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Author: Graham McKay


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Change

Change
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It was a flying visit to Dubai for a two-day conference and an opportunity to revisit the city I’d lived in from September 2008 to September 2020. It’s not always a good idea to revisit overly familiar places from one’s past where every road and building has a memory of being travelled or seen. One […]

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An Architecture of Sharing (2’nd Attempt)

An Architecture of Sharing (2’nd Attempt)
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This post is a reworking of a post of almost exactly one year ago, in an attempt to find a better way of approaching the subject. It’s mostly the preamble that’s different as the manifestations remain much the same although some of my examples are more extreme. This is because an architecture of sharing isn’t […]

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Authenticity

Authenticity
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Authenticity is probably the wrong word as it’s been severely debased and overused for some time now, especially with respect to those marketable things known as experiences, particularly if they take place in foreign countries. Remember the photos of the long queue of people with their identical bucket lists of authentic experiences waiting to get […]

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The Tops of Buildings

The Tops of Buildings
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The first thing many people younger than me probably thought of when they saw the title of this post is the song Mansard Roof by epic New York indie band Vampire Weekend. This link is to the video accompanying the studio version of the song that, I think as a statement of musical intent is […]

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Meatspace

Meatspace
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Meatspace is a word I first heard a few weeks ago. It’s used to describe the human realm that’s not capitalizing artificial intelligence. It’s slightly derogatory and its users slightly smug. It implies that that part of the human realm is full of losers. Not on the winning team. I know I’m being repetitive but […]

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The Elevated Courtyard

The Elevated Courtyard
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In China it’s not just in Beijing where courtyard housing is being demolished because its density is relatively low compared to what’s needed. Even the three-storey high stacked courtyards of the 1990 Ju’er Hutong Phases I & II couldn’t deliver the density required thirty years ago without shrinking the size of the courtyard. If the […]

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Architectural Intelligence

Architectural Intelligence
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There’s been a flurry of articles voicing fears of AI in creative fields such as art, graphic design and, to a lesser extent, poetry and literature and, to a lesser extent still, architecture. As soon as computer processing speed and power increased, it was inevitable that this would be showcased by computers challenging humans in […]

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The Middle Ground

The Middle Ground
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Architects used to have us believe that better architecture made for better lives. They were rightly ignored as it would make more sense for us all first to agree on what a better life is before thinking about the means to achieve it. Of course some degree of spatial and physiological requirements need to be […]