Participants: Stan Allen, Princeton University School of Architecture Dean; Craig Borum, University of Michigan architecture faculty; Shane Coen, Coen + Part...

TED Talks At the BIF innovation summit, Cat Laine draws on the Greek myth of Tantalus to explain the frustration developing countries face. She shows how we might help communities rich in human capital, but poor in resources and infrastructure, with cleverly engineered solutions.

A/N Blog - Quicks hits and big thoughts from The Architect's Newspaper

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The Design Life

“I do see the film and the album as being together, as a unified thing,” says Noah and the Whale’s chief songwriter and singer Charlie Fink about the band’s new record and accompanying film, The First Days of Spring. “But the album very much came first – it has its own internal narrative.”

As with their debut, last year’s Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, the Londoners’ second release follows a structure. There are songs here – Blue Skies, Our Window, I Have Nothing, Slow Glass – that cry out for special attention, for love. But the journey the album takes you on, from the ominous drum tattoo and string swell on the opening title track right through to the strummed acoustic guitar, pedal-steel keening and massed voices that bring My Door is Always Open to its devastating close, is an experience quite unlike that offered by most music being made today.

Charlie began thinking of making an album that was also a film (and, as he sees it, vice versa) last year. The film, shot on a miniscule budget in a tight time-frame – a process one of the producers describes “as making a near feature-length film, for the budget of a short, in eight days” – and directed by Charlie himself, can be seen as a companion piece to the album, as a visual version of it, or as a piece of work in its own right. That decision is very much up to us, as the listener and viewer, says Charlie.

Formed in 2006, Noah and the Whale quickly gained a foothold on a London music scene variously described as anti-folk, nu-folk and folk-pop (a confusing multitude of pigeonholes) alongside like-minded souls such as Laura Marling and Emmy the Great. Both were part-time members of the band at various points, while Charlie Fink also produced Marling’s Mercury-nominated debut album, Alas I Cannot Swim. It was apparent immediately that something unorthodox and disturbing was going on in Noah and the Whale’s songs: that, beneath the surface appeal (bells, whistles, handcl

The Design Life

The Design Life

one of the highlights of the 2009 promax/bda awards ceremony, this intriguing, tasteful, and beautifully show open was a pleasure to work on!
thanks to shadow the dog!

The Design Life

The Design Life