La Defense

The rules for changing rules

Mathieu Helie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:12:44 +0000

Paul Romer presents his solution to the problem of underdevelopment in this TED video.

Stanford economist Paul Romer believes in the power of ideas. He first studied how to speed up the discovery and implementation of new technologies. But to address the big problems we'll face this century -- insecurity, harm to the environment, global poverty -- new technologies will not be enough. We must also speed up the discovery and implementation of new rules, of new ideas about how people interact.

The Cultivation of a Spontaneous City

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:11:57 +0000

This is the last of a series of excerpts from my article in the upcoming issue of the International Journal of Architectural Research, about the principles of emergent urbanism. Click here for part I, The Journey to Emergence. Click here for part II, The Fundamentals of Urban Complexity.

A conversation about the geometry of nowhere

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:42:18 +0000

In response to my previous article, Bruce Liedstrand of Community Design Strategies in Paris writes,

I read with interest your essay on The Geometry of Nowhere because I divide my time between Paris and Silicon Valley (the site of your Cupertino Target store example). After re-reading the essay, I am puzzled. I hear your frustration with narrow sidewalks, but I am lost in understanding your concept of “place”.

Producing land with nested markets

Mathieu Helie — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:57:26 +0000

The Poundbury Grid, from Streets and Patterns by Stephen Marshall

Cinderella architecture

Mathieu Helie — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:37:25 +0000

If you ever find yourself speaking to an architect at a party, most likely the word transparency and the supposed need for it is going to come up over and over. This is a recent concern for the building arts. Modern architecture, traditionally, has been philosophically focused on honesty of materials, or the meaning of forms. Transparency is in a way a renunciation of architecture. Its purpose is to make the form of a building as unnoticeable as possible. Architecture just gets in the way, so making it unnoticeable is the best design choice. Nothing is the new something.