maetl

Infrastructure

Floating Farms on Inner City Waterways

A novel solution to the lack of space for food cultivation in modern cities.

Our New Feudal Overlords

Not everyone understands scaling for the masses.

A Utopia Without Ideals

The implications of Pig City by MVRDV are a sensory and ethical challenge - architecture that tests the fine line between social criticism and gritty realism. If meat consumption was to stay…

Scaling for the Masses

“Only the largest enterprises will be able to justify owning and operating their own servers.”

The City as a Whole

Holism and the case for utopian imagination in architecture.

The Seduction of Maps

Illustrations and musings on the unbuilt expressways of Manhattan, the ubiquity of Google maps and the legacy of Robert Moses.

Can Human Development be Agile?

There is an interesting case for agile development of infrastructure, applying lessons learned from the software world to civil engineering projects. This is a useful metaphor, but there is an…

Unsolicited Architecture

Using design to provoke public debate about the future of cities.

Nuclear Italia

The Italian government has reversed a 20 year policy against building nuclear power plants, and has announced that they plan to return to nuclear power. Unlike New Zealand's strange and fascinating…

Underground in Canada

BLDGBLOG talks to Michael Cook, the author and photographer behind the Vanishing Point. Michael's spectacular images of tunnel systems and urban decay are a must-see. He views the city as…