Dean Johnson, futurist and head of innovation at Brandwidth, explains how the Internet of Things relies on continuity of experience. 2:02 — About Dean Johnson and what he does 5:14 — Mobile technologies 8:50 — How we developed our first gadget 20:27 — How does an iBook work 21:05 — Urban environments 23:50 — Libraries 25:42 — How do we actually interact with content 37:26 — Why the iPad was so popular and successful 42:19 — Back to the future

There are few things in urbanism today so unfashionable as the ceremonial public square. The vast, proverbially windswept plazas built under “really existing socialism” from the 1920s to the 1980s are widely considered to be useless spaces, designed to intimidate or at least impress. Yet if they are only of use to those in power, why is it they have been used so successfully in protest? From Petrograd in 1917 to Independence Square in Kiev during the Orange Revolution, these spaces have become focuses for mass protest. Beginning in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, and taking in Warsaw, Ljubljana, Kharkov and Moscow, Owen ...

Space is a technology. Buildings and the cities they inhabit have become infrastructural – mobile, monetized networks. For the world’s power players, infrastructure space is a secret weapon, and the rest of us are only just beginning to realize. If Victor Hugo came back to give a TED talk, he might assert that architecture, which he once claimed had been killed by the book, is reincarnate as something more powerful still – as information itself. If this space is a secret weapon, says Keller Easterling, it is a secret best kept from those trained to make space – architects. Meanwhile, ...

AI plays a crucial role in the global cultural ecosystem. It recommends what we should see, listen to, read, and buy. It determines how many people will see our shared content. It helps us make aesthetic decisions when we create media. In professional cultural production, AI has already been adapted to produce movie trailers, music albums, fashion items, product and web designs, architecture, etc. In this short book, Lev Manovich offers a systematic framework to help us think about cultural uses of AI today and in the future. He challenges existing ideas and gives us new concepts for understanding media, ...

Dutch artist, inventor, and sculptor Theo Jansen talks about making “artificial life forms” from yellow plastic tubes and explains how individual elements of these structures work.

Art director, illustrator, and concept designer for such titles as “Ghost in the Shell”, “Captain Marvel” and “Assassin’s Creed” Ash Thorp develops a storyline through his work process, dwells on his favourite tools for animation and 3D-renderings, shares tips on self-organisation and destroys the myth of creative block. Books Ash mentions: “Mastery” by Robert Green, “Eat That Frog” by Brian Tracy, “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, “Damn Good Advice” by George Lois, “Manage Your Day to Day” by 99U. The lecture took place at Strelka in 2019 as part of “In Other Worlds” annual event series. To watch the ...

A nuclear facility in Iran before and after an explosion, a village in Pakistan before and after a drone attack, a Cambodian river valley before and after a flood. The before-and-after image has become the tool of choice for analysing events. Satellite photography allows us to scrutinise the impact of war or climate change, from the safe distance of orbit. But one thing is rarely captured: the event itself. All we can read is its effect on a space, and that’s where the architectural expert is required, to fill the gap with a narrative. In this groundbreaking essay, Eyal and Ines ...

Preservation is ordinarily reserved for architecture that is unique. So how would we go about preserving buildings that are utterly generic? Such is the case with Belyayevo, an ordinary residential district in Moscow. Belyayevo is a classic microrayon, the standardised neighbourhood system that successive Soviet regimes laid out across the USSR in what was the most expansive programme of industrialised construction the world has ever seen. Belyayevo’s buildings, and the desolate spaces between them, are identical to thousands of others, but is it different? Kuba Snopek argues that is. Home to many of the artists of the Moscow Conceptualism school, the ...

In summer 2018, Amsterdam appointed eight-year-old Lotta Crok to the position of the first ever Junior Bicycle Mayor. According to her senior colleague Katelijne Boerma, they work in synergy and “it’s important that adult professionals help children to implement ideas that would be good for the city and the whole country.” What are the main goals set by the duo? In this episode, Katelijne outlines the story behind famous image of Amsterdam, dives into the most common threats to the development of bicycle lanes, and shares tips on moving towards a cycling society.

These are serious times, or so our governments keep telling us. Strangling economies with their austerity policies, they assure us that they have no choice. In a world where “there is no alternative”, how do you dissent? Once upon a time, graphic designers would have made political posters and typeset manifestos. Today, protest has new strategies. Enter the internet meme. With its Darwinian survival skills and its viral potential, the meme is a way of scaling up protest. Hackers and activists have learned to unleash the destructive force of a Rick Astley video. They have let slip the Lolcats of ...

Rick and Morty director and storyboard artist Douglas Olsen talks about creating scenes, cinematic storytelling, and strong draftsmanship.

We live in an age of sticky problems, whether it’s climate change or the decline of the welfare state. With conventional solutions failing, a new culture of decision-making is called for. Strategic design is about applying the principles of traditional design to “big picture” systemic challenges such as healthcare, education and the environment. It redefines how problems are approached and aims to deliver more resilient solutions. In this short book, Dan Hill outlines a new vocabulary of design, one that needs to be smuggled into the upper echelons of power. He asserts that, increasingly, effective design means engaging with the ...