Author Archives: Graham Shawcross

About Graham Shawcross

Architect PhD student at Edinburgh University Interested in order, rhythm and pattern in Architectural Design

Haptic Interfaces: Extending Object Capabilities

Whilst looking for more up-to-date scanning devices I came across this nice haptic interface that extends the capabilities of everyday objects. It comes from the Fluid Interfaces Group of the MIT Media Lab and uses my favourite definition of a … Continue reading

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Smartgeometry 2013

The tenth annual smartgeometry event has just finished in London, and was held at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Previous years’ events have been held at Troy, Copenhagen, Barcelona, New York and San Francisco with institutions bidding for the privilege of hosting … Continue reading

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Woodland and Silver

The co-inventor of the bar code N. J0seph Woodland died recently; his other co-inventor, Bernard Silver, having already died in 1963 aged just 38. They had been inspired by Silver overhearing the president of a food chain pleading with one … Continue reading

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Visual Pangrams

How Space Begins: Georges Perec This is an extract from The Page the first essay in Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Perec (1974, 1997).  “This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Brain Physiology, Enumeration, Graphics Technology, Visual Pangrams | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Doing Things The Hard Way

Andre Cassagnes the inventor of Etch A Sketch died at the weekend. Etch A Sketch is an ingenious analogue  device, that paradoxically makes sketching more difficult  yet has sold over 100 million copies since 1960. Some of its charm must … Continue reading

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The Long and the Short

A year-out student Tom Kirby emailed an office of 200 people asking what the convention was for beyond and behind dotted line styles.  No one knew. On-line searches didn’t prove very helpful so in one of those mad delightful collective … Continue reading

Posted in Aperiodic Tiling, Architecture, Frozen Music, Rhythm | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

A Continuous Semantic Space……

I came across a report of this recently in the New Scientist and thought it might be important as it seems to suggest that the brain locations of names of objects and actions have some commonality across the brains of … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Brain Physiology, Classification | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Enjoying Randomness

This came about after visiting Loch Maddy in North Uist and trying to think of ways to emulate the  strange way that the land and sea merge into each other there and realising that the technique had wider uses as well. … Continue reading

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Randomness | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Visual Thinking

I have recently become interested in visual thinking, probably because I like making arguments visually but also as a result of having encountered problems in producing simple easy to understand diagrams. Diagrammatic Illustrations The minimal (graphics only) version above contains … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Geometry, Logic | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Oscar Niemeyer

The death of Oscar Niemeyer reminded me of an enjoyable September 2010 visit to Paris with the Twentieth Century Society. Among other wonderful buildings including Pierre Chareau’s  Maison de Verre we visited Oscar Niemeyer’s Paris Communist Party Headquarters which later became … Continue reading

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