"The theory states that at a certain distance from central London, running the length of the border between the 0207 and the 0208 telephone codes, a much higher than average number of nail salons exist." via russell_davies

mike bouchet's suburban home sinks into the venice canals

"You could describe it as a kind of slang architecture - full of malapropisms and tautologies - in comparison to the received pronunciation of contemporary modernism, although this makes it sound more exciting than it actually is."

typology of outdoor store speakers in Little Haiti (Miami): "This is why a snapshot of a milk crate at the moment in its life-cycle when it transitions from one use to another—when it is stolen from the supermarket and used as the leg of a display table for pirated DVDs—can be a better model for urban reconfiguration than a Herzog & de Meuron building caught in a sweeping shot from a helicopter or in a vertiginous 3D zoom. This snapshot neatly captures the fact that a city's morphology is as prone to alteration by small and repetitive gestures as it is by megaprojects."

"How much easier would it be for a novelist simply to point out the inhospitable nature of this space, to say what we're all meant to say: that these environments are inhuman, hostile, destructive, bleak. Instead, Ballard is more interested in showing what's on the other side of the inhuman; he describes for us what might happen when you truly settle into "an alien world" all the more uncanny because it was built by humans, and you marinate there, letting its ambiance sink into and alter you."; JG Ballard's spaces

"The Centex company has hired four actors to play a family "living" in one of their model homes -- a performance called Homelife."

all good projects turn out to have been done in some form before: "photographs of 26 gas stations, with one-line references stating the stations’ name and location"

photos of ornate / default / contractual parks outside of korean apartment complexes

from stephen, about shopping mall design and implementation

the design of prepaid phone cards; I love the company name "Total Call International"

via mbs

via britta

photos from fake towns and buildings used for police/fire training