Another Xmas Gift

 

Just as it happened last year, I’m rewarding my small but faithful sect of readers with a little revamp of my blog – a new section – and, of course, a couple of texts.

The first of these articles was actually commissioned for issue 38 of the MIT’s Thresholds journal, but I have no clue if it is really going to be published or not. (I guess that’s the way some editors manage their responsabilities out there.)

As I’m about to revisit the issue of architecture and science fiction for the local FNAC magazine – one publication that, at least, has a wide readership in the gullible world of popular culture – I reread my very personal story and thought it fit as a piece of festive shrapnel. Read it here, perhaps while listening to this.

Archigram, A Walking City. Via io9…

The stimulus was there, the text as well, so here goes another piece of text onto that growing world of unpaid content that, as some critics are now shyly discovering, – and as I would boldly state – will ultimately drive exclusive, academic writing onto the useless niche where it belongs.

Back in 2005, parallel to this notion, I have also produced some reflections – and something of a demonstration – on the subject of how the decrease of professional criticism would ultimately kill architecture as we know it. Naturally, Portugal was a retro-avant-garde in that respect.

However, the article was published in a small, local academic magazine and thus it was read by practically nobody – which is one of the (general) problems of the design and architectural critique these days. As Alexandra Lange just unfolded it for us in the Design Observer, after her other article on the subject in the recently revived Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui.

As such, I also take the opportunity to republish that old text in my Portuguese language archives. As for the English-speaking world, it can always read the somewhat less darker version of a similar content in Lange’s “boring” blog.

And don’t forget to have a nice Christmas.***