4 Weeks, 3 Continents, and 2 Hemispheres

Greetings from a tiny cabin in the Stockholm archipelago, where I’m recovering with my family after an intense month of travel. (But we still have WiFi, of course – one can’t quit cold, after all.) A quick recap:

• First up was Sao Paulo, for the New Cities Summit. (Please read the post below for more.) I had the pleasure of meeting (and moderating) the architect Daniel Libeskind, Emaar’s Fahd Al Rasheed, Ericsson’s Jan Wareby, architect Edo Rocha, and Mandalah founder Lourenco Bustani, among many others. I had the chance to bump into and catch up with Saskia Sassen, Cisco’s Wim Elfrink, the FT’s Simon Kuper, and Jones Lang Lasalle’s Rosemary Feenan. Before leaving, I ran into Daniel and Nina Libeskind again in the departure lounge of GRU (naturally).

• The next week took me to Los Angeles for the “Rumble,” the annual year-end review/party at UCLA’s Architecture and Urban Design school. I was invited to attend a day-long mini-conference devoted to “Divining Providencia,” Roger Sherman’s open-ended project to re-imagine the urbanism, economy, and institutions of Ecuador’s Amazonian basin in a last-ditch effort to prevent wholesale deforestation. Joining us was Roger’s counterpart at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Ecuador (PUCE), Santiago del Hierro Kennedy; the South America Project’s (SAP) Felipe Correa, Ana Maria Duran Calisto; and numerous special guest stars to critique the final projects of Roger’s students – four different attempts to imagine an alternative to the riverside truck stop that passes for Providencia now.

• If that wasn’t enough, from there it was off to Europe, where I gave four talks in four days in Amsterdam, London, Istanbul and Prague. The first three were organized by various chapters of the Urban Land Institute, including the opening keynote of the Europe Real Estate Trends conference to talk about my book, Heathrow, “Boris Island,” and why London probably has no choice but to pave a third (and even fourth runway) at Heathrow or else economic irrelevance. (Future Cities’ Rich Heap was kind enough to cover my London appearance.) Istanbul (pictured at top) was more exciting, where plans to build a new airport on the Black Sea is one of the mega-projects associated with Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan’s efforts to pave over Istanbul and replace it with Dubai-on-the-Bosphorus. Finally, I flew to Prague to moderate and speak briefly at my friend Martin Barry’s reSITE conference devoted to cities and public space. (Pictured at left.)

• Finally, it was back to Los Angles for Extreme Ideas: Runway, the final installment in the Getty Foundation-sponsored series of events about the future of architecture. (I had been a panelist at the launch event in May.) Earlier in the day, I joined a passel of UCLA friends and faculty to discuss the future of architecture education and what it all means. (You haven’t lived until you’ve picked a fight with Thom Mayne.) The assembled brain trust made the day memorable, but the location made it magical: the Sheats-Goldstein Residence (pictured below), the house in Beverly Hills that John Lautner and Jimmy Goldstein’s money built. From there, it was a redeye back to New York and another redeye to Stockholm the next evening. My sleep deficit is steep.