The Sydney Design Guide is being launched tomorrow night at Customs House. If it is anything like the Melbourne Design Guide released last year, it should prove to be an excellent resource for tourists and locals alike.

Customs House, Thursday 29th November, 7pm.

For whatever reasons, I spent the last two weekends down in Canberra. And managed to spend a bit of time in the three best buildings down there. Following are a some snapshots.

The National Academy of Science building by Roy Grounds 1959:

The High Court of Australia by Edwards, Madigan Torzillo and Briggs (Chritopher Kringas was the design architect) 1975:

Australian War Memorial by Emil Sodersten and John Crust, 1941:

Valve, the publishers of the Half Life series, gather large amounts of gamer data through their online delivery system Steam.

There are an average of 8.44 billion minutes played each month on the Steam servers and a consequence of this is that they are able to gather vast statistics of how people play through games. Recently they began publishing information for Half Life 2 Episode 2 including ‘death maps’ - maps charting where and how often players die on any given map.

A graphic representation of danger.

Does the US military - or any other military for that matter - use similar tools in real life conflict areas? I suspect that they would.

One can a future with its inevitable ubiquitous computing, where these maps become commonplace tools for advertising firms and security agencies alike. Where maps like these are used to track points where people wearing a particular brand of watch stop to drink a particulare carbonated drink, the corelation a majestic revelation to targeted advertising marketeers everywhere.

This Vortal Coil - ep2_outland_04

Freeman Pontifex - ep2_outworld_06

Riding Shotgun - ep2_outland_06a

Under the Radar - ep2_outland_10a

Our Mutual Friend - ep2_outworld_11a

t-Minus One - ep2_outworld_12a

UNSW is holding an exhibition in their newly awsome-fied mezzanine space THIS friday at the Red Centre, UNSW 6pm:

UTS is holding theirs in a couple of weeks - 12.12.07 at UTS:

The Sydney University Exhibition - {esc}ape - is on Tuesday 27th November at the Everleigh Carriageworks. Would be a good opportunity to head out to see the Carriageworks if you have not already, as it is quite a fine project.

Circuit IV (2007), Roberto Cabot

From the latest issue of l’architecture d’aujourd’hui centred on drawing.