The Longest Now

Projects like EveryBlock have a noble goal – to have information about every block in a city for cities around the world, to let you follow information relevant to where you live and work.  But they tend to stall at the level of a few thousand new entries about a city each day — far less than even the collective newsrooms in a city process.  And they don’t have many ways for individuals to contribute information about where they live, or to distribute the task of seeking out new govenment data and posting / tagging it where appropriate.

How do we make things like this real?  How do we identify the hundred or so large ongoing tasks for a city – from posting its laws and regulations and codes, to sharing any information about its public works, to sharing updates from residents about the state of its infrastructur, to crimes and concerns, to social events and new business openings, to apartments for rent and neighborhood committee meetings?

My brother Sebastián Gray Avins, architect and essayist, have a lovely new website up for their architecture firm, Bresciani Gray Arquitectos.  Now you can see their recent projects, from municipal buildings to the Chilean display at the Venice Biennales.  They include both images and floorplans in most cases.  I should find out if they have high-resolution images up to complement the overviews.

One of my favorites is Librería Ulises — a bookstore with the glory and scope of a library.  What I wouldn’t give to have such a store in my city!  You can also see it in the upper-left of the gallery below.  And I learned a few things from their design of the new Psychology building at the  Pontifical University of Chile. Props to the architects – browse some of their work if you need a break from the everyday.