Today was split between a tour of a few neighborhoods in Old Dhaka and attending half of the Asia Cup final between the cricket teams of Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We started out in Shakhari Bazaar, one of the oldest parts of Dhaka and one of the most Hindu. The main street is lined with... Continue Reading →
Third class travel has certainly improved in a hundred years time. I am seated in the back of the first level of the double decker Airbus, a swollen and oddly proportioned plane with some 600 seats but I would wager less than 400 passengers. Maybe far less. My section seems less than a third full.... Continue Reading →
E-waste has a lot of possible definitions, but it refers to used electronics shipped between countries. From the StEP-Initiative, it refers to "the reverse supply chain which collects products no loner desired by a given consumer and refurbishes for other consumers, recycles, or otherwise processes waste." The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development defines e-waste as... Continue Reading →
"Information does not exist in a natural state, available to the light of reason in the form of knowledge ordered to display itself in a self-evident way. Not at all.- if that would be the case, designers would only have to follow the natural way of presenting information. ...the distance between us and Edward Tufte:... Continue Reading →
It took me a while to accept the concept of 'noise pollution', that noise can be a difficult to control nuisance which can lower the quality of life for those exposed to it. I try walking down Walnut Street Bridge while listening to music and I find myself unable to hear anything other than tire... Continue Reading →
The following is an excerpt from an assignment for a theory class taken at the same time as the Co-Lab studio. The assignment was an 'analytical description', essentially an in dept case study or 'precedent study'. I had chosen to analyze the site in Olde City by way of advertisement and visual communication, and I... Continue Reading →
The project mentioned yesterday involved the design of a co-lab or co-working space in Old City, Philadelphia. We were introduced to Alex Hillman of Indy Hall (read a good interview with him here courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine), and were told of spaces like 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. These organizations work off of two principles, firstly that independent... Continue Reading →
This may wrap up my discussion on the M'Zab valley for the near future, but I wanted to talk about a visit I was able to take to a traditional courtyard house in El Atteuf (mentioned two days ago). To supplement my photos, I have come across a writing from the 1970s by David Etherton... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago I visited a reservoir in Virginia, an artificial lake created to cool a nearby nuclear power plant. What the dam accomplished was to drastically raise the water level, creating a horizontal plane which cuts across the landscape and registers the topography as defined by the shoreline. As the water level rises... Continue Reading →
Spanning a few valleys spanning the southwest edge of Medellin, Altavista is a sparsely populated suburb home to farmland, a large brick factory and a majority of the mining activity in Medellin. Most of the approximately 17,400 residents are in the lowest two economic strata. Like most of Medellin, a good portion of population growth... Continue Reading →
Adam Achrati 