2005
Reputations: Francois Mitterrand, Total Spec 1, October 2005
"Streets Ahead: Hostels of the Future", Housing Today,
"Pick N Mix: The Return of Social Engineering", Housing Today, 21 January 2005

2004
Icon of the Month: The $50 Bill, Icon 018, December 2004
Icon of the Month: The Caterpillar Track, Icon 017, November 2004
"The Bins of Pimlico", Smoke 004, autumn 2004
"Bomb the Bits the Blitz Missed", London Line, summer 2004
"Atlantis and the Circle Line", London Line, summer 2004
Review: Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, Icon 014, July/August 2004
"Voting With Your Street", Housing Today, 4 June 2004
"Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere", Housing Today, 7 May 2004
Review: Kitchen Stories, Icon 011, April 2004

2003
"... And I'm the One Who's Supposed to be Nasty", Housing Today, 12 December 2003
"Kicking Their Butts", Housing Today, 10 October 2003
"Walk On By?", Housing Today, 8 August 2003
"Admit it, You're Cheap", Housing Today, 27 June 2003
"Back to the Future: Thamesmead, the First Thames Gateway", Housing Today, 27 June 2003

Previous Blogs
This Isn't London, 2004-2005
Londonist, 2004-2006

Notes: Not comprehensive. I've excluded most things that are less than 500 words and the more forgettable hackery. Links included where found.