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Have Clock, Will Travel
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[Image: From The Hunt For Red October, via Quora]. There?s a throwaway line in The Hunt For Red October where a submarine navigator jokes, ?Give me a stopwatch and a map, and I?ll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows.? I was reminded of that...
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A Burglar?s Guide to TV
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I?m finally back from several weeks of travel and wanted to post some recent news I was particularly thrilled about: my book, A Burglar?s Guide to the City, is being developed for television by CBS Studios. From Variety: The drama, which landed a...
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Glitch City
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[Images: Via Wired UK]. Sites of urban infrastructure and other industrial facilities integral to municipal management, from fire stations to fuel depots, appear to be the target of deliberate erasure in Baidu?s street maps. As photographer...
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Cloud Constructor
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[Image: An airplane hangar in Utah, via the U.S. Library of Congress]. Another book I read while jet-lagged in London last week was David Gissen and
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The London Time Ball
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[Image: The London ?time ball? at Greenwich, courtesy Royal Museums Greenwich]. Thanks to the effects of jet lag getting worse as I get older, I was basically awake for five days in London last week?but, on the bright side, it meant I got to read a...
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The Sky-Math Garden
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[Images: Via Peter Moore?s piece on ?dueling weathermen? over at Nautilus]. As mentioned in the previous post, I recently had the pleasure of reading Peter Moore?s new book,
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?The entire city can be considered as one large house?
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[Image: ?St. Mark\'s Place, with campanile, Venice, Italy,? via the Library of Congress]. Following a number of recent events for A Burglar?s Guide to the City?discussing, among other things, the often less than clear legal lines between interiors...
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Immersive and Oceanic
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[Image: Undersea augmented reality headgear; courtesy of the As you can see in the embedded video, above, Matsuda?s film is a POV exploration of information overload, identity gamification, and the mass burial of public space beneath impenetrable...
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L.A. Recalculated
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[Image: From L.A. Recalculated by Smout Allen and BLDGBLOG]. London-based architects Smout Allen and I have a project in the new issue of MAS Context, work originally commissioned for the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial and closely related to our...
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The Soft Spot
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[Image: Close-up of the 2010 State Geologic Map of California]. An interesting story published last month in the L.A. Times explored the so-called ?sweet spot? for digging tunnels along the California/Mexico border. ?Go too far west,? reporter...
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Burglary in Context
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[Image: The former Polish National Alliance Building, now Studio Gang; via Studio Gang]. Just a quick reminder that, if you?re in Chicago this Friday, May 27th, Iker Gil, editor-in-chief of MAS Context, and I will be discussing A Burglar?s Guide to...
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Beginning at Arcs, Centered by Lines
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[Image: From United States of America, Plaintiff v. State of California,? December 15, 2014]. This is old, old, old news, widely covered elsewhere at the time, but I rediscovered this link saved in my bookmarks and wanted to post it: back in...
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The Voids Beneath
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[Image: Drone footage of a Cornwall garden sinkhole, via the BBC]. [Don?t forget to update your bookmarks to bldgblog.com]. One of the peculiar pleasures of reading Subterranea, a magazine published by Subterranea Britannica, is catching up on...
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Machine Quarantines and ?Persistent Drones?
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[Image: An otherwise unrelated photo of a ?Scout? UAV, via Wikipedia]. [Don?t forget to update your bookmarks to bldgblog.com]. There?s an interesting short piece by Jacob Hambling in a recent issue of New Scientist about the use of ?persistent...
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Three More Events
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[Image: Flying with the LAPD; photo by BLDGBLOG]. Just a quick heads up about three more Burglar?s Guide-related events coming up this month: Monday, May 9th, AIA Center for Architecture, New York City?I?ll be speaking with fellow crime-enthusiast...
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Book Touring
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The west coast leg of the book tour for Burglar?s Guide ?locates the spot where architecture and crime intersect. It?s the dark side of urbanist Jane Jacobs?s 1961 work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, depicting the city and its environs...
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Bacteria Rule Everything Around Me
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[Image: From Financial Growth by Heidi Hinder; photo by Jonathan Rowley]. I somewhat randomly found myself reading back through the irregularly updated blog of the British Museum earlier today when I learned about a project by Bristol-based artist...
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?This is how you can shape a metropolis for generations?
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[Image: Robert Moses, via Wikipedia]. I?ve been meaning to post about this since I first heard about it: a competition to design a game based on Robert Caro?s book The Power Broker into a playable, interactive form that preserves the flavor and...
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Books Received, April 2016
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[Image: Inside Tadao Ando?s studio in Osaka; photo by Kaita Takemura, via designboom]. Somewhere, despite the weather here, it?s spring. If you?re like me, that means you?re looking for something new to read. Here is a selection of books that have...
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The Burglar's Guide Has Arrived
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At long last, after more than three years of research and travel, A Burglar?s Guide as one of their ?picked up a copy, and I would love to discuss the book?s many ideas?and people and tools and scenes and histories?in more detail here. However, I?m...
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Panopticops
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[Image: Flying with the LAPD Air Support Division; Instagram by BLDGBLOG]. Over the past three years, I?ve gone on multiple flights with the LAPD Air Support Division, during both the day and night; my goal was to understand how police see the city...
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A Burglar?s Guide to the City
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For the past several years, I?ve been writing a book about the relationship between burglary and architecture. Burglary, as it happens, requires architecture: it is a spatial crime. Without buildings, burglary, in its current legal form, could not...
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The Four-Floor War
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[Image: Russian troops in Grozny, February 2000; image courtesy of AP]. ?U.S. land forces will eventually find themselves locked in fights within huge, dense urban environments where skyscrapers tower over enormous shanty towns, and these troops...
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Grid Corrections
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[Image: From "Grid Corrections" by Gerco de Ruijter, courtesy of the Ulrich Museum of Art]. De Ruijter is already widely known for his work documenting grids and other signs of human-induced geometry in the landscape, from Dutch tree farms to...
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Pivot
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[Image: From "Cropped" by Gerco de Ruijter; view larger]. The "Grid Corrections" of Gerco de Ruijter, as seen in the previous post, reminded me of de Ruijter\'s earlier project, "Cropped," previously seen here back in 2012. [Image: From...
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