The newly-built Toronto Star building ca. 1974, with the under-construction CN Tower top left, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto-Dominion Centre top right.

Baumeister interview on ‘media houses’

Just before the UK went into it lockdown in late March 2020, I did an interview with Alexander Gutzmer on ‘media houses’ for the German architecture magazine Baumeister. We discussed what is at stake in studies of media companies’ headquarters, offices and facilities, with reference to my research into the Toronto Star‘s various facilities around … Continue Reading

Data Materiality Episode 2: Shannon Mattern on 5G, Media Materiality, Archaeology and Pedagogy

Although it’s technically been online for a week, I just took a short pause before publicising the second episode of Data Materiality. Data Materiality is a podcast series I co-host with Joel McKim, and is related to our three-year research project running under the same name, co-sponsored by Birkbeck’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Media … Continue Reading

CFP AAG 2020: Building Platform Urbanism

Susan Moore and I have begun advertising a CFP for the 2020 AAG conference in Denver, USA. The paper session we are proposing focuses on the theme of ‘Building Platform Urbanism’: the ways in which digital platform companies, or agents anticipating their interests, are increasingly involved in designing and constructing particular built forms and new … Continue Reading

Urban media tour: 18 May 2016

After a two-year hiatus, Joel McKim and I are pleased to again lead our (evidently) popular urban media tour of West End London, this year as part of Birkbeck Arts Week 2016. As always, we’ll be not only visiting a range of buildings and neighbourhoods associated with major media industries, but also we’ll be discussing … Continue Reading

New senior posts in history of architecture/photography/digital culture at Birkbeck

A couple of interesting new posts have been announced today in Birkbeck’s History of Art department (which has some important interactions with my own department, for instance through the Vasari Research Centre). These are senior posts, one in the History and Theory of Architecture and the other is in the History and Theory of Photography/Digital … Continue Reading