Nige admires the work of Charles Holden, the architect behind Southgate Tube Station, one of London's finest Art Deco Underground stations... That is not a newly landed art deco UFO above - it is Southgate Underground station, towards the end of the Cockfosters branch of the Piccadilly Line. I discovered this part of ... Read More...
Technology
Perhaps Boris Johnson could press today's weird wikipedia discovery into action as the new Thames estuary airport? Project Habakkuk was a plan by the British in World War II to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice), for use against German U-boats in the ... Read More...
Machines are already better than humans at chess, and now computers are increasingly important in sports like cricket and baseball. Author Jon Hotten ponders the implications... Writing about the 1986 world championship match between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, Martin Amis said of chess: '[They are playing] the foremost game of ... Read More...
Bizarre Flemish coincidences and worshipping at the Temple of Apple in this dispatch, as Rita visits New York... I first suspected something was amiss with my New York Subway app when it advised us to travel from Midtown Manhattan to the Lower East Side via Brooklyn, on the other side of ... Read More...
All the world’s a stage – or at least it could be, according to Simon Woodroffe, creator of YO! Sushi and Yotel - and originator of a novel new purpose-built home of the future. His 800 square foot flat utilizes the mechanics of stage scenery to do all sorts of unexpected ... Read More...
Scott Locklin continues his irregular series on machinery that, in one way or another, is utterly compelling. Today a crazy machine from a crazy time. Aerospace technology became grotesque and beautiful in the 1950s. One of the most grotesque and beautiful creations of that bizarre era of technological excellence was the Convair ... Read More...
Perhaps I should be more patriotic, but much as I love the V&A, the latest exhibition is a bit of a bulldog’s dinner. British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age has a fundamental problem with time span and size – there’s simply too much to fit in. Still, this ... Read More...
The Ford Edsel was launched on ‘E’ Day, the 4th September, 1957. It was so big, it had its own television special on October 13th, called The Edsel Show, featuring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Louis Armstrong. Research and development had gone into overdrive to create the Edsel; ... Read More...
Happy New Year! I hope you had an enjoyable time over Christmas? Mine was somewhat quieter than expected… mainly due to the lack of a television signal. I’m sure there are many advantages of communal living, but sharing a satellite dish doesn’t seem to be one of them. I didn’t ... Read More...
How many of your Christmas gifts were made in China? Ongoing upgrades in transport and technology will no doubt make the world an even smaller place in 2012. Translation innovation think tank, TAUS, believes that translation will become a ubiquitous service, “like the internet, electricity, and water, translation is one of ... Read More...