Nicholas De Monchaux Livres

How the twenty-one-layer Apollo spacesuit, made by Playtex, was a triumph of intimacy over engineering.

Exploring the diverse landscapes of California, the narrative delves into the contrasts between the U.S./Mexico border, marijuana farms, and urban environments like Los Angeles and San Francisco. It examines California's dual identity as a major global economy and a cultural hub, focusing on the intricate relationship between technology, nature, and humanity in the 21st century. The book highlights how these elements shape perceptions and aspirations in contemporary society.

With three billion more humans projected to be living in cities by 2050, all design is increasingly urban design. And with as much data now produced every day as was produced in all of human history to the year 2007, all architecture is increasingly information architecture. Praised in the New York Times for its "intelligent enquiry and actionable theorizing," Local Code is a collection of data-driven tools and design prototypes for understanding and transforming the physical, social, and ecological resilience of cities. The book's data-driven layout arranges drawings of 3,659 digitally-tailored interventions for vacant public land in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Venice, Italy. Between these illustrated case studies, critical essays present surprising and essential links between such designs and the seminal work of urbanist Jane Jacobs, artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and digital mapping pioneer Howard Fisher, along with the developing science of urban nature and complexity. In text and image, Local Code presents a digitally prolific, open-ended approach to urban resilience and social and environmental justice; At once analytic and visionary, it pioneers a new field of enquiry and action at the meeting of big data and the expanding city.