Our pick of urban ephemera on the internet

April 2018

In April we shook the Internet to see what would fall out. In no particular order:

• A conceptual design by a Polish architecture firm for collapsible skyscrapers
• Medieval wearable tech: girdle books
• Short story dispensers, for when chocolate just won’t cut it.
• Lots of maps. Interactive maps of the cold war and Australian artist Damien Rudd’s maps showing topographies of sorrow.
• And abstract paintings, that don’t look like maps, but are.
• A creepy abandoned theme park where the yellow brick road leads to oblivion
• Ida Lupino, the star of High Sierra, born in Camberwell, London.
• The London Fatberg (currently on exhibition at the museum of London HERE)
• An eco-conscious online conference on urbanism and displacement.
• Forensic Architecture, at the ICA.

March 2018

• March was Women’s History Month, and March 8^th was International Women’s Day. We therefore picked up where we left off last month, exploring gender. We especially liked this article about women’s history in the era of Trump.
• We also enjoyed this article about women as ghosts in the Architectural Review: https://www.architectural-review.com/rethink/campaigns/outrage/outrage-blindness-to-women-turns-out-to-be-blindness-to-architecture-itself/10028680.article
• And this one, from the Guardian, which got us thinking about how cities might be different if they were built by women: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/05/if-women-built-cities-what-would-our-urban-landscape-look-like
• Then we learned about the women who do build our cities. Check out these overlooked architects: https://www.archdaily.com/341730/the-10-most-overlooked-women-in-architecture-history. You might also want to read about Kate Macintosh, an unsung hero of social housing, here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/21/kate-macintosh-one-of-britains-great-unsung-architects-of-social-housing
• While in the UK, you might find yourself walking through Bloomsbury, as we did on the 23^rd of March, which we discovered was the 101^st anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s founding of the Hogarth Press. Learn more about Woolf’s London here: https://londonist.com/london/books-and-poetry/mapped-all-virginia-woolf-s-novels
• Virginia Woolf doesn’t have a street in London named after her. I cherish this as something she and I have in common. But seriously, street naming is sexist. We found out a lot about street names and sexism from this City Lab map: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/11/mapping-the-sexism-of-city-street-names/414094/?utm_source=SFTwitter
• We didn’t have time to get too angry with this, because an artist reminded us that language is complicated and sometimes signs have no meaning. Check out the familiar yet strange asemic alphabet of Mirtha Dermisache and find out what it meant for one writer exploring immigration HERE
• We almost didn’t finish reading that article, because we got distracted by the dancing architecture of Shirley Clarke’s “Bridges Go Round” You can find out more about Clarke and other female Avant Garde film makers here: http://www.indiewire.com/2015/10/6-avant-garde-female-filmmakers-who-redefined-cinema-56972/
• And because you can never have enough cinema, you might want to end the month like we did, with one (or all) of the films on this list, all directed by women of course: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-british-films-directed-women
• If we’re honest we could think about women’s history every month of the year. For an annual calendar of events visit: http://www.nwhp.org/events

February 2018

• We still liked the underground in February, but spent more time looking upwards. What kind of city would we inhabit if Victorian London’s answer to the Eiffel (the Watkin Tower, nicknamed the London Stump) had been completed? Find out more here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/site-of-the-watkin-tower
• We decided we preferred the Eiffel to the ‘London Stump’ so tweeted about the Tower on film, in Paris 1900, a documentary by Nicole Védrès. And then we found out there’s a screening of it in London soon: https://www.institut-francais.org.uk/cine-lumiere/whats-on/special-screenings/paris-1900/
• We blog a lot about city symphony films, so were very excited to learn about this new one in February: http://brightonsymphony.com/
• We celebrated Black History Month, and learned about Granville T Woods, the inventor who patented the third-rail system in 1901. Learn more at http://www.com/nytransitmuseumand even more here: https://curiosity.com/topics/granville-t-woods-known-as-the-black-edison-once-beat-edison-in-the-courtroom-curiosity
• We also celebrated LGBT History Month, and read this article about Sherlock in Feminist Media Histories: http://fmh.ucpress.edu/content/4/1/84
• We didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. Instead we spent it dreaming up visions of the city on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. We wondered if there was such a thing as an insta-city. There is. Check out: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/cities-on-instagram and this little gem: http://www.hashtagtheworld.com/top-hashtagged-cities-instagram/
• We couldn’t stop thinking about urban photography so we were glad that this exhibition is on: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/hayward-gallery-art/andreas-gursky
• We also thought about urban memory and memorials and especially liked this article about Suffragette sites around London: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/02/suffragettes-london-holloway-prison-pankhurst-pubs?CMP=share_btn_tw
• We found out about this intriguing walking tour of Aldgate and Whitechapel: http://designmuseum.org/whats-on/talks-courses-and-workshops/spectral-developments-a-walk-with-laura-oldfield-ford?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Walking%20tour%20with%20Laura%20Olfield%20Ford
• It was a busy month, but we still had time to get excited about the latest issue of the Architectural Review, focused on women in architecture: https://www.architectural-review.com/magazine-shop/the-women-in-architecture-issue-is-here/10028203.article?blocktitle=issue-is-here&contentID=20009

January 2018

• We really loved the underground in January. We especially loved this Paris Review piece on ‘subway ephemera’: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/17/two-thousand-pieces-subway-ephemera/
• We found out there’s more to the ground under London than our daily commute: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/hidden-london/clapham-south-subterranean-screenings
• We liked these geometric visions of the city above ground: https://www.flowersgallery.com/exhibitions/view/renny-tait-6
• We also liked signs. Check out this museum of neon signage: http://www.neonmuseum.org/about
• We noticed the latest issue of Feminist Media Histories: http://fmh.ucpress.edu/
• We saw differently: http://anothergazejournal.bigcartel.com/product/another-gaze-01
• We wondered if architecture was gendered, so we checked out the RA’s events and found this: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/event/andres-jaque-and-nina-power-on-gender
• We re-discovered this photograph: http://reelfoto.blogspot.com/2011/10/salvador-dali-walking-his-anteater.html
• We watched this clip about manhole covers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ldrk_KlKsg
• Then we went back underground in Naples: http://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/10/the-forgotten-tunnel-under-naples.html